‘Shanty Town’ Brings Back the Ghosts of Jenifa
Over the weekend, I was treated to posts about the newly released blockbuster Netflix series “Shanty Town.” While most of the posts lauded the acting of Nollywood’s long-forgotten bad boy actor, Chidi Mokeme, one of the posts caught my attention. Blame me not, for as elections approach next month, my ears and eyes are attuned to anything remotely connected to them. In this post, the author made mention of a certain Chief Fernandez, played by Richard Mofe-Damijo, easy to recognize by his trademark cap and glasses, who bragged that he ran a big part of Lagos and was ready to take over the whole city for the coming elections. Did it strike you as strongly as it did me?
I really hope the movie is a kind of satire for this time when Nigeria is getting ready for an election. I believe that those in the entertainment industry have a moral obligation to be opinion shapers and cultural messengers, not just national consciences. A good example I often refer to is how the Christian Jesus has been described as the best-known figure in history. If Jesus’ name was brought up in any conversation, the question “Who is Jesus?” would inevitably sound ridiculous. Most people, including those who don’t believe in him, think they have a pretty good idea of what Jesus looks like. They think Jesus had long hair, dressed in white, and was tall. Yet, the most fundamental depictions of Jesus in popular culture are almost certainly inaccurate. Hollywood has done a remarkable job of changing the way billions of people around the world think about Jesus.
The Nigerian movie industry, nicknamed “Nollywood,” needs to take their role of propagating culture seriously. It has the potential to tell stories that we have long forgotten and that many of us have never heard before. I am reminded of the story of the town of Aiyetoro that I read many years ago.
Incidentally, I had been forced to watch snippets of the movie “Jenifa” three years before in 2008. The film was primarily a comedy in which Jenifa from Aiyetoro arrived at the university as a naive, impressionable Sulia and left as a sophisticated bottom lady Jenifa. “Gbogbo Bigs Girls” is made to look cool. The suggestible comes away with the feeling that if you are poor and you go to the university, you will be pimped and handed on a platter to some predator to have his way with you — rewardingly, of course. At best, the watcher goes away with “the bad girls don’t win, but the good girls don’t either.”
Funke Akindele, now running for the post of the deputy governor of a state that used to be the nation’s capital and effectively the fifth largest economy in Africa, built her entire career on that movie. The movie was so influential that at the mention of “Sulia kan,” “Aiyetoro kan” followed (One Sulia, One Aiyetoro ). Such is her claim to represent Aiyetoro.
But after reading about Aiyetoro, I considered it disrespectful for the Sulia character to represent such a town. It was founded in 1947 by a small group of the Cherubim and Seraphim Society, which is part of the Aladura religious movement (a charismatic Christian movement having affinities with Pentecostalism). After violent clashes with members of the Oro cult, they had fled their previous dwellings. Aiyetoro, loosely translated to mean “happy city,” was popularly known for its adoption and practice of communism in the late 1940s. In Aiyetoro , the Christians ensured that there was public ownership of all investments. The day opened with worship in the church or in the palace courtyard and sometimes ended with a form of communion meal. The traditional extended family was abolished, and all activities organized along family lines were discouraged.
According to newspapers, the town was so popular that it attracted the attention of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the first premier of the Western Region and later federal commissioner for finance. Even more, the communist world in the 1950s, particularly the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), became intrigued. This town of less than 3000 people had many students educated through a bilateral agreement with countries like Eastern Germany and Hungary.
Before then, one of these people’s most notable accomplishments was the construction of a ten-kilometer canal connecting the village to the then-inland waterways. They did not wait for development to come to them; instead, they created it.
It’s 2023, and Aiyetoro, like the rest of Nigeria, has taken a sharp turn for the worst. I admit that there is nothing associated with communism that lasts, still it’s harrowing that it’s Sulia, our heroine, who proudly waves the flag of this once-busy town.
And this is where the movie industry is needed. It is necessary to bring to our attention that there are stories in the past to be told with real significance to the present, not only the drab, monotonous swaying of body parts.
