DIRECTOR of Last Flight to Abuja, Obi Emelonye, has announced that his new movie project will take on the personality of former Nigerian military ruler, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, otherwise called IBB.
Although the story of IBB has filled the public space as a controversial, dictatorial, sadistic and devious leader whose parting gift to Nigerians was the annulment of the acclaimed most free and fair presidential election of June 12, 1993, Emelonye said there is more to IBB than the ascribed negativities.
The filmmaker, who claimed that the retired Army General revealed some of his ‘darkest’ moments in a no-holds-barred interview, said these new discoveries will be the substance of the film which also intends to document the Nigerian political history.
Announcing the project during a press conference on Tuesday, Emelonye said, the biopic titled “Badamasi: Portrait of a General” is not just about the General that ruled Nigeria from August 1985 to August 1993 and the annulled June 12 election, but will chronicle his childhood days as an orphan, his military background, his part in the civil war, his marriage to Mariam, a stylish women from another region, as well as his years of military rule.
He said the reason the film will explore the General’s early days is to enhance public understanding of some of the man’s most controversial actions, noting that the project does not set out to patronise him in any way.
“The Badamasi film project is shaped to be hard-hitting, controversial but historically factual in its treatment of Ibrahim Babangida’s rise from obscurity as an orphan to the zenith of Nigerian military power.
“This film will be unafraid of touching raw-nerves and being boldly revealing, with the ultimate aim of giving the viewers unprecedented access into IBB’s role in some of the most defining and controversial moments of Nigeria’s journey to nationhood from the Nigerian civil war to the many coups of the 1970s and 1980s particularly the Dimka coup and the bloodbath in the Gideon Orkar coup, and then the June 12 issue,” he said.
Although the filmmaker said he might be criticised by people of his tribe for not making a film on the late Biafran warlord, Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, the time has come for Africans, especially Nigerian filmmakers, to rise up and begin to tell the stories of their leaders, irrespective of ethnic or religious differences.
He disclosed that he was inspired to make the film after watching Mandela, a flick on the late apartheid fighter and South African president, Nelson Mandela. “As I watched it, I felt proud as an African. As Nigerians, we have several historical figures who haven’t been immortalised on the big and small screens for the world to see. We should begin to profile them in a historical faithful biographical film, a treatment that has been meted out to other African leaders like Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba and even Idi Dada Amin,” he said.
Apart from ‘Last Flight to Abuja’, Emelonye’s The Nollywood Factory” is known for other titles like ‘The Mirror Boy’, ‘Onye Ozi’ and ‘Oxford Gardens’.
Planned for premiere and cinema release on October 1, 2017, casting, he said, will soon commence ahead of shooting in June.
