Peter Obi: AGN Call out El-Rufai
By Collins Mbakwe
For comparing the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, to a Nollywood actor, the Actors Guild of Nigeria, AGN, has called out the Kaduna State governor Nasir El-Rufai.
In a strongly-worded statement signed by the body’s Director of Communications, Kate Henshaw, the Guild describes El-Rufai’s account as not only derogatory to the acting profession but degrading to the Actors in Nollywood.
Mr El-Rufai, a two-time governor, in a recent interview with TVC, spoke about online polls which place Mr Obi ahead of other presidential candidates.
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He noted that the polls were not conducted accurately and that Mr Obi’s Labour Party uses ethnicity and religious bigotry in its campaign.
“Peter Obi is a Nollywood actor, and that is all he will speak about. This election is between the APC and the PDP because they have the footprints and the ‘spate’. Ethnicity and religious bigotry will not take you anywhere, and that is what the Labour Party campaign is about,” he said.
Reacting, the AGN president, Emeka Rollas, said that the statement is intended to belittle and demean the intellectual capacity of an actor.
Mr Rollas said that using actors to make sarcastic examples of an unintelligent person is arrogant and condescending of a public office holder.
“The statement is very offensive and demeaning to the Actors Guild of Nigeria and Nollywood as a whole, as it was purely intended to deride the acting profession.
“Nollywood Actors have in no small way projected the image of our dear country positively from the negative perception the likes of El-Rufai and his cohorts have portrayed us to be,” the statement read.
Mr Rollas noted that the Guild is utterly bewildered by this statement from a sitting governor who claims to be educated and intelligent, referring to a noble profession of intelligentsia endowed with uncommon talent.
Mr Rollas lamented that it is pretty unfortunate, as it portrays the governor’s ignorance of the pivotal role of the actor in the emerging global creative economy after many years of his checkered sojourn in government.
He further asserted that actors are intelligent, educated, creative, and highly endowed with the ingenious capacity to lead and develop Nigeria more than some average leaders in government houses today.
