Ogbonna Amadi, Lolade Sowoolu
29 November 2008
interview
The movie industry is agog with the story of a war between the AGN president Mr. Ejike Asiegbu, and the organisers of the first ever Face of Nollywood event. One side of the divide is Bryan Chike and his team at Total TV and on the other side is the AGN and Mr.Obi Godwin Nwachukwu the man the actors guild is backing as the originator of the Face of Nollywood.
Both parties have been trading words over whose right it is to host the event. We spoke to the warring factions and this is the result of the encounter. First we started with Obi Nwachukwu and this is his story.
It's a fight to finish with Ejike Asiegbu- Bryan Chike
Bryan Chike the man at the centre of the Face of Nollywood spared nothing in defence of his right to host the event. He took swap shot at the AGN President accusing him of insincerity and greed.
If the AGN and the other body started their project since 2005, when did you start yours?
Oh! I'm hearing for the first time that there are people behind Ejike and that there is another team from you.
Ejike says he is standing by the other team because they approached him first and as a man of integrity and honour...
The question is if some people had approached him way back in whichever year, what did he tell me when I started? What did he tell me in February when I wrote a letter to him and up till two weeks ago when he began to play the mischief he's playing now.
If he had any agreement with another body in 2005, why did we carry on and why did he go into an MOU which was not signed?
He gave reasons why he went into the MOU which was because he thought he could get both parties to work together..
How can I work with a party I never knew, I'm hearing about another party for the first time. All this while, he didn't tell me there was another party other than the AGN. Before now, all he had said is that the trade mark belongs to AGN.
What he is saying is that somebody had already come to them with the proposal to host Face of Nollywood and which they endorsed ...
I'm not aware of that. When I started the Face of Nollywood also way back in 2006, I had to do my homework and planning. When I was ready to reach the public, I approached the AGN, the Association of Movie Producers (AMP), Script Writers Guild, Directors Guild of Nigeria and ANTP which is the Yoruba association for movie makers, I approached almost all the guilds. It was the same letter I wrote to all this other guild that I wrote to AGN.
All we were seeking was for support and endorsement. I never sought for anybody's collaboration. The other guilds wrote back giving their support but Mr. Asiegbu said he cannot give us support rather he can collaborate with us. And I asked him what kind of collaboration he was looking at. And he asked me what we are going to offer to the guild.
I reminded him that I was the Secretary General of AGN eight years ago and if the association has a programme and my company feels that we should get involved in it then why not, we can support the project or whatever they want to do.
But when he's talking about collaboration that I don't understand it and the discussion broke down at that point and we went our different ways.
Later one of my partners and colleague said he spoke with Ejike and that we have to resume that discussion again and I asked him if he fixed any time and he said yes.
We came to O'Jez restaurant and started talking about it again. In that discussion he asked what we can offer AGN, so I went outside to discuss with my colleague and when we came inside again, I told him we're offering 5% but asked him what AGN is bringing into the event. He said they are bringing their name or is their name not enough?
First, when I told him we were offering 5%, he laughed and said that I'm insulting him. And I told him that 5% is not the issue, but 5% of what are we offering.
At this point my colleague called me aside again and told me that he knows Ejike, that he has a feeling Ejike is not satisfied with what we've offered that we should give him (Ejike) 5% and the guild 5% making it 10%. I told my friend that I don't like this idea of offering this and that so we went back to him and my colleague told him what we've decided.
As far as Total TV is concerned Mr. Asiegbu is greedy. At the point of writing up our MOU which he refused to sign, he was asking for 20% to himself and 10% to the AGN and in the end Total TV will go home with 70%. We drafted the MOU through our lawyer and gave to him which he said he'll go through it and give to his lawyer to go through before all this game started.
And before the MOU, he said that we can go on, on the ground that we have always been friends. Initially we printed posters which didn't have Ejike's name on it and even the TV commercials didn't have his name too.
But when we got to the point of MOU where he said we can go on, we then asked for his name, phone number and the AGN's since he said he'll bring all the corporate bodies and banks who were ready to do business with AGN.
He gave us his name and phone number that day but their logo was not available but he said we should go and cut the Logo from the paper they used in launching the office which we did. We put his name, phone number and their logo there, but it's so unfortunate that we didn't record all these things.
Uptill this point, did he ever mention another body to you?
No. He has issued press releases about this event and talked about it on TV. Ask any press man whether he mentioned anything like another body to them. He told some of his colleagues also that we've settled the matter that we can go on. Even on the day I went to his office to deliver the MOU, I met Sunny Macdon who said to me, thank God that you've settled with Ejike. He also told me that Ejike told him that we've agreed to give them 30% and I was surprised because he claimed that I am the one who has been telling people that he's taking 30% from us.
Inside the MOU, there's a non discloseable clause that we must not tell anybody about percentage, we should just say we are working together. On getting to his office I told him to stop talking to people about our agreement because they don't need to know the basis at which we are working. We went on and discussed the project.
He even gave me lists of hotels I can stay in Abuja and I told him I don't know them so he called them in my presence. When I got to Abuja, I used one of the hotels.
He called to say he was coming to Abuja the following week and when he arrived, I called to know where he was staying and I went to consult with him.
In our meeting I told him we are having hitches with the FCT ministry, the NTDC and Rochas foundation. He told me he couldn't do anything about the Rochas foundation and mentioned people he said can help me in that regard. I asked him to help us talk to theFCT minister if he's close to him because our proposal has been on his table for the past four months.
Few minutes after our discussion, he called to tell me that the man said he was not willing to do our project this year and I asked why. He said he doesn't know. At this point I started feeling that Ejike's interest is not in this project.
The same day I visited the CEO of Abuja film village international Segun Oyekunle in pursuance of my proposal and he said he had told Ejike last night that the ministers have said they may not be able to do two closely related Nollywood events in 2008.
I asked him which other Nollywood event the minister was interested in and he was like am I not aware that Ejike submitted a proposal to host a Screen and Stage Actors Award? And I told him I wasn't aware.
He said both of us should go and work out details of both events and tell them which one can wait till 2009 and which one can hold this year. Then I told the man that we are not doing any collaboratiohn with Ejike since he has decided to push our own event to next year. The man insisted that we must work out a date for each event because the minister was waiting for him to do a memo on that.
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