President of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, Emeka Rollas, speaks to Samuel Onyekwere on some of his achievements in the last one year and his plans for the guild.
Being the President of Actors Guild of Nigeria has taken much of your
time that you no longer feature in movies. Isn’t it?
I won’t say AGN has taken my time, though time is of essence. But you must know that the proliferation of movies in the industry has made a lot of us stay away. I decided that I must not be involved in all movies.
Let’s look at you transition from being the Secretary General to President.
Yes, I was the Sec-Gen during the tenure of Segun Arinze. Yes, being the AGN president has been my long time ambition. In 2005, I contested against the likes of Ejike Asiegbu and Prince James Uche. I contested again in 2012, though it was in 2009 that I became the Sec-Gen of AGN.
Before I became the President of AGN, I had a dream and vision for the guild and presently, I have not done anything differently from my initial plans for the guild.
Most of the members have accused the past AGN presidents and executives of not catering for the welfare of members especially the sick ones.
That’s not true. If you have been following me, on the 8th of August 2018, we launched the AGN Welfare Foundation which is geared towards supporting our members that are sick but the main event is coming in November. We are also involving majority of the state governments. Why it’s been as if the presidents don’t care, most of these actors have been in the business for more than 12 years, and yet they have not paid their dues and they are not even part of what is going on in the guild. Presently, we have a General Accident Insurance Scheme that a lot of people are not keying into. It’s just N6, 500. The wannabes and the waka pass, what they use to recharge their phones and chat away their lives on the social media is more than N10,000 in a month or two, but we said, use this money to invest in something that will take care of your future but they don’t want to do that.
They complained that despite paying their dues and attending meetings, producers still prefer to pick the old faces.
They should understand that our union does not give jobs. We do a collective bargain; we try to protect the welfare and the interest of the actors. It’s not when you register with the guild, you just go home and sleep. We have training and retraining for actors and you must take part in workshops and so attending meetings is not a guarantee that you will get a role.
All of us that are stars today started from the same waka pass level. I took a decision years ago, when I decided I did not want to do waka pass on the set of the movie ‘Witches’ where I would have been paid N3000 because we were supposed to appear in a luxurious bus as passengers.
But I refused to join the waka pass and that was when I got another role of 21 scenes, where I shot the movie ‘My Cross’.
Nigerians will tell you that they have no job, but when you interview some of them, you discover that they are unemployable. People just want to wake up and become the Ramsey Noahs and the Emeka Ikes overnight. You must pass through the rudiments. There are lots of windows with which you can improve on your skills. Some of them cannot drive, and if they are given roles to drive, they complain that they can’t drive. And you say you’re an actor?
How do you handle the regular complaints that some of your actors are difficult on set?
If you’re a producer and you are employing our member, you must get a contract, where everything is spelt out, and not when you have problem you begin to call me and ask me to talk to my member. Can you imagine a producer calling me, telling me to warn my member, that the said actor left for another set in Enugu, that he told the actor that he has just two set remaining. When I called the actor he said they kept him, therefore seven days without shooting and he told the producer that he had another job elsewhere, he even told the producer to just pay half of his ticket and you are complaining and you want me to support you.
Some of these actors have like five jobs and they will tell the producer, no, I am engaged but the producer will tell them to take the script first. You will foist the script on the actor and when you now have issues you will start calling us to complain. However we are looking into that a situation where we get enshrined in the constitution that if you get a job and refused to honor it, you pay twice the amount you collected. We want to restore dignity to labour in what we are doing.
Do you have plans to reconcile the past presidents since the Guild has been bedeviled with leadership crisis for a long time?
On the 8th of May 2018, I held a meeting with past presidents of the Guild including Zack Orji, Segun Arinze and Ejike Asiegbu with the exception of Ibinabo Fibreseme who could not attend. I called them to brief them on the way forward. I have been able to establish the excos of 23 state chapters. This is a government of national unity and I don’t want to fight anybody. We enthroned excos in Nasarawa, Cross River and Plateau and these are the hot beds of crisis.
People must know that AGN is no longer that body where you have fewer members in Surulere. We have state chapters and we are dealing with people from diverse cultures. Some think that they are bigger than the Guild but nobody is bigger than this Guild. We must adhere to global practice. Pay TV people are using our faces and actors are not being remunerated. How an actor feature in over 100 movies and the person is still trekking on the streets of Lagos and you say you
are a star? We are just popular and not stars.
Our country is not a place where royalties are paid. Which actor can say he bought his first car with proceeds from acting? Because, if you are paid N100,000 last month, somebody will approach you to pay N50,000.
How about the Secretariat?
We are working towards getting our structure. That office at Ajao, we pay N1.5million yearly and you know the leadership crisis that rocked the Guild all these years.
How did you feel at the insinuation by another news medium that you went for anal surgery, which may have prompted your alleged sex preferences?
I cleared the air on this when I paid a courtesy call to Daily Trust Newspaper in Abuja. I don’t intend to continue to respond to this because when you do, you make it an issue. For someone like me, with one wife and seven children, it’s a non- issue. I have spoken about it severely. I had a surgery of anal fistula. Fistula can happen in any part of your skin and if it happens in your anal area, it’s called
fistula in anal. The reporter did not do his research; he was only interested in publishing negative story. They did not investigate; they where only interested in publishing negative story and I don’t know what they stand to gain. Well, it never affected me or my marriage because my wife knows me well.
What is it like taking care of a large family?
God gives children and He keeps the family. If you put your trust in God, He will solve all the problems for you. Now I am hardly at home, moving from one place to another. Some of these things, your wife may understand you and the nature of your job, but outsiders who want to destroy your family will continue to put ideas in her head. And I am not a 5-8 pm person. If I am a banker, you will know the time I will be home, but when you become like a bank MD, your wife will not
be expecting you home all the time.
Did you plan to have seven children from the beginning?
Of course, I did not plan how many kids I was going to have. My first three children were girls though I was not interested whether they are male or female. But the fourth child came, and it was a boy and so my wife said there could be chance that she could have more and so the fifth child happen to a female again. My last two babies came miraculously. They were neither planned for by the time
they came and we did not want to soil our hands.
God told me, am I not the one that gave you the children, I will take care of them. The woman that my wife had her first child along side, they had just a month gap, since that time, the woman has not had any baby but my wife had six more babies. It is God that gives and you can’t say no.
Greatest challenge as AGN President
It’s the ability to make actors realize themselves. It’s no longer about appearing on TV, but what comes to you after. By now we should be clamoring for royalty. We have done enough movies that our jobs should be paying us. It’s only here that an actor will attain his greatest height and still return to do normal business because
filmmakers are no longer using him. Here, we have a model where actors do not realize who they are or what they have. You need to see where actors are rushing for invitations for one award or the other; you need to earn it so that when you are nominated, they will invite you because you are nominated. Actors have to realize who they are; that’s why producers and PayTV stations are tossing them around. The pay TV stations are using our faces to make money in other countries. Producers just go there and tie up our contract. The copyright lies with the producer but the exposure right lies with the actor. There are theatrical contract, Cinema contract and Pay TV contract. If you’re a Pay TV and I sign a contract with you and you expose the same content in cinema, I should be paid.
It’s not the producer’s problem; we are a labour union and we are still in the process of registration. I am in government not because I want to
re-contest but to leave a legacy. My tenure will expire August next year and it’s the members that will decide. Since I came in a year ago, I have been able to set up an insurance policy, re-brand the logo of the Guild, conduct election in different state chapters and redesign a new ID card. I introduced a mobile app so you can sit at home and pay and register. Those days they used to collect money and put in their pockets.
You elect President and Chairme; they collect money and use it for their personal needs. I took over and I did not see anything in the account. I want to be accountable; even if I embezzle money, let it be on record. We have two buses; I did not see any bus when I took over.
We used to have landed property, but I did not see any. When you call the person to come and account they will start quarrelling with you.
One of my mandates is to ensure that there is peace in the Guild and among members. From here, we are going to late Bambino’s house to see his widow and we are presenting a cheques of N700,000 to her to support the family. This is the first time it’s happening in AGN, that after the burial of a member, we are presenting something to the family.
Being the president of AGN is not about the glamour but doing something that will touch the lives of the members.
