Emeka Ike is one of the prominent faces in the country’s movie industry. He told CHINYERE OKOYE that few people defined themselves in Nollywood with their different styles, but his passion paved way for him as an actor, educationist and producer

 

 Trained as a mechanical engineer and coming from a strong religious background, Emeka Ike’s  parents thought he has disgraced them by veering into acting.  But  today, “they understand what I do beyond the layman's definition of the profession and they appreciate me. Today, when I walk on the streets, I feel happy when I make people happy.

That I can cure people as individual with my facial appearance, that is the greatest thing that God has done for me.” Professionally, Ike started acting in 1994, “but from then till now nothing has changed in Nollywood instead the name is going down and down. I think government’s intervention was negative.

 They didn’t do enough research before intervening. What they did wrong was giving people license to rent out our movies. If you have an alternative to buying, people will choose the alternative. About 85 per cent of those who could buy movies now rent. This is one major undoing. If you try to arrest them they would tell you they are licensed.
“Now, you have people that are licensed to mass-produce your works without recourse to you. The industry by this, is bringing in the cable stations to show our movies.

There is also the hunger factor in Nigeria and some producers are afflicted with this. About 70 per cent of our producers are hungry.
“Again, people prefer to subscribe to watch our movies on ‘Africa Magic,’ which is the selling point. What is the use of buying CD when you can watch our movies on Africa Magic? And our producers have no choice than to run to them after video rentals must have battered their movies,” Ike said.

“See it this way, when we have about 10 million subscribers, calculate
N9000 paid monthly and see how much they have milked out of our industry. You can see that our industry is nose-diving, while they are getting better. They just pay $700 to air our movies and they sometimes come up to $1500. Some of these things have led to what we call oil in the industry. That is if you sell a movie for N250 when you release after about two weeks you send it into oil and it begins to sell for N50. I think we need to chart a way forward instead of fighting,” he said.

The actor, who has lost count of  movies he has featured in, also said  that “when you go to school, you have a lot to gain. You don't know what you stand to gain until you have that certificate in your hands,” explaining the reason he went into education business with spouse. “Unlike many educationists, my reason for building a school is because children are the leaders of tomorrow. And this is where they can learn under a conducive environment, it is not primarily to make profit, but to  give back to the society.

The fact that “the youths in our country no longer enjoy what the older generation enjoyed from government got me worried. The Nigerian youth of today has lost all the care they are supposed to get from the nation. Lack of educational facilities, unemployment, poor healthcare system have become the order of the day. Apart from the little effort that is being put into these sectors by the government of Lagos and Imo, nothing is happening.

“So as a youth who has the interest of the future generation at heart I decided to take up the challenge of providing quality education for the youth.” At St. Nicholas College, the actor help the students actualize their dream in their lives. “Ours is a school that is shouldered with the responsibility of delivering a qualitative and excellent education with qualified and oriented teachers. We also have  boarding facilities for both boys and girls with homely environment and properly trained house masters and mistresses giving a parental care to the children.

“My parents too did not have enough money to sponsor me to school, but I was determined to go to school. That is why I'm successful now.”

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