South African film gives Nigeria bad image?

Description:

Information and Communications Minister Dora Akunyili was shown on national television for the second time this month.

Her latest appearance is in reaction to a new South African film 'District 9' which the government says portrays Nigeria in bad light. The film is currently being sold and shown in the Nigerian.

'District 9' is produced by the South African Film Corporation. Its central and sub-themes suggest that Nigeria and its leadership are fraudulent and its people cannibals. It made its public debut on the screens of Silverbird Cinema. With her rebranding effort called to question, Akunyili has officially protested to the South African government over the film and is demanding an apology from its makers.

However, a different point of view is that it is not a surprise that this latest image bashing comes from South Africa, a country that is showing unrestrained intolerance to other Africans, as we have seen in the mass assault on citizens of its less-privileged neighbours, especially Zimbabwe.

While we sympathise with the minister and share her sense of nationalism, there are salient issues which must address. The first being whether the content of the film represents the truth that is known about Nigeria. It is a painful fact that some Nigerians are indeed scammers and fraudsters. Indeed, our local film industry, Nollywood daily portrays us so to the entire world. There are citizens of other countries who are scammers and fraudsters.

Nollywood producers place much emphasis on some of our communities' penchant for disorderliness, violence, fraud, cannibalism and criminal behaviour, and project them to the world as standard Nigerian practice. It is therefore, possible this projection is the aggregate of what Nigeria exports as art mirroring its own society. Secondly, disturbing as it may be, District 9 may not be totally wrong in portraying the criminal behaviour of the few the filmmakers have had contacts with. But for the District 9 producers to try to morph the conduct of the few as the national vocation of the 150 million Nigerians is not only lazy art, it is libelling the Nigerian nation.

The film industry, without direct censorship and in the hands of patriots, can be a great vehicle of nationalism, social mobilisation and ethical re-orientation. Unfortunately in the Nigerian context, it has been left totally in the hands of script-writers with little depth in the strength of art and no inkling as to the damage rushed scripts can do to the image of a country.


Partially, this is the result of official neglect or incompetence, because with support, Nollywood would be an instrument though which the government can portray the deep sense of patriotism which usually drives Nigerians to criticise their country and leaders. The absence of this interface will always cause the bitterness of having others who know little or nothing about us making irrational judgements. This is where the challenge is for the government and the National Film and Video Censors Board to do its homework and get into action by using film as vehicles of repair, national cohesion and development. While we admit that Nigeria's pre-colonial past, like any developing society is not perfect, this country has made giant strides in its development and has grown from the primordial age to where it is today. We think, for instance, that Nollywood can portray this with excellent storyline and shoot at locations that project the scenic beauty of the Nigeria, in effect telling the Nigerian story in a much more contextual way that no one else can.

As far as the approach of the Minister on this issue is concerned, we think that quiet diplomacy would be useful. The gung-ho method she has adopted may in fact cause more headache for the government than it is fighting to contend with; she has only succeeded in unwittingly popularising the negative traits she sets out to correct in the first instance. This is why we believe that all organs of the Nigerian government, especially its foreign service must work together with its government to present a balanced image of Nigeria to our foreign friends and partners.