Browsing: Femi Akintunde-Johnson

FAJ and his two friends, Olakunle Sikiru Bakare (or Kunle Bakare) and Isiaka Mayowa Akinpelu (or Mayor Akinpelu), founded FAME on a conviction that the time was ripe for an authoritative tabloid capable of giving all those glossy and glamorous foreign tabloids a run for their money – they didn’t want it to play in the local league! And although their collective credentials were never in doubt as to their ability to run a newspaper, the huge investment in ambition made colleagues predict to FAJ, Kunle and Mayor that FAME would not last six months.

FAJ will be the first to confess that he’s a “reporter for life”; consequently, Reflections, subtitled Salute to Pioneering Creativity & Perseverance, is his attempt to honour and memorialise the folks who felt their way blindly along until they uncovered the elephant that is today the Nigerian movie industry – aka Nollywood. Toss the provision of “data” and “original stories” about these key players into the mix and a book is done. Written in a conversational style, clearly a stylistic choice to draw in all eyeballs, Reflections can be considered a natural outcome of Akintunde-Johnson’s decades-old dance with entertainment in Nigeria. From reporter at The Punch Newspapers to editor and co-founder of publications like Fame and Encomium, to being the brain behind the nation’s leading music and movie awards, the author has never been far removed from the people whose lives he chronicles in this book.

Nigeria is celebrated across the globe as being amongst the three biggest movie-making nations in the world. The United States through Hollywood, India via Bollywood, and Nigeria with her irrepressible Nollywood are the acclaimed three leading countries in the art of telling stories with moving pictures. Femi Akintunde-Johnson, popularly known as FAJ, in his book: Reflections on Nigerian Movie Industry: Salute to Pioneering Creativity and Perseverance,” offers a list of the pioneers and players of the dramatic and filmic arts that made the Nollywood phenomenon possible.

It would have been heart-warming if Ms Genevieve Nnaji had kept sealed lips. It would have been gracious if frazzled selectors had promptly apologized, and speedily assumed responsibility, and offered to resign (or feigned it). It would have been a shocking binge of fresh air if our social media influencers and critics had done a little research before crashing into the current controversy surrounding America’s Oscar Awards’ treatment or maltreatment of our dear lovely Lionheart. It would have been great to see how the supposed second-placed work which is predominantly rendered in an indigenous language would have fared. It would have been uplifting if after five years of “searching” for the right movie to represent Nigeria at the Oscars, we didn’t bungle it.