videosare 
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ gradually and effectively replacing all contending 
forms of popular discourse in many African cities. It seems the era of the cheap 
literatures is gone, replaced by cheap indigenous video productions. These video 
dramas now form one of the most significant ways in which the city discusses 
itself, its superficial modernity and its strange attachment to traditional life. In 
many ways, these dramas construct the city in its own image, sometimes reducing 
the problem of the city to the pleasure of gazing, the need to feed one's voyeuristic 
curiousity, but they provide a new and refreshing way to look at the city. This is a 
medium of the city, created and nurtured in the city for its own benefit. Home video 
production is itself a direct result of a declining standard in the culture and economics 
of African city life. It is in a sense a movement out of the purely literary culture. It is 
a means of discussing tradition and modernity in the city. It is a means through which 
city dwellers in Africa try to make sense of wretched lives; in other words, it is a 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA,
meant through which city dwellers convince 
themselves that life is still worth 
living. It is the site of the city narrative; its 
irreconcilable differences and ambiguity. 
Indigenous home video provides within 
its narrative options all the sites of social 
and cultural antagonisms and contestations 
in a postcolonial, post-civil war, 
post-oil boom era of the Nigerian society. 
Above all this, the medium creates a 
subculture which encourages a distinct 
but fragile urban culture. 
Indigenous video phenomenon is only a 
recent thing, but the boom seems to have overtaken 
the whole of the continent. Home video entertainment 
has grown lately into a flourishing business, 
catering for a very enviable profit margin in the 
private sector in the economies of many African 
countries. All along the streets of Nairobi, and 
many big cities and towns in Kenya, the casual 
observers cannot fail to see how pervasive this 
phenomenon has been. Writing about the Kenyan 
Film Corporation for instance, Manthai Diawara 
tells us that 
Other functions of the KFC involves the 
development of a mobile cinema system in the rural 
areas and video centres on the outskirts of Nairobi, 
therefore the KFC limits its film production to 
videotaping urban products for advertisement in 
rural areas and for television commercials 
(1992:117) 
The proliferation of video technology on the 
continent is a result of many social and economic 
factors. Video productions are cheaper to accomplish 
and easier to put to use in village video 
viewing centres as well as in the many video shops 
dotting the cities of African countries. The Kenyan 
government recognizes this and has taken adequate 
steps to put this medium into useful purpose 
to expand its commercial base to the rural areas of 
the country. Diawara also writes about the situation 
in Ghana. In his words, 
The GFIC has had to deal with video piracy, 
too, because the shortage of foreign currency in 
Ghana makes the import of films expensive. Since 
1982, video centres have opened up everywhere 
in the big cities, and the most recent films are 
shown on video monitors in violation of the copyright 
and cinematographic laws in Nigeria (1I8J. 
What comes out clear here is a proper 
recognition of the medium in urban development. 
GLENDORA • 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
Video and music stalls are everywhere, from 
mainly the commercial areas or Lagos to sidestreets. 
Home videos are sold in the streets advertised 
on primetime national television programmes, 
on radio and only recently a journal solely devoted 
to video personalities was inaugurated. From the 
hard, ear-blasting shops, it is not uncommon to see 
groups of young men and women watching with 
serious attention on the television screen video 
dramas of their favourite actors and actresses. 
Often the stories are based on the urban life. 
Onome, for instance, has the pathetic story of a 
girl by that name. Onome's drama is a typical 
example of how the devastating city life can lead 
a young girl from the path of honour and 
hardwork to that of immorality and criminality. The 
moral question of this drama is a perennial one 
which the city foists on its dwellers. In this drama 
the question is situated around the problem of 
urban poverty, a result of the unequal distribution 
of resources in urban life. In Kosegbe, the city 
creates and destroys itself when powerful smugglers 
connive with corrupt officials of the Customs 
Department to render the role of this institution 
ineffective. The lone crusader of social justice 
suffers in the face of an overwhelming brigand 
age. 
But while interest in indigenous video dramas 
has risen in the past ten years, this has not 
dampened the continents' enthusiasm for foreign 
home video entertainment. Indeed the influence of 
foreign home video is often apparent in indigenous 
home video copy of stories with urban 
setting and the imitation of the plot structure. 
Besides the many problems which the industry is 
saddled with Amaka Igwe, herself an actress, tells 
us that home video producers are mostly interested 
in two main themes: black magic and the complete 
imitation of Oyinbo.' In her opinion, when these 
videomakers are not concerning themselves with 
the banal issues of 'black magic, juju, witchcraft, 
serpents and all that,' they are at the other extreme 
'trying to be more Oyinbo than the Oyinbos... 
people do not mind the traditional values which 
ore good and beneficial to the society' (1996:29). 
The foreign influence which Igwe hints at displays 
the abiding contradictions of urban life in contemporary 
videoplays in Africa. The city provides a 
facade. City dwellers revel in the most modern 
items. From clothing to the most exquisite cars and 
homes, city people pretend to have imbibed the
A scene from 
the video 
film, 
'Magnate' 
ways of the West sufficiently enough to pass as 
Europeans or Americans. Yet when the tough chips 
of city life are down, the deeper spiritual need is 
resurrected: the urgency is to reach to the root of 
traditional spiritual essence. Indigenous home video 
dramatizes this contradiction, producing mostly 
dramas of young flashy and upwardly mobile city 
dwellers who are seemingly rootless, but whose 
needs reach fulfilment only after a visit to the dibia 
or babalawo. 
It is not only in the choice of story and the 
structure of the plot that the influence of foreign 
videoplays can be seen. Indigenous home video 
productions also try to replicate the characters of 
films and videoplays from Europe and the United 
States. In the streets of Nairobi and Lagos, as in 
other parts of Africa, especially in English-speaking 
Africa, youngsters speak and dress like the 
characters found in indigenous home videoplays 
who are thinly veiled replicas of characters from 
foreign films. Since violence is part of the youth 
culture which these foreign films engage in, the 
version found in the cities go strutting about in the 
street night and day, talking tough and holding up 
people at gun-point. The evidence of the urban 
dress code is also one of the characteristics you will 
not fail to see in these cities. Only recently the BBC 
correspondent reporting the incessant alarming 
day-light robberies in Nairobi noted that the heinous 
robbery of a Nairobi bank is reminiscent of 
the films of the American wild, wild West. The 
insinuation is very palpable: these robbers have 
been watching gangster movies. 
In Ghana and Nigeria, consumption of 
indigenous home video has witnessed a phenomenal 
rise and this has produced a subculture which 
has inaugurated a neotraditional culture in a 
diabolic relationship with the modernity in the 
cities. In Nigeria, for instance, the post-oil boom 
era, the 1970s, witnessed huge movement of 
people from the rural areas to the urban centres in 
search of jobs. There was the promise of jobs, 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/Wo. 1 GLEN DORA
opportunities, and the hope for better life. The drift 
was phenomenal in the 1970s, but the government 
did not make any preparation for this massive 
movement of people. The result was slumification in 
most of these cities. Essential social amenities were 
lacking, housing and recreation inadequate. The 
consequence was a rise in crime rate. In the face of 
all this, social activities such as movie attendance 
dropped drastically. 
Meanwhile the mismanagement of the Nigerian 
economy of the 70s led to a drastic reduction 
in the power of the cinema industry to support itself. 
In the 70s the industry strived solely on the personal 
efforts of very dogged filmmakers. But while it was 
obvious that the 70s presented problems for these 
filmmakers, notably Eddy Ughomah, Ola Balogun, 
and Francis Oladele, the 1 980s exacerbated the 
rom the hard, ear-blasting shops, it is 
not uncommon to see groups of young men 
and women watching with serious attention 
on the television screen video dramas of 
their favourite actors and actresses 
problems. The Naira, the nation's currency, was 
abysmally devalued and it became practically 
impossible to make films in the regular celluloid 
gauges. Filmmakers who were once working with 
the regular celluloid gauges turned to the video 
format. Although cheap, it lacked archival value. 
At lesser cost they assemble a cast, shop for cheap 
urban stories saturated with dubious beliefs which 
hardship in the cities have engendered; rush 
through rehearsals, after which a large number of 
the original print is duplicated. The result was often 
shoddy. In the early days of the videoplays in the 
1 980s the stories had plots hanging out. Nothing 
was quite right, and the acting very stiff, but the 
stories thrilled the city because in them, they see 
their hopes, aspirations and dreaded fears and 
hopelessness. Today the speed with which 
videoplays are released into the market is unbelievable. 
According to the visiting German filmmaker, 
Mieke Reinhard, 'good feature videos are being 
released on the average of one in a week or two in 
Ghana, but very few celluloid films due to its high 
costs of production' (1996:29). 
Jonathan Haynes' study of Nigeria's cinema 
GLENPORA. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
industry provides a graphic picture of how the 
industry has managed to shift into the cheaper 
form of making movies: 'it is now impossible to 
produce a 1 6mm of good technical quality entirely 
in Nigeria, importing only the raw stock and 
to do most of the post-production work there as 
well' but the 'video resources in Lagos are considerable, 
with abouttwenty video production houses, 
and since a feature can be produced on video (for 
distribution by video cassette) for a tenth of the 
price of a celluloid film, there has been a pervasive 
structural adjustment towards video production.' 
(1995:97-78) It is the compelling need to 
keep the city narrative alive, together with the 
enthusiasm which many city dwellers display in 
support of this narrative. The viewing context of 
video is also another reason for its popularity. The 
relative safety of the home is surely preferable to 
the turbulence encountered in the cinema halls, 
with all the problems associated with the flotsam 
and jetsam of urban slum who frequent such 
places. Perhaps even more important is the fact 
that these videoplays include another group of 
movie audience that was kept on the fringe of film 
audience for a long time - the female audience. 
Before the emergence of indigenous home 
videoplay respectable women were mostly consigned 
to their homes for fear of the violence 
normally associated with movie houses. This meant 
that a large percentage of the potential audience 
was cut off. 
Indigenous home videoplay changed all 
this, providing, for the first time, the female audience 
and her narrative of urban life in Nigerian 
cities. The female narrative may prove to be 
conservative because it is often written and articulated 
from the dominant patriarchal order (video 
producers are mainly men), but this too has 
signalled a change. Many videoplays in the 
Nigerian video market now deal with stories 
about women. Obiora I and II deal with a 
domestic palava in which the wives and women 
of Chief Obiora, the newly crowned Eze, dominate 
the course of action. Obiora, the husband 
and father of the home, remains a toothless 
bulldog vacillating between the extremes and 
devious designs of feuding wives and concubines. 
The interest in all such domesticities is the 
ability to make public what has remained for a 
long time in the private sphere of public life. 
Wc-ien in the city would be glad to see these
stories made public, because in them, their private 
lives unfold and in the handling of these stories, 
some of their fears are allayed. 
There are three streams of the indigenous 
videoplay, all of which deal with the subject of 
violence, prostitution, witchcraft, moral questions 
bothering on ill-gotten wealth. These three streams 
meet in the city. They all discuss the city and the 
dwellers separated into cultural and religious units, 
each competing for places within the hectic and 
diabolic social and economic situations. These are 
the Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa videoplays. 
The Yoruba videoplay is well developed. 
Themes assume typical Yoruba world view, although 
later Yoruba videoplays such Kosegbe may 
be preoccupied with social satire, dealing with the 
bad guys (smugglers and their accomplices in the 
Customs Department) and the good guy, theriewly 
appointed Director of the Customs, Service. Mako, 
the custom's Chief was appointed to rid the 
service of bad eggs, together-with the conniving 
smugglers. The immediate past chief of 
omen in the city would be glad to 
see these stories made public, because in 
them, their private lives unfold and in the 
handling of these stories, some of their fears 
are allayed 
Customs, one of the notorious bfains behind the 
deadly syndicate of smugglers would not hear of it. 
In any case, he is still bitter that he lost the job to 
Mako. With the help of dubious friends and women 
of loose values, Mako's family bond in torn to 
shreds. First, his son is set-up in a party. He is found 
with drugs. This is done to taint and upset the 
crusader. And then Mako is lured into an 
arranged sexual affair with one of the women of 
very questionable virtues. Gradually Mako is led 
into the most horrifying saga of his life-time. He 
soon realizes that there is little hope in what he 
does. He fights on, winning the battle against these 
bandits only after a series of hard tackles. Not 
surprisingly the title of this videoplay translates as 
'You can't carry it'. Mako, tried, but couldn't get 
around carrying that heavy 'load': his will is not 
sufficient to pull his social crusade through. In other 
words what the video drama portrays is the filth of 
this corrupted city. The bad guys drive in stretch 
limousines, while the good guys lament in the dirty, 
slimy street corners. 
Kosegbe is only one of the very small number 
of indigenous videoplays that deal with the urban 
problems. But it is also a clear representation of 
how well developed the Yoruba videoplay has 
been. Produced by Mainframe, one of the many 
video production houses in Lagos, with a script 
written by the famous scholar and professor of 
Yoruba studies, Akin Ishola, the pictures are well 
laid out. The scenes are discrete units organized 
and edited into a fine piece of narrative. It is unlike 
the many sloppy videoplays that inundate the video 
marketplace. 
Nonetheless Kosegbe carries with it the 
ethnic bond for which Yoruba videoplays are 
known. Set in Lagos, the dialogue is in Yoruba and 
there is nothing to suggest that there are other 
ethnic groups living in this strange land of 'opportunities.' 
The story of Mako, the Customs Officer, 
becomes, in this videoplay an ethnic crusade, with 
a social vision reduced to the needs and aspirations 
of this ethnicity. But this is only part of the 
problems associated with a close identification to 
a particular ethnic group in a medium which is 
unabashedly urban. Nigeria's cities are mostly 
sprawling slums of a culturally pluralistic society in 
which ethnic origin becomes significant only when 
an economic or political issue is introduced. Yet 
Kosegbe, one of the most recent accounts of the 
corruption of urban Lagos, does nothing to 
problematise this vice across the ethnic line. This 
shortfall is itself a character of popular Yoruba 
urban entertainment. 
Any discussion of Nigerian urban cultural 
practice and production such as the popular 
videoplay is intricately bound up with the unpredictable 
economics of the post oil-boom era. This 
economic situation is intricately woven with the 
new social and political conditions of uncertainty. 
Every work of art, official or unofficial, produced in 
this context carries the stamp of this complexity. 
Yoruba videoplay is very well implicated in this. 
The Yoruba videoplay play is certainly the 
most developed in Nigeria. It came from a long 
enviable tradition. If we wish to stretch the matter 
of history,, is possible to locate in the popular 
performances of sixteenth century Yoruba. This is 
because the theatre tradition which later developed 
into what I have referred to elsewhere as the 
popular Yoruba cinema of the 70s and 80s had at 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA
\ 
Scene from 
•Violated1 
GLENDORA 
one time or the other figures who were prominent 
in the practice of popular Yoruba travelling theatres 
of the I 940s and 1 950s. Hubert Ogunde 
was one such figure. Referred to and venerated as 
the doyen of modern Nigerian theatre, Chief 
Ogunde who died just about when Mr. Johnson got 
out of location, was a member of the early Twentieth 
century edition of an Alarinjo troupe. He went 
on to collaborate with veteran Nigerian filmmaker, 
Ola Balogun, to make celluloid films based on 
some of his famous stage plays Ayanmo and Aiye 
to mention only two. 
The films of Ogunde occupy a special place 
in the tableau of Yoruba cinema. Conservative and 
deeply traditional in outlook, Ogunde's films are 
invested with the supernatural in which fate is 
worked out as the causal path of the plot. In his 
hands, the Yoruba film, defined as a 'cultural 
encyclopedia' braided out of the universe of the 
Yoruba. mind, primarily intended for the Yoruba 
audience' (1995) was exclusively monoethnic in 
practice and in thematic preoccupation. The 
themes of his films are explicit about the unchangeable 
paths cut out in the realm of human existence 
by the pantheons of Yoruba gods and goddesses 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
Plotted around the morality story very much like the 
passion plays, these stories are about the triumph 
of good over evil forces in which Ogunde, the 
father figure or the symbol of the good forces 
triumphs and overwhelms the capriciousness and 
duplicity of the evi I forces of aye (witches). Ayanmo 
is particularly interesting in this regard 
Moses Olaiya (Aka Baba Sala), the comedian 
is also thinly affiliated to the Alarinjo performance. 
He was with Ogunde at one time in his 
acting career. Today he is the undisputed king of 
comedy, having made very successful comedies 
such as Mosebolatan and Are Agbaye which have 
gone to define an indigenous comic genre in the 
Nigerian cinema Baba Sala'? style, like that of 
Hubert Ogunde, is eclectic, embarrasing the very 
ludicrous of our city life, but is also rustic. 
Mosebolatan, for instance, deals with the gullible 
of our existence. The landscape of his film is 
Yoruba, the language spoken is Yoruba, but the 
significance transcends this ethnicity. 
The first Yoruba travelling theatre personnel 
to make it into the celluloid film was Ade Folayan. 
Having starred in Balogun's Ajani Ogun, he immediately 
saw the potential of the Yoruba stage on
aba Sala's style, like that of 
Hubert Ogunde, is eclectic, embarrassing 
the very ludicrous of our 
city life 
film. He allied with Ola Balogun and in 1977 
produced Ija Ominiran which is perhaps his most 
successful film. 
Ogunde, Baba Sala and Ade Folayan made 
these films on the regular 1 6m and 35mm gauges 
in the 1 970s and early 80s. All this has changed. 
Yet there are Yoruba filmmakers who made 
films about Yoruba life in the city without any strong 
affiliation to traditional Yoruba theatre practice. 
Although these filmmakers succumbed to the economic 
vagaries of the 1980s, resorting to producing 
dramas in the video format, they were keenly 
aware and deeply rooted in the tradition. The 
difference between these filmmakers such as Ladi 
Ladebo and Afolabi Adesanya and the directors 
who come from the Yoruba traditional theatre is the 
cosmopolitan mgke-up of their plays. In their films 
and videoplays we find the complexity of urban life, 
the complicated make-up of ethnic representation 
in the city, the ephemerality of life in the city, 
poverty and deceit; hopelessness and crime, fadism 
and violence. Ladi Ladebo's video dramas Eewo 
and Vendor are examples of the abiding urban 
interest among these filmmakers, yet they examine 
city life from a deeply conscious Yoruba paradigm. 
Kosegbe, Vigilante, Ti Oluwa Ni ile are just 
a few examples of the new Yoruba plays dealing 
with the narrative of contemporary urban existence. 
In these videoplays, there is no urgency to 
recall the ideal past of some unsullied cultural 
landscape. The urgent need is to examine the 
precarious urban existence in which people live 
and die. 
The Igbo videoplay is a recent phenomenon, 
but is nonetheless popular. This popularity is of 
course difficult to define in a straight way. Started 
only some five years ago, the world in most of the 
works are strangely urban with casual references to 
village life. In Igbo videoplays, ethnicity becomes 
the subsidiary point of reference. Nostalgia is never 
completely biased towards village life or to some 
rural life that was lived, now dead and longed for. 
Mostly, they convey the traditional world in a 
simplistic manner. Traditional life is simply brought 
to bear on the urban characters who often think or 
have some relationships with traditional life. In 
Living in Bondage, everything happens in the city of 
Lagos. Andy, the main character, who is avaricious 
and gullible, gets entangled with a group of upwardly 
mobile dubious Igbo 'business men'. He 
envies them and would like to be part of their rich 
circle. Gradually, but carefully, he is let into the 
secret of the bizarre world of these people and 
when he insists that he will want to be like one of 
them, he is asked to present his wife for the sacrifice 
necessary to assure him of his position. 
Once he is introduced >o this deadly group 
and its evil deeds, he cannot opt out. He does what 
is wanted of him, kills his wife in a bizarre scene of 
ritual and immediately prospers. The narrative is 
very quick to get to this point. Andy enjoys his 
wealth for a time, doing what this class of upwardly 
mobile people know how best to do: philandering 
in bars, posh hotels; displaying conspicuous consumption 
patterns in the most awkward manner of 
the newly 'arrived.' This is the sign of his 'arrival'; 
it is the new way to acknowledge his new status in 
society. Andy does all these and then tries to marry 
a new wife. His problems begin here, not the least 
of which is the nightmarish apparition of his first 
wife hunting him. 
At first, he manages to get over this. But this 
could not be for too long. The story must teach a 
moral lesson, while at the same time establishing 
the position of a new thieving and dubious social 
group. After a while, Andy goes mad, ravingly 
picking morsels from rubbish heaps in downtown 
Lagos. The news gets to Andy's village, a family 
council is summoned and a delegation sent to bring 
back the mad son from the city. The rest is a winding 
story of rehabilitation. Andy is taken to one of the 
Pentecostal churches and when nothing works he is 
removed to a dibia's home of herbal cures and 
spiritual exorcism. Meanwhile, nothing is said to 
the other members of the secret cult, who were 
instrumental to Andy's shattered world. The narrative 
does not try to give the options open to Andy as 
he faces the many problems of unemployment and 
other social problems - his wife is thrown out of job 
because she will not sleep with the boss. Interestingly 
the death of Andy's wife does not lead to 
criminal prosecution because this is outside the 
province of rational thinking. The ritual itself hap- 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. I GLEN DORA
pens in the realm off the unknown, yet the actions 
unfold in a complicated hybrid urban culture, in 
which the characters try to negotiate their lives. 
Open and accommodating as the Igbo video 
practice may seem, it is implicated in the shifting 
position of producers trying to walk over the 
problems of urban vices, cultural sense and the 
discussion of modernity. This problem is real in 
many respects. The Igbo videoplays, to use Jude 
Akudinobi's words, 'rather than constructing a 
monolitic persona anathematic to modernity, these 
works propose critical analysis of the self and the 
world' (1 995:30). The argument goes further than 
this. These works also function to create or 
hegemonize a cultural self in conflict, but one 
which is often negotiated from the position of urban 
commodification. 
Living in Bondage makes obvious this complexity 
in many ways. Why for instance does Andy 
go back to the village when he becomes mad? In 
this urban context, the immediate thing to have 
happened would have been to send him to an 
asylum for the mentally ill, certainly not to the 
village dibia or to the church. A deeply connected 
link between urban Igbo and the fading traditional 
presence think otherwise. Tradition is where the 
solution is to be found. All at once, the fancy of 
modern items and services withdraws into some 
obscure corner in the minds of those on whose 
shoulders the burden of taking care of Andy falls. 
In traditional Igbo society, the inexplicable is 
located in some transgression against traditional 
order, although the immediate cause of this 
catastrophy is located in the city. 
In most of these video dramas, ethnicity is 
often constructed to suit individual preferences, 
especially as individuals living in towns and cities 
are given certain latitude to work out their existence 
in the daily contact with the outside world. It is not 
surprising therefore that Dr. Raymond, the nuclear 
physicist trained in America and who never got 
used to the local cuilure of Ikuku, negotiates the 
nd because they live in a society 
that now pays less respect for 
hardwork and industry, they also feel 
that cheating is after all as profitable, at 
least in the cities 
GLENDORA 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
communal desire for him to become the next chief 
priest of the shrine in an untraditional manner in the 
videoplay, \kuku. 
The Igbo video culture comes from a very 
different social background. Unlike the Yoruba 
video industry described as having a strong link with 
the oil-boom era, Igbo video industry is of the postoil 
boom era. This is a period of intense crisis within 
Nigerian society. Social infrastructure sank abysmally 
and the need to reconsider the Union became 
the only debate that had meaning across ethnic 
groups. National identity was severely fractured, 
forcing the informal business sector to rethink video 
production both as a commercial venture and as a 
means of discussing their place in the nation. For this 
reason it becomes clearly difficult to think of Igbo 
video drama as merely a response to the Yoruba 
equivalent, which had existed since the 1970s. The 
forces of commodifying art became for the Igbo 
video entrepreneurs a way of evolving as many 
options in the choice of culturally diverse production 
process. For instance, the Igbo video maker cannot 
be bothered about who acts in any particular film, 
nor is he bothered about the ethnic origins of his 
actors. What matters for him is primarily, but not 
excessively, financial consideration. This does not 
mean thatthe videomaker cares less about his or her 
ethnicity. The videomaker is simply negotiating 
personal interest in order to survive the complicated 
character of this new society-the crass urban reality 
in which he lives. This is the pragmatic way out for 
him. This condition also exists in the Igbo 
videomaker's culture. Material wealth through 
hardwork is desirable. These values are recognized, 
but they also have to contend with the crass 
materialism of the post-oil boom that has little respect 
for hardwork and honesty. And because they live in 
a society that now pays less respect for hardwork 
and industry, they also feel that cheating is after all 
as profitable, at least in the cities. 
There is also a boom in the Hausa language 
video dramas of Northern Nigeria. The social 
context may be different, but is obviously one of the 
tributaries which Biodun Jeyifo describes as 'solidly 
within the pale of an emergent national popular 
culture' (1984:5). It is certainly one of the several 
major tributaries, within which we locate the Yoruba 
and Igbo video cultures. 
The social distinctions which Hausa videos 
exhibit are mostly conditioned by ethnicity, religion 
and gender. Hausa video dramas, according to
Brian Larkin (1996) have a close affinity with Hindi 
films. Hindi films have been very popular and 
widely distributed in the North. Although a low 
class male activity, the early cinema culture has 
developed into the video culture which admits a 
large chunk of the female population. Video technology 
has made it possible for women in Icu/etobe 
part of the public generated by Hausa video 
dramas. The video boom has helped for the first 
time to create, 'a private female public sphere' 
which is ultimately part of the emerging popular 
culture. 
The link which Hausa videos have with the 
Hindi culture is interesting. The Hausa muslim has 
clearly defined religious and moral obligations, 
quite different from those of the Hindi culture. Yet 
Hindi films provide the religious and moral example 
for the Hausa videomaker. The Indian film 
has been part of Nigerian's cinema diet for over 
thirty years. The preference for the Indian cinema in 
the North is understandable. Indian melodramas 
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and comedies provide an alternative world for the 
Hausa youth. 
Like the Yoruba and Igbo video dramas, the 
Hausa language video dramas address an audience 
with a similar set of postcolonial problems 
found mostly in the cities. 
What does the variety of videoplays portend 
for a national popular culture? Our guess can only 
be tentative. The Igbo language videoplays show a 
likelihood of developing into an acceptable, all 
embracing urban art. What remains undisputed is 
the fact that the indigenous videoplay will retain its 
primary charm - the urban flavour. It is the medium 
in which the new literature of the city is written. It 
influences the city, and the city influences it. This is 
difficult to dispute. 
Like many video industries in Africa, indigenous 
Nigerian video industry presents the 'seedy' 
and 'flashy' or urban Nigeria. An interesting narrative 
of our postcoloniality. GR 
Notes 
1. Amaka Igwe's position is a popular one. 
Many observes think that videoplay producers 
are often trying to ape Hollywood production 
systems. See also Jonathan Hayenes and 
Onookome Okome's Evolving Popular Media: 
Nigerian Video Production (Mimeograph: 
unpublished). For details on the comments by 
Amaka Igwe. see The Guardian, April 24, 
1996:29). 
2. Liberia does not have a regular film industry, 
but there is a thriving indigenous video 
industry which caters for local audience. 
Works cited 
Akindinobi, Jude 'Tradition/Modernity and the 
Discourse of African Cinema.' IRIS No. 18,1995. 
Diawara, Manthia. African cinema: Politics and 
Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 
1989. 
Ekwuazi, Hyginus. Film in Nigeria. Ibadan: 
Moonlight Publishers, 1987. 
Haynes, Jonathan. Nigerian Cinema: Structural 
Adjustments in Cinema and Social Change in West 
Africa. Jos: Nigerian Film Corporation, 1995. 
'African Filmmaking and The Postcolonial 
Predicament." Unpublished, 1996. 
Jeyifo, Biodun. Popular Yoruba Travelling Theatre. 
Lagos: A Nigerian Magazine Publication, 1987. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Reinhard, Mieke. (Interview with Steve 
Ayorinde) 'Your Market is underrated'. The 
Guardian, May 14", 1996: 29. 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA