While reporting in West Africa, journalist Norimitsu Onishi, a Japanese-Canadian and Paris correspondent for the New York Times and Bureau Chief in Johannesburg, Jakarta, Tokyo, and Abidjan, saw filming going on in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2002. He is credited with coining the moniker “Nollywood” for an ideological film industry that has no set, static space, or place with structures to identify with it, as the now accepted nomenclature for what was at the time known locally as Nigeria’s “home-video film industry.” The name is a reflection of the two most well-known film production hubs, Hollywood in the United States and Bollywood in Bombay, India.
The film “Living in Bondage” was released in 1992, and from my perspective as a scholar in the gown and town gang, it was never the beginning of Nollywood, if we have to go by the term and tag. The term Nollywood emerged in 2002, 10 years after LIB was launched in the Nigerian film industry. However, LIB is the first widely-sold commercial movie made on video cassette to achieve financial success. Just like how crude oil was discovered in commercial quantity in Oloibiri, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, in 1957.
Given that the phrase was coined by a foreigner and is therefore another example of imperialism, some stakeholders have consistently voiced their opposition to it. However, some have contended that the phrase is not an original and uniquely African identity in and of itself but rather a copy of Hollywood. Na so e take happen o.
By Perekeme Odon
