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There is a reason even Hollywood actors are no longer making many public comments on politics. There was a time they had an opinion of virtually everything in society: Donald Trump, police brutality, racism, immigration, LGBTQ and so on. Virtually every show, every award ceremony, turned into an opportunity for some to highlight their virtues to the public. It got to a point where the posturing started backfiring.
Unlike Hollywood though, the Nigerian audience does not wield that much economic power over the agents of their film industry. The industry is not yet profitable enough for actors to survive without sucking up to patrons—most of them politicians—for survival. Nollywood actors hardly become rich through public patronage of either movie ticket sales, merchandising or movie tie-ins.
In Nigeria, you could be a famous actor for 30 years and still end up begging for donations to raise enough money to go abroad for some medical procedure. When the actress Moji Olaiya died in Canada years ago, it was a politician who paid for her body to be repatriated back home. In another society, that expense could have been borne by an insurance company, but here, you are likely to rely on the generosity of the same people who robbed you of dignity.
If there is any lesson in the drama of Nollywood, electioneering and the pushback against actors as political endorsers, it is not the “freedom of choice” or whatever being mouthed by those who seem to forget that choice does not go in a unilateral direction. Actors can make their choices, of course. Their followers too retain the right to respond to those choices with either approbation or opprobrium.
That said, even though such dis-endowment can get acrimonious does not mean anyone should spend their entire life pandering, afraid to take a stand that might irritate people. Anyone who wants to extricate from the expectations they have always personified to people should also prepare for a raucous breakup. If you are the kind of public figure whose values are consistent, you will ultimately be fine despite the tension.
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