Researching for Dummies: A Rant to Nollywood Practitioners
Or, Researching for Non-Researchers: A Rant to the Nigerian Film Industry Practitioners.
The Nigerian education system, coupled with the economy, isn’t primed to birth researchers and innovators, rather it is designed to cultivate consumers and crammers. In my 20 years of schooling in Nigeria — 2 years Kindergarten, 2 years Nursery School, 5 years Primary School, 6 years Secondary School and 5 years University — there was no part of my learning that inspired me to go out and learn some more regarding whatever topic I was taught. Not one part. Now, before you dismiss me as a truant who didn’t utilize the opportunities presented to him, in the words of an ex-President of Nigeria, ‘ask the man on the street’ this question: did your education in the University make you an authority in your field of study? Also, before you answer, by ‘authority’ I mean being a go-to thought leader, one respected by peers who often seek your advice.
Rather, the Nigerian education system spits out a ton of half-baked, underskilled graduates who then join the already teeming labour market in their quest for a job and when they do get a job, any job available, they continue with the skills they had learnt and honed over the years which include consuming and cramming the current knowledge modus operandi and sticking with it without the desire or effort to research and innovate. Since most employments don’t have levels or parameters that signify growth whose criteria is your increasing knowledge base — KPIs are often focused on you doing the job you’re assigned well enough to get a pass mark, and not on creativity and innovation — most employees are content with keeping the knowledge status quo wheel turning. To the pragmatic employee, every exerted effort must have a direct correlation with the salary at the end of the month. If seeking new knowledge doesn’t affect her KPI and invariably doesn’t increase her salary which in turn doesn’t increase her purchasing power despite inflation and which eventually doesn’t give her more freedom, then seeking new knowledge is a secondary concern. What is primary is regurgitating the same ol’, same ol’ and keeping the job. Continuing in the amorphous blob of sameness.
Thus, because of the conspiracy between the Nigerian education system and the Nigerian economy, research for non-researchers is a luxury many don’t bother paying for.
This is a national problem, yes, but in particular, Nollywood cannot continue to survive on the stories of storytellers who have been indoctrinated by these systems and have not liberated themselves from their intangible shackles to become research junkies and knowledge connoisseurs. Because why would you, in a movie airing to both indigenous and international communities, strap a person to a chair, surround said person with henchmen, pour what I assume is petrol over the person and on a trail leading to the person, and then set fire on the person, while in a small contained room. It reeks of banality which we cannot continue to abide by. This is why we have so few industry-specific stories. Despite our thriving Banking Industry, we have never had a story that looks at insider trading where the dialogue uses banking and finance registers. We have a few medical drama set in and around hospitals and medical practitioners but a good number of times you watch and think, that guy no fit be my doctor. Or the legal drama. We have a sizeable number of them. But have they gripped us in dialogue dripping with wit and sarcasm and court cases so intellectually engaging and stimulating that you swear to your gods that the story could only have being told by lawyers?
A good number of us in Nollywood didn’t have this career path laid out from before we were born. We didn’t learn what it means to be in the film industry. We didn’t learn how to learn what it means to be in the film industry. Rather, we learnt how to cram from our education system. We learnt how to regurgitate well-worn ideas without thought of how to revamp and innovate these same ideas. We’ve taken King Solomon at face value; ‘there is nothing new under the sun’, forgetting the sun doesn’t shine through the day.
P.S. Do not, Dear Reader, erroneously assume that I use word ‘storyteller’ to mean writer. No. Everyone involved in bringing a film or TV series to life is a storyteller. Or more aptly phrased: everyone involved in bringing a film or TV series to life ought to be a storyteller. Those in charge of wardrobe, in charge of light, hair and makeup, logistics, editing, everyone who comes together to bring a story to life on the big or silver screen is a storyteller.
Nollywood practitioners must all learn how to learn their storytelling craft.
From here on, I’ll speak to writers. A Producer released a video recently lambasting writers who state they are underpaid and that a writer’s strike will strike a chord in Nollywood’s cold heart. In his statistic: 80–90% of Nollywood writers are bad. It is said that the farmer first chases the fox before chiding the chickens for leaving the coop. I am currently just a writer, so in defending my ‘kind’, I put it to you Mr Producer, you don’t know what it takes to be a writer. It’s gruelling! It’s you fighting your every urge to switch up your profession, to hide your art and not present it on the chopping block for analysis. It’s you wondering if you’re smart enough, broken enough, disturbed enough, or weird enough to even attempt to tell stories. It’s you chomping hard on your fingernails wondering if that which you envisioned in your mind will be translated the same way or better on screen. It’s you teetering on depression when the audience is not accepting of your art. It’s you smothering in silent fury when your genius is watered down from great to good on screen. You don’t know what it takes to be a writer. The mental compartmentalization required to remain brilliant when your inverter has died because you have not had power for close to 48 hours and the heat wave has descended on you. The emotional juxtaposition required when going through grief and heartbreak while still been pressed to produce a masterpiece under the duress of deadline. The character resilience required not to drag some fellow practitioners who ridicule you and stomp on your pride when they underpay and still mistreat you. As a writer, I put it to you sir, you don’t know what it takes to be one of us.
Now that the fox is gone, dear chickens, over to you.
Most of us writers have no pride in our work. I have been to several story workshops and sat with several writers and worked with several more writers in different capacities which gives me the audacity, temerity and plainly speaking, the balls to say ‘most of us writers have no pride in our work’. Else why we go dey write some kin rubbish way we dey write? Ha ba! The Internet is rift with resources that aid learning. YouTube is bursting at the seams with materials which if consumed over a period will cause a geometric leap in your storytelling and writing skills. So why are critics having a field day with us? The issues had with our works are not issues that require critical thinking, they are — speaking of critical thinking, e con be like say e dey hard us. Come off it! I long to see works that have sub-textual meanings that unfold with each watch. I long to see scenes that have huge re-watch value because of the beauty of the scene. I long to see writing that has me jealous that I didn’t write such lovely dialogue. I long to see writing that has me sending a DM to the writer to say ‘yo, this was awesome!’ I long to see dialogue that speaks to the heart and brain at the same time. I long to see IG reels of scenes from Nollywood movies or series. I long for all these things to be mainstream. Not for a select few.
There is a knowledge pool we are currently swimming in. We need to get out and build a different pool. A bigger one. Nollywood needs its writers to become inquisitive, curious scholars, researchers and innovators. No just tanda for front of TV no open one single book, read one single article because say you be writer. Other film industries might have such a large pool that writers and other industry practitioners don’t research or seek new knowledge because what is to be done has been done before, but we can’t afford to be that lackadaisical in Nigeria. Stop the rhetoric of ‘if we write it, the audience won’t understand it’ and start feeling shame that consistently it looks like we are the dumb stock of society.
Research!
We are Artists. We are Storytellers. We are the builders of tomorrow. We are Nollywood.
Now act like it!
