Spare a thought for Buhari

A man and his dog 

So a man buys a dog and call him Buhari, as an ode to Mr president...a man he “respects and admires so much” for his "doggedness" (pun intended). He loved his dog so much that he shaves the dog's torso and writes Buhari on both sides of it then walks his dog past his neighbour from Niger Republic whose father apparently is also called Buhari (like there are no other names to bear) and the neighbour demanded an explanation as to why Joe Fortemose Chinakwe a.k.a Joachim Iroko decided to name his dog Buhari which led to an altercation and subsequent police intervention.
Unfortunately for Joe…what started as a police intervention soon graduated to an arrest and charge for “conduct likely to cause breach of the peace” under section 249 (d) of criminal law of Ogun State and Joe has since then been sent to prison. As usual this has divided opinion across the nation, some argue this is a violation of fundamental human rights to freedom of speech and others argue that Joe deliberately goaded his neighbour by his action.

What about Buhari

Unfortunately, in all of these, nobody seems to care about poor Buhari or his whereabouts. Joe’s neighbour allegedly killed the innocent dog because they saw it as an insult to name the dog either after the President or after his Dad, so killing Buhari was the best option as far as they are concerned. People have been going on about rule of law etcetera, but who is going to bring Buhari’s killers to justice?? When is animal rights going to be enshrined in our constitution and more importantly in our minds.
Buhari never asked to be bought by Joe…he never asked to be shaved, hell his original name was bully before Joe decided to name him Buhari either for the reasons he stated i.e. out of admiration for the president or perhaps he was being cheeky and trying to goad his neighbour, this poor dog had nothing to do with all of these, yet he’s been brutally killed and no one is being arrested for that.
The Nigerian police have one more arrest to make…Buhari’s killers must be brought to justice and the Senate and house of representatives need to be up and doing regarding animal rights legislation, after all you can tell a lot about a country based on how they treat their animals.

And what about Lucky?

If everybody who bears the name Lucky was to take offence by the fact that 1 in every 20 dogs is called Lucky, then how many people will be in prison for breach of piece? If Joe wanted to upset people, he succeeded and hopefully learnt from it but what sort of precedence are we setting under this Government? After all Patience Jonathan was called a hippopotamus and a chimpanzee and her husband Goodluck Jonathan the former president had a goat named after him and heaven did not fall over, so why can’t I name my pet parrot Aisha or my pet monkey Lai without being worried I might get locked up and this is 2016 and a supposed democracy.


Let us spare a thought for Buhari and use this unfortunate incident as a turning point to start treating animals fairly and consider the fact we have a duty of care to our wildlife, maybe…just maybe we might start treating each other better.

"Out of the mouth of babes"...the Fiyin Gambo story.

Unlike the music industry, the Nigerian film industry a.k.a Nollywood has been unable to breakout into the mainstream or gain a desired level of international recognition, save for a tiny minority of film makers who manage to have their films recognised at least in parts of Europe, albeit amongst Africans in diaspora and perhaps their European spouses, but non with the exception of the late great Hubert Ogunde can boast of high level cinema, done to very high standard worthy of nomination at the Oscars in the foreign films category.

Nigerian movies are riddled with errors, even from the very successful ones in the Industry, ranging from bad acting to poor editing, poor story line, hasty endings, predictability and very substandard technical aspect in terms of camera angles, reaction shorts, ariel shorts and the kind of creativity you would expect from so called seasoned film makers. From the beginning, you know the end.

Perhaps the most disappointing is the complete absence of CGI or any form of visual effect in Nigerian movies and any attempt at a remote form of visual effect in an average Nigerian film makes for uncomfortable watching.
 The weird noise and the 1980s cartoon animation makes you cringe, so it was with great delight and a thing of joy to see the emergence of young Fiyin Gambo, an 18-year-old engineering student of Covenant University gate crash into Nollywood with a bang literally with high level computer graphic imagery and visual effect to usher in a new genre of Nollywood films.

This young man apparently taught himself how to make films, but the plot, dialogues and shorts selection of his short films will put so called seasoned film makers to shame. His new film "Intercept" is a must see film...set in 2019, it explores how Nigeria could use technology to tackle terrorism and cyber crime in the future but what impresses me the most is how this film pushed the envelop and used technology to aid visual story telling. Not bad at all for a young man still receiving pocket money and living with his parents.

 I am particularly excited about young Fiyin because of his mission to make action movies from the Nigerian perspective. Many a time we’ve seen Nigerian film makers attempt to make action films like it were Hollywood and people ran about with toy pistols which they brandished like assault weapons or fight and car accident scenes that make you cover your face in shame…I still cringe when I remember some of these dreadful films.

Fiyin however, has decided to tackle these aspects head on, but without any intention to mimic Hollywood, after all every day in Nigeria is an action movie waiting to happen, so why not tell our own stories our own way, then Hollywood will see our unique and exciting life then start to watch our films but only if they meet the basic required standard at least.

I can only hope that Young Fiyin will be seen as breath of fresh air in the industry and not as some threat as is been alleged by foreign based film makers about Nollywood…apparently they'd rather continue to dish out mediocre films and hire their girlfriends and love interests with bad grammar and zero acting skills to play lead roles.

The opportunities available in the film industry as a revenue earner is immense, and with young talented film makers like Fiyin coming on board, perhaps the future of Nollywood is bright after all but what more…the future is here.

Fiyin is expected to showcase some of his work at a film workshop in Manchester later this year and will headline the African Film Festival UK 2017.