Veteran Nollywood actor Nkem Owoh, popularly known as Osuofia, has denied claims that he said the Yoruba started Nollywood, insisting that Yoruba filmmakers only pioneered Nigeria’s home video.
Owoh made the clarification in an interview on the YouTube series “Curiosity Made Me Ask”, hosted by comedian and content creator Adebayo Abidemi, known as Bae U. The interview was published on Saturday.
The host asked the actor about reports that he had said the Yoruba, and not the Igbo, founded Nollywood. Owoh rejected the suggestion outright. “First of all, you have given me this wrong accusation that I said, Yoruba started Nollywood. No,” he said.
He explained that the name Nollywood did not exist when he and his colleagues began making films. “When we started the thing, there was no Nollywood as a name,” he said.
The actor, however, credited Yoruba practitioners with popularising the home video format. “The Yoruba did not start Nollywood. They started Home video,” he said.
Owoh named the late Hubert Ogunde and Adebayo Papa among those who made home video popular. Responding to the suggestion that Ogunde was Igbo, he said: “Ogunde is not Igbo. I’m telling you that Yoruba started it.”
The remarks add to a long-running debate over which ethnic group shaped Nigerian cinema. In August, the late actor Francis Duru had argued that Igbo entrepreneurs built the modern Nollywood boom of the 1990s and early 2000s, while Yoruba filmmakers later became dominant through stronger organisation and promotion of their culture.
Many industry watchers trace the start of the commercial home video market to Kenneth Nnebue’s 1992 Igbo-language film, “Living in Bondage”. The clarification by Owoh, one of Nollywood’s best-known comic actors, has since drawn fresh reactions online from fans on both sides of the argument.
The post “Yoruba Did Not Start Nollywood, They Started Home Video” – Osuofia Clarifies Controversial Claim appeared first on Information Nigeria.