Omoni Oboli—Nollywood actress, producer cum director and proud daughter of Niger Delta— has a dream that one day women will go on strike and make live hell for men who keep silent over the child-bride issue.
She has a dream that one day men will beg their wives for intimacy and all they will get from the creeks to the city will be resounding nos.
She has a dream that one day a senator will feel bad that he has compromised too much and failed to be the conscience of the upper legislature on matters such as the bride-child.
She has a dream that one day international news organs will take interest in a strike called by local women traders to force men to see the evil in child-bride.
She has a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of the creed that a boy-child and a girl-child deserve equal treatment.
She has a dream that one day in the troubled nation called Nigeria, the daughters of the poor and the not-so-poor will be allowed to grow and be ready for marital life and not sold into bondage.
She has a dream that one day this nation of injustice and of oppression will let the girl-child have the best of education and others.
She has a dream that daughters will not be judged by their breasts and other feminine contours but by their brains and will power.
Before the University of Benin-trained Omoni, Martin Luther-King jnr had dreams too and it took decades for almost all of the dreams to be fulfilled. I am not sure Omoni is willing to wait for decades for her dreams to become reality. I can hear her screaming: ‘Child-bride is evil. Stop it now!’
To realise these dreams, she decided to be serious and unserious at the same time. She made a movie called Wives on Strike. The movie, which I saw last Friday in a packed cinema hall in Ikeja, has 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 movie is not comedy for comedy sake. It is comedy for social change. It is comedy for re-evaluation of our social mores. I doubt having seen this sort of socially-responsible comedy before. 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!
I suspect those guilty of the abuse against the girl-child will even laugh at many of the scenes before realising they are the ones being told to embrace change and abandon their archaic ways.
Another thing I like about the movie is the clean language. 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. I doff my hat for this laugh merchant with a mission.
I also like the way the movie is being marketed. Last Saturday, Omoni was in Benin, the Edo State capital promoting this great work. She has also been in Akure, Lagos and others for the same purpose.
Last weekend, Julius Agwu, one of the lead actors in the movie, was in Port Harcourt, the capital of the almighty Rivers State, which he last year dreamt of governing, to encourage people to see the movie. Ufuoma McDermott was at the Silverbird Cinema in Ikeja spreading the gospel according to Omoni Oboli.
Other stars of the movie were also in different parts of the country to encourage cinema goers to see Wives on Strike.
I foresee a situation where this movie will break the box office records. Yet, Omoni, I understand, was afraid to take it to the cinema because she feared people may not like it. Perhaps this fear explained why another movie she shot after it titled The First Lady came out first.
Interestingly, some weeks before the premier 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 last year, when her husband sent her the trailer. Knowing what people could be capable of, she foresaw a situation whereby she would be accused of stealing Lee’s idea.
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!”
As a result of the good cinema run the movie is having, I ask Omoni to emulate Jesus Christ by declaring: forgive them because they know not what they are doing. God has also been good to her. So, resenting rumour mongers should not have a place in her heart. Like the great Nelson Mandela said: “Resentment is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill your enemy.”
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.
My final take: Although I have not seen First Lady and Being Mrs Elliot, the reviews have been great. This is another reason while forward should be the place Omoni looks to. And I am giving her an advice she gave her fans in a recent interview. She should continue to trust in God and keep holding on to her dreams and they will come to pass and child-bride, VVF and other evils against the girl-child will die and be interred in unmarked graves.
