Actor and movie producer Paul Obazele, is passionate about preserving our cultural heritage, especially, the Benin culture through movies. In this interview, he also disclosed why he contested the last Edo state governorship election.
Which work are you doing presently?
Okay, I just finished a work called Osamede. It is in the cinemas right now.
In fact, it’s doing a world tour. It was released in Nigeria here on October 17. It did well and has won awards. We are doing a UK and US tours. Some of my colleagues are out there but I can’t join them because of other serious engagements I have. They are even preparing that of Oslo, Norway.
Osamede is big in the sense that it becomes a massive cultural export and a thing of exploit because people do not understand the ernoumous power of what our tradition beholds. They also do not understand the unity of purpose that we have after the Invasion of the Benin kingdom in 1897. It was excellently shot.
You seem to have this passion for epic movies, why?
If you don’t tell your story, somebody will do that for you and your identity will be messed up, your story will be distorted and your voice will be destroyed. Everybody talks about the great Britain today, they told their stories and they changed their name from the current pronunciation of what their name used to be. If you watch the movie the ‘Last Kingdom’, it has to do with Uhtred of Bebbanburg.
They will tell you how he presented and they fought for what you have today and the very realm they are talking about is a tourist attraction.
So, why would I wait for somebody to tell my story?
I have a very proud heritage. I have a very proud kingdom. I have a story of my people, what my ancestors did and I must tell the story.
So, it gives me great joy when I come out to want to depict what I know.The white man can’t tell my story.I don’t hate them. I love them.
They have told their own story. I cannot come and start talking about their own story when they know their story.It’s like a fallacy.It’s like a joke.
Osamede for example, when they went to Cannes, it was embraced totally. because it was something they are looking forward to. They want to know about Africans. They want to know about Nigeria. They want to know about the Benin Kingdom.
It’s an empire that existed.It has civilization before, it also had what they call the Great Wall. Before what they call street lights.
The discovery of what everybody will be hearing about, the Black Stone is just part of it. The joke. It’s just part of the story. You understand it?
That Black Stone is like the elephant. When 10 blind people come to touch, they tell you different stories of the elephant.That is what the Black Stone is all about. Osamede is like that.
There are people who are custodians of power in the kingdom.
There’s what they call unity of purpose and fight for a cause in defense of the land. That is what you see in Osamede and at the end of the day, love found its way; two people who never knew themselves came together. The ancestry was defended. If you go back to Iyore, the same thing, we told our story. Go to invasion 1897, the same thing went on.
Yes, I don’t blame people who shoot, uh, the normal story, but I want to fault them because they refuse to tell your story.
We have not been able to exploit stories from Arondizuogu and King Jaja of Opobo. The prince who went into into slavery. A slave boy that soon became a king.
Even Queen Amina, we have not finished telling the story. I thank God for the life of someone like Okey Ogunjiofor
We have not told them well. It’s real. The fact is that we have not come to understand that not one person does a movie because there are different components. He has done his best to pull it through. I expect other people from my industry to come and say, “Okay, let us support this. Let us take it to this angle.” Yes, lifting beyond this.
Yes.So many stories, so many stories that made us the proud and the people we are now.
Nobody has talked about Kosoko.The lineage of Kosoko. King Kosoko, how large it’s. Nobody has told the story of Madam Tinubu and yet we have a Tinubu Square.
We have so many kings in this in this country called Nigeria that have not told their stories and without them, the areas they come from will not have been able to stand.
Go back to Edo North.The Onwas have their own story. They will tell you about the river that is ankle height. And it doesn’t go beyond that. The river is destructive.No evil person comes in there.
And if they tell you that the story happens to be the tears of a princess that was maltreated and killed. Yes, It’s a massive, strong story. So, the river hates injustice.We have not told it.
Go to Fuga. They will tell you about the cave in Fuga. The cave in Fuga where we have massive reserve of gold guarded by a python.You don’t get in there.
People come in there for tourism.But you cannot take anything from that place.
Doing research and shooting these movies, wouldn’t it expose the myth behind such tradition?
I don’t think the Christians fight that.
It’s just a belief system.But the fact is that the Africans, the Christians in Africa, they know they come from that place.
Some people will believe. Some people will not believe.But the truth is that they have to to tell you that it gives them justice.
In one of the lines of one of the followers of Uhtred, he said, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. I’m telling you about the Last kingdom. He said, one of the guys told him, “Why don’t you go to, London. So, it went to the moment, London was captured by Wessex, it was a mess.
He said, I would rather stay where I stay because in London, if you come into London, you’ll be consumed and destroyed because it’s supposed to be a cosmopolitan ground.
That there’s something they’ve not been able to understand about the town that sucks life out of you. And it is true. The moment you leave our villages and you come to the city, it happens. It happens. But to them, it’s a mystery. Today, if you go to London, you find that London is a 24-hour thing.
People are moving. If you are not smart, you’ll be sucked back to London. That’s the truth. It’s still there. There are some people who don’t want to believe. So, it’s the same thing about my culture, my kingdom, my people, Edo’s, we believe in the strength of what our stories are.
We get our stories, we tell our stories.
Still talking about our culture, a lot of these young ones will contradict what you are saying because of their orientation. How do we integrate them back to our culture
It’s true to remember that as long as we take history away from what our curriculum is in school, it begates, whatever teachings you want to bring in, because we knew what our roots are. For some years now, history has been removed from our curriculum. As long as we keep removing history from our curriculum, it becomes a distortion of what our information system is.
For example, if you have admission to read medicine in the US, you must learn American history. So, if we want to preserve what our cultural heritage is, what our belief system is, which aids our religion, our Christianity, our Christian life, it aids it. Because the people of old never taught you how to lie, never taught you how not to believe in your parents, never taught you how to look down on your parents, never taught you how to look down on your culture and your tradition, never taught you how to be insulting to people, never taught you how not to be respectful.
The religion also never taught you how not to respect your parents, but that’s the truth.
You now come to understand what your culture is because the history of your people are being told. Today, people will stand up to their father, ‘Daddy you cannot do that.’ Our history never taught us that. Our history taught us how to respect elders. Our history never told us to tell our elders ‘dont be silly daddy’ actually it’s not an abuse, but to us, it’s an abuse. Those are things our tradition taught us and if we can’t teach our children from home, then we have failed.
But your belief as a Christian contradicts the traditional believe?
I will go back to Benin, the kingdom has what it called the Aruosa church, built in the 14th century. There is a bible in the church. Do your research. The ones who want to follow Christ will follow, Christ and the the ones that want to follow their traditional believe can do so. There are laws of the land
You were once the AMP President and then you became the President of Edo Film Makers Association of Nigeria. Why did you condense to being President of Edo film makers.
They’re two different things. The national president of the AMP cuts across the nation. However, for Edo Film Makers, all the guilds that have to do with moving making are embedded in the asssociation. It became pertinent that they all come together as a unit.
Remember when I became President, for the first time, we did the Edo State International Film Festival, that was when Senator Adam Oshiomole was the governor. When I was AMP President, we did the Eko International Film Festival.
I resonate what tradition is, what our beauties are and what we need to teach people. Till date, I am still the national president of Edo Film Makers World Wide.
Do you still have the ambition of contesting for the governorship under ADC, since it’s now a strong opposition party?
People have been telling me to come back home but I just laugh. I came into politics because my state yearned for a stronger voice and an egalitarian society and I was not impressed with the people that came out. So, I decided to come out
As at the time I came in, if anybody had told me I was going to leave the Labour Party, I will tell the person, it’s a lie. When I saw what was going on, it was a far cry from what I expected and I said no, I can’t continue like this.
When I came in I wanted to prove a point that you don’t need to be dirty to win something, you don’t need to lie to win and I won the primaries under ADC because I left Labour Party to ADC.
I keep saying it, the reason I entered is because Edo deserves to be better. In fairness to former Godwin Obaseki, he did well.
Just like if I have to rate present the present government of Gov Monday Okpebholo, he could well if he has good people sorrounding him . The reason is because the moment you have sycophants around you, they blur your vision and your thought process. If he has people with good intentions not praise singers. My vision for Edo State, we must have good health care, generate employment and housing scheme for the people.
When I set out, I did what is called a convenant with the people not a manifesto. I told them, If I go in after a while, you don’t see anything; talk and I will resign. I said so because I did so in AMP when I was the president. I controlled 26 states and I made meaningful contribution that time.that brought in 4.8 percent to our GDP then.
The present leadership of AMP is dominated by women, is this a deliberate ?
Yes. They said give them a voice and we have done that. They are our daughters they came out and they have done well in fairness to them. Except that when you are working and somebody is pulling you down, it becomes difficult for you to pull through compared to my time when we put force and brutality, we were able to do things.
At that time, we had many things bedeviling us and we were able to walk through. We had the issue if finance, piracy, people not wanting to belong to association and guild, we also had the issue of identity, letting government know what we stand for and what we can do.
Now it’s good for them except that some people will say, ‘why will a woman rule me’. So, when she is going this direction, they are going the other direction. Situation where in a while discordant voices will come up and you are wondering why should it come up. Its not far fetched, the fact that some men will not always want a woman to lead them. But the women have done well especially in international presence, they have gone far.
