His black trousers, cinched by a sleek belt, gracefully drape over the bedside drawer. Wearing an earring, hand chain, and a wristwatch, he peacefully sleeps on a bed adorned with a pristine white blanket. His head rests on the pillow, radiating an almost ethereal glow. Beside him lies a lady, covered in the same white blanket. As she awakens, a startled realisation grips her, prompting her to hastily wake him up. She questions, a mix of confusion and concern colouring her tone, about her presence in the room and the nature of their interaction. He is surprised by her enquiry. To him, she is the escort he had summoned to his room the previous night.
“We did have sex”, he says casually and throws her off balance. More questions follow.
It is all in ‘One Night in July’, one of the latest movies of Nollywood actor and director Omoni Oboli.
Omoni is on a rampage. Late last year, she began a journey, a journey that looks promising and may set a record hitherto alien to Nigerian film production on YouTube.
After years of cinema releases in partnership with Inkblot Production, Omoni decided to open a YouTube channel and she has released no less than six movies that had not been exhibited elsewhere.
The movies on her channel are cinema standard. Good stories, great pictures and actors who know their onions. The 45-year-old seems out to prove that on YouTube, technically-sound movies can do well and earn producers as much revenues as Netflix and Amazon Prime releases.
So far, her dream appears to be coming true. Over 100,000 subscribers are now on the channel. ‘A Night In July’, within three weeks of release, garnered no less than three millions, eight hundred thousand views. It stars Uche Montana, Eso Dike, Tony Mezie, Jennifer Nnoruga, Adeyemi Habibat, and Martins Ogbebor.
Her ‘The One Who Stole My Heart’ already has three million views and a sequel is in the works. Another one titled ‘Thicker Than Water’, in four weeks had one million, two hundred thousand views. Others such as ‘A Special Place’, ‘Dark Secret’, ‘Twisted’, ‘Another You’ and ‘Marriage of Inconvenience’ have also had good views.
‘A Night In July’, which is so far the most successful viewers-wise, follows the young lady who finds herself on a man’s bed and has no idea how she got into the room. Her woe is compounded when she discovers she is pregnant. Others treat sociological issues such as adultery, motherhood, entitlement mentality, and domestic violence.
Omoni has always addressed topical issues in her production. Her cinema release, ‘Wives on Strike’, has a bunch of pidgin-speaking women and men whose acts make us laugh and also think. It has also a group of senators and the wife of one of them whose acts make 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. It is a socially-responsible comedy. 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! 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.
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The first time I took note of her prowess was in Kunle Afolayan’s ‘Figurine’. I consider her one of Africa’s greatest talents. She acts. Very well. She directs. Exceptionally. She writes amazing scripts. So well. She is a damn good mother. You need to see her with her kids to agree with me. She is an amazing wife. Her husband, 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. This woman who does not take no for an answer, except her heart is not in it, ignored the naysayers. 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 taking on the responsibilities of writing, producing, directing and playing multiple characters. In ‘Being Mrs. Elliott’, she was writer, producer, director, dual roles actor and executive producer. Kunle Afolayan also influenced her.
The next few months will show the fruits of Omoni’s new direction which already has caught YouTube’s attention and has led to a meeting between her and the platform’s managers.
My final take: When we don’t give up on our dreams, they often come to fruition. The key is to continue to give our best to things we are passionate about. Never-say-die spirits have been the secrets of many successful people.
