The first time I took note of her prowess was in Kunle Afolayan’s Figurine. In two days, this amazing woman that I consider one of Africa’s greatest talents will be 40. She acts. She directs. She writes amazing scripts.
You need to see her with her kids to know whether or not she is an outstanding mother. Nnamdi is never tired of celebrating this wife of his youth, who he captured young.
Her never-say-die spirit came alive when she was told it was not possible for a woman to make it as a movie director.
Welcome to the world of Omoni Oboli, the woman who does not take no for an answer, except her heart is not in it. So, she worked on being a successful director and today we all can see the outcome.
To make a success of directing, she took a short course in digital filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. This was to enable her understand the technical details, instead of using on-the-job experience. She equally learnt from other filmmakers’ work, journeys, successes and failures.
A major influence on her career is Tyler Perry. This explains her love for writing, producing, directing and playing multiple characters. In Being Mrs. Elliott, she was writer, producer, director, dual roles actor and executive producer.
Omoni’s relationship with other female actors, producers and directors portrays her to me as good-hearted. The way she celebrates Mo Abudu, Uche Jombo, Chioma Akpotha, Ufuoma McDermott and Toyin Abraham is amazing. In one of her promotional materials for the sequel to Wives on Strike, Omoni predicted that the world would celebrate Toyin for her role as Iya Bola in the flick. When I saw the film, I could not agree less. Toyin was simply crazy.
Let me serve you another evidence that she is never tired of celebrating what she believes in. She said of Toyin in an Instragram post: “I am so proud of you my darling. The world will celebrate you some more after they watch #Wivesonstriketherevolution. You murdered your role as Iya Bola! I could not have casted a better actor. I’m so glad you took all we talked about into consideration and you ran with it! You just wait for the accolades and the awards! I love you my baby girl.”
Her disdain for child bride and domestic violence is evident in her last two cinema releases Wives on Strike and Wives on Strike the Revolution. I won’t be surprised if Moms at War, her yet-to-be released movie, has anti-domestic violence stance. The lyrics of Gone Forever, the soundtrack to the Wives on Strike the Revolution, which she wrote for Chidinma to voice, can melt any heart.
The Wives on Strike series parade a bunch of pidgin-speaking women and men whose acts made us laugh and also think. It has also a group of senators and the wife of one of them whose acts made us think and ready to stop the child-bride craze.
The movies are not comedy for comedy sake. They are comedies for social change. They are comedies for re-evaluation of our social mores. These sort of socially-responsible comedy movies are rare. What we have most of the time are just plastic-comedies. Omoni employed the trick of the rat, which usually fans its victims before attacking. Call it the carrot-and-stick approach to fighting against child-bride advocates and you won’t be wrong. You will laugh at the seeming jokes in the film while being hit unconsciously by the message: She is a child, not a bride!
The language in these movies is the clean. Omoni deploys creative coinages to describe acts which kids are not supposed to be exposed to. One very creative coinage is ‘janglova’, which means love making. There is also ‘kongea’, which means pent-up sexual passion.
Interestingly, some weeks before the premier of the first part of the movie, it was engulfed in a controversy. Reason: its central idea of women going on strike and preventing their husbands from having sex with them has a similar ring with the theme of Spike Lee’s satirical musical drama Chiraq. So, when the trailer of Wives on Strike came out, the mother of three was accused of copying Lee.
The controversy forced Omoni to give vital background information on the movie. The movie’s concept, she said, came to her about four years ago when she wanted to do a movie about women going on strike, but could not find a sensible reason for the strike.
Her words: “We felt there was no sense in making comedy, just for comedy sake. At least, that’s how I think, and I like to stick to what I know and leave others who are better at their own areas of expertise to do theirs. So when my husband and I wanted to do something concerning the Child-Not-Bride issue which was steaming up back in 2013, we decided that we had found a good enough reason for the strike. I wrote the script, and when we were ready we started principal photography in April 2014.”
She added that she got to know after her shoot that some women in South Sudan suggested a sex strike to end the war in their country.
“The idea of going on strike was just fantasy and wishful thinking, not knowing that it had really been conceived by other women in practice, or by other filmmakers and playwrights in theory,” said Omoni.
The director of Being Mrs Elliott said she heard of Chiraq for the first time when her husband sent her the trailer.
She said she expected a reaction like this: “Nollywood is at it again! Copy! Copy! Copy! Omoni Oboli has joined the bandwagon of Nollywood producers who steal original works and make it their own.”
She continued: “Spike Lee commenced principal photography (that means he started shooting) in June 2015, and released in select theatres on December 4 of the same year. Heaven forbid that Spike Lee would copy little old Omoni Oboli, who is in our Nigeria here! How can that happen?! If I had released it first on October 1st, instead of The First Lady like I did, then Spike Lee was definitely being artistic and the similarities were just mere coincidences, but since I decided to release later, then I ‘definitely’ (beyond a shadow of a doubt) copied Mr Lee. Case closed!”
From the look of things, this amazing daughter of Mosogar, Delta State—who shares not just birthday with me but also birth year — will continue to break a leg. And God will keep her, the three boys and the eternal treasure in her life called Nnamdi.
Happy 40th birthday to us in advance.
The accolades have been pouring in from her colleagues who have read the book.
“This is a must read for every youth! Yes, the youths need this even more than those at the top of success already. I saw the slash sale on these pages @okadabooks @omonioboli and I said to myself, “I must grab this opportunity today”. Kai, I started reading this book and I couldn’t stop. I’m not fan of finishing a book at a sitting but I couldn’t resist this.
