In June, comic actor, Victor Osuagwu, completed the first half of his two-year term as chairman, Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Lagos chapter. In this chat with Assistant Editor, Sam Anokam, he speaks about how he is coping with his responsibility, plans for the forthcoming AGN Week, AGN president Ibinabo Fiberesima’s contributions to the chapter and future projects, among other issues.
Osuagwu
What have you been up to?
God has been so gracious and I am feeling the grace of God in my life.
It has not been easy. Every day, I move from one location to another, from one set to another but I must tell you that God has been so wonderful in my life; combining my own work, Actors Guild of Nigeria and my own family programmes. I have been able to plan well. I don’t overlook my first choice, which is acting
After one year in office as AGN chairman, how has it been?
It has been wonderful. We came into a non-existing office. There was nothing to show that there was AGN in Lagos. And right now, we have put things in order.
When we came on board, we discovered that a lot of people left the association out of anger. We have been able to bring back these set of people to the association. When we came on board, the meeting I attended before the election, I can still remember we had about 32 people, but right now AGN Lagos chapter has close to 2,600 members and in every meeting, we record an average of 600 people.
We have been able to get a very conducive place where we meet, which is at Ojez Entertainment Centre in Surulere. One of my priorities is to see how we can reduce the death rate in the industry. Most of the time we are acting or on set, travelling from one place to the other, but we don’t take time to check our health.
We first did a medical outreach. We started with the elders and some of them who have problems, we began to support them with the help of the national body. You know we have our health insurance policy, which our president, Ibinabo Fiberesima, has already done. During our anniversary, my president brought the Certificate of Occupancy of the land that was given to us in Abuja and work has already started, to build the AGN centre. She gave N10 million to one of our ailing members, who was our member before he became president of the Writers Guild, I am talking about Chike Bryan, to enable him take care of his kidney problem. She has given a cheque to Prince James Uche, who happens to be a veteran in the industry.
She also went to Enugu to visit another veteran actor, Romanus Amuta popularly known as Natty, and supported him. Right in our chapters those ailing elderly people that have problems with their health, we have been able to support them. We have somebody we call Mr. Matthew aka Murayan, he is being supported as well. He has high blood pressure and diabetes.
We initiated what we called, ‘Walk for Life’ programme.
We have a six-day programme, starting with ‘Walk for Life’, then we have the community service, where you will find A-list artistes on the streets doing sanitation work. Then we have the symposium or seminar, where we will gather all the stakeholders in the industry and some companies to invest in the industry. We also have our carnival that we are breaking into zones. We will adorn different traditional attire and you will see us on the streets. It is a competition. The grand finale of the week will be Miss AGN 2014 and we hope the winner goes home with a car.
How do you source for funds?
At the moment, we have been sourcing funds from the public. We have been writing for sponsorship, but I believe somebody out there is waiting for us. You know the economy is bad. It is not every sponsorship letter you put across that will be successful. What we are hoping for is that some of the big companies we have spoken with will come to the AGN week. Within the executive, we have been trying to support the guild from our pocket. There is no money in the purse. We inherited an empty purse and we cannot dip our hands into the purse because of the little registration money that is coming in because we have a project. My national president has been so supportive because when we came on board and had problems of finance, we ran to her and she gave us N500,000, which we added to pay for this wonderful secretariat.
Sometime ago, Clarion Chukwurah said that AGN is supposed to have a business initiative, instead of running from pillar to post begging for money. Is there any plan to generate funds that will sustain the guild?
There are several things we have put in place to generate funds for the association, but then there is nothing wrong for an association like this to seek for support from other bigger bodies. State governments do that, even countries do that. They go for IMF loan. Nigeria sources for funds from IMF, so what stops an association like us from sourcing for funds, especially an association that has been weak? What has (Clarion) contributed to make this body what it is today? Whatever she said is her opinion.
With over 2,000 members in AGN, Lagos chapter, what structures are in place to make sure they are not cheated by producers?
When I came into office, the first thing I did was to hold several meetings with our producers and executive producers and marketers, informing them of the existence of a new AGN.
Sometimes, you can be shooting and somebody will come from nowhere to demand you pay for shooting. We had problems with the state government too. At times you see a KAI man or LASTMA official telling you that you cannot shoot on the road, you have to go to the government and get permission. These are some of the problems we face most of the time. So we had to meet with these producers to help bring back jobs to Lagos. Those days, people would travel from the East to look for jobs. If you watch carefully, things have changed. They are beginning to shoot in Lagos again. One of our future projects is to shoot a soap opera, as you can see the script with me, at least it can feature about 150 people. We cannot satisfy everybody but we try as much as possible to create an enabling platform where everybody will be able to get jobs easily. We are even talking to people in Asaba and Enugu to inform us of job opportunities for our members. What we are doing presently is to create the opportunity.
What is your relationship with the Yoruba section of Nollywood?
When you talk of Nollywood, it embraces all, whether you are a Yoruba, Fulani, Efik or Igbo. There are many producers that are ready to use me if I could act a Yoruba film. There is a very good relationship between us, even the Hausas, because all of them are in Nollywood. Most of them are registered members of AGN and some of us here who can speak Yoruba language are registered members of their movie body. People like Ramsey Nouah, Ejike Asiegbu, and Bobby work with them. If goodies come to Nollywood, AGN takes its own, NANTAP takes its own, other ones also take their own because all of them are in AGN.
What is your impression about Mr. Ibu’s comments on Ibinabo?
When you try to make a change, problems like this will arise. Ibinabo has come to change things in AGN and nobody is going to stop her. She has already started it. So if people are attacking her either from the positive or negative side, Ibinabo has come to change the look of things in AGN, so there must be opposition. And to the best of my knowledge about her, all those opposition gingers her to work more. That is my national president. But she is not the talking type who goes about saying I have done this and that; this is a woman that came when AGN was in disarray, she tried to put things together bring the old and younger ones together and things are working well. She has provided an office. That office that has been causing trouble, when Ejike Asiegbu was there, it was a befitting national secretariat until there was a crisis, Asiegbu now handed over to Segun Arinze. That time, the state chapters could not provide an office. What they did was to merge with the national. When you go there, you would find cooking stoves, mattresses, et al, they were using it as their residence.
But when Ibinabo came, she cleaned up the place. There was a network system in that office where you can browse anywhere you are but that network system was destroyed. There was also a split unit everywhere but these people went there and some of the monitors, TVs, computers were stolen as well as a giant generator. The place is now clean and of great standard to us. Somebody like that is bound to be attacked as there is no opportunity for them to start siphoning the money, especially those who have leaking pockets. A lot of people are accusing her of one thing or the other but why I love her so much is that she is turning a deaf ear to it and she is doing her job. When you are criticising, criticise constructively. I think it is high time we come together to take the guild to the next level.
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