The real story about Gov. Rotimi Amechi insulting Nollywood practitioners

Yesterday I posted a story on how someone who attended the BON awards said Gov.Rotimi Amechi insulted and called Nollywood practitioners product of economy circumstance, well  BON Award executives has debunked that rumor.

According to Adedokun, Amaechi was only trying to explain the current situation of the country viz massive job unemployment. He said:
“Amaechi never said that. What he said was that a lot of people are into acting because of the situation of things in the country. He said many of them probably studied other courses and didn’t get jobs in those fields. He wasn’t talking about the movie industry alone; he actually mentioned the case of people who read Engineering but work in banks…that was exactly what he was talking about; that because there are no jobs in the country, a lot of people are working in fields they didn’t study for.

Speaking on the quality of the event, Adedokun said, “My assessment of the award ceremony was that everybody was pleased with the event. It went well, and I was glad,” he said.

On reports of low-turnout of actors, he said, “There wasn’t any low turn-out. As a matter of fact, we had a lot of actors in attendance. I really can’t speak much on that because I wasn’t in charge of that aspect, but to be frank with you, I was shocked because 90% of the awards we presented were collected by the recipients themselves, either individually, or by a member of the production team. To say that there were few actors there is totally wrong,” he stated.

BON has also issued a press release:


"At no point did Governor Amaechi insult Nollywood practitioners. Instead, he commended them for growing the industry into a multi billion naira industry without any form of institutional or government support.

Nollywood, he says, now employs hundreds of thousands of Nigerian youths who, despite their qualifications, may have remained jobless because of the unemployment challenge in Nigeria which has led to a situation whereby graduates of medicine, law and other such disciplines end up in Nollywood.

At that point, popular entertainer, Okey Bakassi, interrupted the governor, saying he is an agricultural engineering graduate of the Rivers State University of Science and Technology, which threw the whole hall into laughter.

The Governor then recalled that at the 40th birthday party of Kate Henshaw a while back, Basorge Tariah Jnr reminded her how they used to slap the streets in search of jobs and that it was Nollywood that rescued them.

Governor Amaechi also cited the example of the banking industry which has become a dumping ground of sort for graduates of different disciplines that are not even remotely related to the banking profession.

More so, at no point did the Governor say he gives Kate Henshaw money. He did, however, say that the state has contracted Mrs Joke Jacobs to turn Chinua Achebe’s political satire, A Man of the People, into a movie because of its inherent, timeless social message.

We therefore want discerning Nigerians to discountenance this ill-intentioned report as it is not only the product of warped reasoning and deliberate misinterpretation, it is most uncharitable to Governor Amaechi and demeaning to the Nollywood stars and stakeholders that were at the event."