Lanre ‘Eldee’ Dabiri, Nigerian musician and tech entrepreneur, says Nollywood can save us all. The tech entrepreneur noted that Nollywood can rebrand the image of Nigeria by intentionally telling stories that upholds the values of hardwork and fairness.
The father of two girls said story tellers must deliberately begin to aggressively promote fairness, hard work, integrity, honesty, and respect.
Eldee made this known while writing about the latest episode of his popular podcast, ‘Nigerian American’.
He wrote on Twitter: “Much of modern Nigerian culture is passed on and reinforced through Nollywood storytelling and in my opinion, majority of Nollywood movies reinforce too many negative stereotypes.I watched a lot of Nollywood this summer and the recurring themes of more than 90% of the movies unwittingly reinforce negative stereotypes. The values that perpetuate the societal decay.
In my humble opinion, the intentional attitude of 80’s NTA needs new representation in Nollywood. The carefully thought out storylines that deliberately encourage the inclusion of Nigeria’s ethnic & religious diversity through TV & Film.
Storylines that subliminally teach the values that we are losing rapidly today, the values that are necessary for the positive attitudes that lead to nation building, and not the opposite. Storylines that may help the population unlearn some of the very negative attitudes that led us to where we are as a people today.
“We weren’t always this bad, we just stopped being intentional & allowed our population consume a lot of negative reinforcement”.
Eldee also stated that government intervention is needed to raise capital in order to fund and support big project stories.
“We need a Govt or private partnership film bureau to take up this mission. To raise capital to encourage, fund & support big budget stories/movies/plays that are intentionally developed to change the narrative, and re-teach the values we seek in our citizens. Wakanda is fictional. Never underestimate the power of a story to plant the right seeds. Nollywood can save us all”
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