I am Charlie and Baga

Je Sius CharlieBaga

Is it impossible to differentiate an extremist from a Muslim? It appears that we cannot or better still we would rather not. I am able, dear friend to tell the far right racist from my white friends, the ultras from football fans, the foaming in the mouth ultra orthodox Jews for my friends in Stamford Hill London. 

I am saddened therefore when the Muslim that saved all those Jews in the Kosher Supermarket is described variously as Malian, Malian Muslim etc, not simply what he is, a Moslem - a good man. The interchangeability of Jihadist, islamist, Moslem and terrorist doesn’t help anyone. If you can – read the excellent piece by Gary Younge on the Paris attack http://goo.gl/PLdwWY. 

Bear witness too - to the pupils in some schools in the 20th arronddisement (Paris) refusing the minute’s silence in honour of the Charlie Hebdo victims. I may be stating the obvious but for those who live in the shadow of society, be it in the piths of bleak estates in London or lost to mainstream French society - these incidents means nothing, certainly not with the profundity that mainstream society attaches to. 

Suddenly millions of Euros and in the UK Pounds are been found to recruit even more police officers and for more intelligence resources. Where were all those Euros when social commentators, those who work in the inner cities and work in the coal face in the 20th arrondissement called for more investment in education, in opportunities in the mainstream for the marginalized, for fairer aid and a balanced foreign policy stratagem in the Middle East. 

It is frightening to me that young, beautiful, brilliant brave young men and women - needed so much to improve our nations in England and France are lost to Isis and distant and no so distant jihads. Imagine for moment if these braves were proud gendarmes and British soldiers. That they were Nigerian army men and Cameroonian gendarmes rather that loose and set against the society they are supposed to come from. It sticks in my craw, that young men and woman like Adebanjo, Coulibaly, the Kouachi brothers would seek and have kinship with folks far away in Syria  and the dust bowls of North Africa- not the society that bred them. In every statement attributed to them they said WE - soldiers, warriors, WE never me, never the individual but WE - so their world view is in the collective of the down trodden and in their prism the marginalised.
 

Even in the aftermath of these events (i cannot call the Paris events any more than that) Baga Nigeria  (2000 people dead - that is a calamity) - Politicians are seeking expedient solutions - more guns, not better education (inclusive, decent education) and life opportunities. More powers for the State and less and less for the individual, stifle opinions that differ from the western orthodoxy. The Stasilization of Europe - Phase 2.

Lay the blame on Moslems not the conditions that bred the Coulibilly and the Adebanjos and Adebowales of this world. Extremists will always exist, history is littered with their rubble, but it seems to me that the state of siege we supposedly are in, need not be, if only our leaders would only listen, (I did not say give in, listen is a start) and seek new, innovative and proactive ways of broadening society’s base and investing in the peace that must reign for all our sakes. Western thinking, whether neo liberal or even conservative orthodoxy refuses to see the clear writing on the wall. It is not enough to march against the rise of anti -islamisation in Europe. It is not enough to brazenly defend free speech at all cost. No 

But I know a good place to begin. In our classrooms - where we must teach the nobility of Islam and of Judaism and of Christianity. We must teach that no religion has dominion over another, that no book ancient or modern, Talmud or the Vedas, Bible or the Koran belong to a few, but to all of us,  as no truth is exclusive. We must engage our children in education so compelling that it arms them with immense power. That they may make real choices that begins with I. I am a citizen of the world. That we all have a stake in Paris, and in Baga. 

That the western policy in the Middle East is perhaps the biggest source of the world’s headache today - I say world, not just Europe and America, but all of us. That Isis or Boko Haram or Al Qaeda - will not and cannot exist if their breeding grounds are not teeming with the malcontent. 

Set forth to the 20th Arrondissement, to Bradford and to the places where eager, beautiful, keen and brave young people - the malcontent live.  Our true heroes are Moslems and Jews, Christians and agnostics who in the teeth of racism, anti-Semitism and anti Islam - share common homes and lives. To heap the blame on the Imam now (who invariably has no stake in your decision making) is simply a profound lack of good judgment. Did you write to the Imams on Syria, on Libya, on the teardown of Iraq, on the intransigence in Israel and the West bank - or on America’s refusal to be a member of the ICC and on and on and on. Did George Bush and Tony Blair seek their consul? 

Gathering all the data in the known universe, putting everyone under surveillance cannot prevent Abdulmutallab’s (underwear bomber) rage (may be nothing can. but this much I know the current thinking cannot) just as much as - the state cannot dictate what I should think or which bit of my belief system is officially acceptable by Downing Street, or the Elysee Palace. 

Little is known about the policewoman Clarissa Jean-Phillipe that was killed by Coulibally, no world leaders, no CNN or BBC no outpouring of western grief as she was laid to rest in Martinique. Black as she is, she was not spared by Coulibaly’s rage. 

Open your eyes people we are all in this deathly dance. 

The bomb knows no color, class, race, creed or passport. And to those who have a stranglehold on the mass media, on public opinion and dare I say on mass hysteria – the failure of our foreign policy lies squarely on your shoulders, our failure to stymie this rage falls squarely on your belief that might and white is right. Their self assured hubris will lead only to a vicious and ever widening circle. To Rupert Murdoch (one of six men who control the western world’s media,) whose tweet post Charlie Hebdo was as offensive as it was purile, I say thanks old man for your helpful gunk. 

In case you missed it, here - Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible. 

Thanks Sir.

Jan 2015

African International Film Festival

Why Gov Amaechi is wrong.

In December of this year, the 1st African International Film Festival, the Miss Ecowas beauty pageant, Carniriv and a host of other government sponsored events will take place in Port Harcourt – River State Nigeria.

These events form, I think the bedrock of the state's (I will like to think Arts policy), but I understand tourism/ arts /culture programme.

I am perhaps biased in this piece, I live and work in Port Harcourt and I am a film maker.

I think that as a cultural practitioner in the broad sense and a Port Harcourt boy in the old and new sense, these initiatives – especially the African International Film Festival – is a piss poor use and waste of government money and that Governor Amaechi is wrong on this count.

Why would a film maker condemn a film festival – a supposed celebration of films and the craft of film making? The simple answer I think lies in the genesis of this festival. Last year the Ion Film Festival came into town, paid for by Government – a sordid freefest - that lasted three days. The usual retinue of freeloaders, Lagos and international , stormed our city. The organiser came with everything, if it were possible they would have come with the drinking water. The Government pulled all stops to ensure their security and their enjoyment. They stayed at our best hotels and showed us films - their version of who we are. They left. And then nothing happened.

Someone in Government please tell me what we gained – film makers or the wider arts community or more importantly Port Harcourt. Within our small enclave there is something we call the Lagos con. It works like this – our leaders are so enamoured with anything 'foreign' that they seem to fall over themselves to import all manners of ideas, an inherent fault line must be embedded in our complex – because it determines that local is rubbish.

We were told that the Ion film festival was a tourist event, that we needed to show the world that Port Harcourt was safe to visit. I will have you know that it takes a self flagellatory sado-masochist to come to Port Harcourt as a tourist. Don't get me wrong, this is a lovely place, the greatest thing about PH is her people, has always been. Beautiful, generous and urbane.

But this PH is a work in progress, a city attempting to reinvent itself, a city latterly traumatised and just finding her feet again.

Last year not one film of note was made in Port Harcourt, after the Ion Film Festival, not half a film of note was made here. We are now about to spend a king's ransom of a film festival that celebrates other people's work, Ion Film Festival Part II – new name AIFF, a couple of new faces – same phone number.

 

I need you to understand, the world needs another film festival, as we need more water in the creeks.

Visit withoutabox.com and see for yourself. The more successful film festivals are carved out of need – Cannes (holidays off season , mergence of Hollywood and European films) Edinburgh (old film festival, part of a wider arts festival) Tribeca, New York's reaction to 9l11, co founder Robert De Niro – New York boy through and through. As a film maker, you may ask others you know, while there is a certain excitement to going to film festivals the real buzz of our work is done and dusted way before you get to see the film. I am a great fan of film festivals– Sundance in out of the way Utah – cold and very cold – was founded by Robert Redford principally to showcase off-mainstream work and documentaries. It has since grown to become one of the best film festivals in the world and Utah has benefitted from that a lot. In all these festivals no one pays you to attend, puts you up in the best hotels, feed, lubricate and pamper you before sending back on your way.

In truth we have nothing to celebrate in PH, a film festival that will not show a single film made here. Imagine the Oscars with without a film made in Hollywood.

I am told that the launch of African International Film Festival took place in Lagos!. How so true.

Actors don't live here anymore, they can't really or they starve. Films are not made here. Port Harcourt if your memory is long enough was the arts capital of Nigeria. WE had the first Arts Council, and some of my best days were spend in a brick building by Creek road Port Harcourt, the Cultural Centre, halcyon days it seems. I read and later played in Isiburu, and I swear you could almost hear the heavy breathing of Isiburu as he strode in from Aluu – and Jimmy Johnson as Isiburu (yes same one) was a sight to behold. Mona Lisa Chinda, Tam Fiofori, Basorge...name any number of actors, late JT Tom West, Gentle Jack, they have all left. Sam Dede is here though, he lectures at Uniport.

Before those in Government start to fume in self righteous indignation, I am not suggesting for a minute that they should hand money over to Film makers to make films, no far from it. What I instead would have you ask is (I have to use this very tired cliché) how can government create an enabling environment for the arts.

The arts in Port Harcourt is literally on its knees. Take away the theatre arts department of University of PH and there will be no one left, perhaps except our studios in Mbonu Street and an anaemic cultural centre in town. It is that bad.

My suspicious is that there must be a document somewhere in the laughable Ministry of Culture or in Government house headed Arts policy, there must be, because this thing that parades as an arts programme must be the harebrained scheme of proposal pushers.

The buck stops at Governor Amaechi desk. It is no one's fault if he surrounds himself with a coterie of yes men, neither if it mine that he sees that arts in simple grandiose terms. Events like these may work within a vibrant landscape- where they are a culmination of activities. You should not have a harvest if you don't have a farm . The Oscars cannot exist without Hollywood, Cannes is the bridge head of Hollywood and Europe. Berlin probably does more for Nigerian film making that Ion in their new avatar ever would. Successful film festivals are by their very nature organic and grow because film makers are the heart of it; here I suspect that we are witnessing a parade of minnows led by PR and proposal pushers, peddlers of convenience as it were!

I see nothing wrong with a fraction of the money spent in these love-ins, to be spent funding directly or through grants and soft loans, repertory/touring theatres, visual arts, and yes film making.

There is nothing worse or more disheartening to see a state erode or better still disenfranchise herself, lose her voice and narrow her relevance because it more expedient and glamourous to host these love-ins. It is myopic.

In the non descript brick building I spoke of earlier, the cultural centre of yore, on any given day, you could take in a play by Ola Rotimi, or J P Clarke, or Athol Fugard, and a whole host of new writers. You could hear some of the best drumming and if you are lucky breathtaking choreography. That was years ago, before the rape of the arts by politicians and their acolytes.

In a room recently I was with fellow practitioners and they were all clamouring to be members of the LOC (Local organising committees) these events are not even organised by ourselves. I saw a roomful of fine artists and actors, sculptors, designers and directors – away from the stage or the film set or the drawing board – chasing the crumbs from the acolyte's table.

To an extent I understand the attraction of these grandiose events, Politicians get to hobnob with stars – Daryl Hannah et al, - seas of red carpets and the champagne, a stage to make promises and all those cameras..all those lurvies. It certainly beats funding touring theatres, or keeping some sweaty, bearded sculptor at work – genius or no genius. But here is the rub, you cannot have one without the other.

If none exists then the government must evolve an arts policy that has at its heart practitioners of the arts. That our voices (culture) and stories, our raison d'être, our mores and our languages, the cadence of our very existence must be the bedrock of our arts policy.

The Market Theatre in Johannesburg was the cradle of hope, was some will say the heart of Joburg. Housed in an abandoned market, it became the focal point of theatre of resistance against apartheid. Tourists defied the authorities and went to watch plays there . Black people and white people sat in that space and shared the experience of their collective stories being told. In lore and forever names like Athol Fugard and John Kani will remain. In PH we performed Sizwe Banzi is Dead and the Island by Athol Fugard – as they did in the Market theatre in Joburg – not out of sympathy but because it was ours, our shared heritage.

It is people stupid, not the brick and mortar, that make theatres, it is people that make films, it is the people that maketh a city. The sooner we begin to develop the human capital, only then will the great writers and artistes emerge, the successors to Erekosima, and Ola Rotimi, and Clarke and Okara and E Amadi . They cannot be found in a proposal or birthed by these kidnappers of the arts.

PH needs films to be made here, good ones, plays to be performed and sculptors to etch our dreams in stone, painters and artistes to remind us of our selves and writers to chronicle our existence .

We cannot celebrate film when we are literally pissing in the wind, neither can we have a voice when our choristers are asunder.

I did not attend the Ion Film Festival (last Dec) – as I saw no honesty in the process that led to it, it was a damp squid. Perhaps there is a flaw in my character, but I derive no joy from watching the applause of paid clappers.

That is all this African International Film Festival is – an audience for rent, a road show that will head for the next freefest as the last glass of champagne is emptied.

On a final note, at least something is happening in Port Harcourt.

Enjoy.

May the last person please turn off the lights.

 

Deinbofa Ere

Sofaya Film Co

Port Harcourt.

 

 

 

A homage to the Kongi from the Creeks of the Niger Delta

Oooo a kule mo! Nua! - We salute you!

We greet you from the land of Benikuru kuru,

From where Egbesu and Adegbe ride astride giant war canoes.. mocking petulant waves..

We salute you from the land of mortals who bore names like Adaka Boro and Saro Wiwa..men who make us tearful with pride..

You have a lot of names they say..

but here where the Sombrero river strolls to meet the great oceans ..we call you Ogoun bebe – the edge of the axe.

Here, where once, fishes, some with voices clearer than birdsong – salute the dawn..

We call you Ogu tobou – the child of the iron.

O bebe yere – for if they will not hear our whisper they will hear your voice.

Owei fa – Fear nothing..beat your cheat and stroke your wise beard, stride our land and all lands and tell them …

that we thank you o..our land the Niger Delta is silent now, the belly echoes of the AKs, and the thunderclap of molten bombs replaced by this silence…

this glorious silence broken only by the hiss of the Gas flares ..like dragons spitting fire

from the belly of the earth….tell them that our land weeps and the creeks are murky with the stain..borne by these evil oil people

Tell them that our children should be at school now, or at their work places pondering

life's questions not draping bullets across angry chests.

They should be healers and makers of things, not toting weapons of

death…they should like you be weavers of tales.

We are the dwellers of the swamp, the people of the creeks,

those forgotten amidst the mangroves forest and the shores of the River Nun.

We dance unsteady on land, our legs are those of the river.. her ebb and her flow – our life.

As the Waantam masquerade raises his head high, arms aloft calling on all that is good and true, to rise,

You should rise with your nimble feet, sail with greatness and dance with kings and queens.

You are Tarilah.. – one who is worth of being loved!

Mere greetings on this your birthday, will not suffice, presents given with a weak hand and even weaker hearts will not do.

From the depths of our soul, where the true water spirits reside,

the spirits that found us, that bade us custodians of these glories creeks – this Niger Delta.…we salute you – Ogu teme – the iron spirit.

Once we heard of hunger only from distant lands,

the leaves of our cocoyams were like ears of elephants,

plantains grew and bore fruit of their own accord and

fish frolicked freely in the clearest waters.

Now great beard, the blackest waters greet the fisherman,

cocoyams rot in the mire..amidst creeks dead to all time..

and our hunger knows no end.

Today, on this day of your birth, let all our spirits greet the one that we call Ogoun bebe –

Those that reside in the depths of the sea, that lie in the plantain groves and the

ones that nestles with eagles in the forest canopy.

Let us mere mortals too salute you, we are the people of Ijaw,

from Arugbo across Opobo to the brooks of ibom.

We salute you - Ogu teme, the Iron spirit.

May your days be long.

deinbofa ere.

19/07/2010

Laughter lives here too

LAUGHTER LIVES HERE TOO

I come here often. The walk takes me past a gargantuan urban waste heap, down a road that tends to the right to form an inverted U. To the left of the road is the part of Mgboshimilli that interest me. Like moss hanging on to tall sheer rocks and eking an existence from whatever moisture it can get, these people are our collective collateral. Our Nigeria.

This is the backside of Mgboshimilli. A fractious Ikwerre slum in Rumeme, a suburb of Port Harcourt. This stretch of Mgboshimilli leans against the wall, like a drunken sailor seeking support. It holds on for dear life against the fence of the Agip Oil Company. A stone wall topped by strands of electric fencing and tall poles of search lights, communications towers and gun turrets.

The side of the wall where these folks hang on precariously is poor. Dirt poor. They literally live in the drains.

There is a divide here that is not quite obvious to the new eye. First the natives (the landowners) the Ikwerre people. They take their role seriously indeed and one is constantly reminded that it is their village, they are the host community – landlords. The youth of the community laze around in faux sports gear, replica Chelsea, Man U and Arsenal shirts. They don't seem to work much. They loll about the half-walled hall of the meeting palace, which was once a village square I am sure but now built up without rhyme or reason - the only logic being roads and walkways are a waste of space. Alleyways and communal dumps are fine.

There are a lot of churches here too. Big, small, medium and those that really interest me. The ones that lean on that wall. The ones that separate this hell from the heaven yonder – AGIP compound. Twenty four hour light, tended lawns, clean potable water, European quarters toilets – oh water cisterns, flush and disappear. Twenty four hour armed guards courtesy the Nigeria Army. And what are these churches? Why, expert peddlers of hope! They speak a lot of languages here. Not just in tongues but different languages. The Ogoni church and the Calabar church, churches that spit brimstone and fire, that casts and binds. Churches assures the faithful that no witch or wizard will stand in their way. That escape from this penury is nigh, that this year is the breakthrough year, as am sure was last year and the year before.

A woman makes eko (agidi) cornmeal and moi moi (steam bean pudding), on another lean-to, on an open fire plantain chips are being fried, crisp chips, the oil red and hot mingling with the sweat of the cook. Opposite her another church that promises redemption gazes slovenly as naked and half naked children find bicycle spokes in the midst of the garbage heap to play games with. These are the Tenants. They hail from Ogoni and some are from Yoruba and on this stretch of the U, they are mostly Ogoni people. Laekia is one of them, a skinny man of indeterminable age, who walks freely in the warren of alleys and who knows everyone in the pits of this place.

Laekia has escaped from here; he for a time was my family's gateman – even though booze will just not let him be. He is something of a Johnny all trade – a gardener, and labourer, a paver and a tiler, an odd jobs man that is quick to laughter and song, especially when lubricated by palmwine or star beer. The palmwine parlour is where Laekia takes me. It is tucked away in an alley just by Agip gate. The Palmwine parlour is rank with the smell of stale palmwine and fags and drunken talk. An ardent assistant sweeps the stone floor with a certain urgency. Dust is in free fall. At the corner a large vat is boiling! White foamy frothy angry palmwine. Fresh, Laekia says and he takes a plastic cup to the frothing work of nature.

The palmwine is off white, light and sweet, just so. On the wall are the measuring jugs –two litre bottle of water – 150, four litres, 300 etc.

I can't sit here , it's hot and it smells I thought. We sit out. On a verge, where everyday household chores occur within inches as if we were not there. Someone is going to have a bath, a man striped to his boxers, baths right there by the gutter – by Agip gate. A woman is busy cooking – Egusi soup by the smell - a few feet away. A quarrel has started, the words indiscernible but harsh. Oh..Oh Nepa, someone groans. Everything goes dark. No light. Soon the air is filled with the exhaust fumes from the barber's 'I pass my neighbour' generator.

In the heat and the squalor of noise and close human contact, the palmwine, all three hundred Naira's worth soothes our parched throat.

No one should live this, I thought as I stood near the mouth of the river, Fire wood or angala is stacked and mounted to dry. The angala is the wood of the mangrove and it is harvested at an alarming rate. It is the only affordable source of fuel – not far in the distance a fire burns from the belly of the earth, as gas is being burned off.

To the left is the communal toilet and bath. High on stalks it stands; open to the skies, the privy is as private as the gold fish in a bowl. The River, brackish, marshy and tidal has claimed three children. People gather as the dead are harvested from the depths of the river. Three girls out trawling for periwinkles.

"That one na im kill them " a doe eyed girl of about ten is accused.

"She be wintch..u no see am' another person retorted. The wailing started from the depths of the slum. Belly echoes, deep and mournful, the slum heaved and wept. They gathered the dead and led the child away. An Inspector of police arrives. One cursory look at the corpes, innocent and scarred by crabs – with a nod of the head, they were carted away to be interred, gone.

The girl child accused of being a witch does not see the dawn. She is dispatched, into the same river. Cruel justice.

 

Barillei my friend is the son of Lily, whose six children are cluttered within a shack that sits by the heaps of angala, in front of river. Her sixth was born one week ago; here she is back in the market selling her husband's catch. The haul is meagre. A small bucket of crabs,atabala (small tilapia), some prawns and little else.

Misery has a smell – its odour is petrid and clings to the nostril. Here It smells of the mangrove, and the dung heap that the tide hasn't yet claimed. It hangs in the air, nothing escapes it.

Barilei laughs as his friend calls him Charity. Barilei is about fourteen, he appears happy in this field of the neglected. They are mending nets, near them in a communal heath cut out of an oil drum they are smoking fish. Mostly frozen mackerel (shiny) and Croaker imported from Argentina and even further. Barilei throws some tilapia straight on to the fire, it sizzles. A pinch of salt and some dry pepper later, he offers me some, his eyes red from the smoke and a smile close to his mouth.

That is why his friend calls him Charity perhaps. The fish tastes very good. I am touched but not too surprised. To these folks I am just this mildly eccentric dreadlocked guy who occasionally cycles in but mostly walks to this, their market and home.

I feel at home here, though in truth I am a complete stranger. I could not help but compare this to all the places I have been, travelled to in search of that solitude some writers crave. These people have no reasonto be kind to me, they are dirt poor

Rage, be incandescent! You are from Ogoni land, you are the scion of Ken Saro Wiwa, and beneath your feet are some of the richest oilfields in the world! I want to shout.

My friend says this is a war front, Nigeria is one huge war front, this is the frontline of the wasteland called the Niger Delta. The war is simply to survive. In this Niger Delta where an uneasy truce holds, Barilei and his friends, and that week old child that clings onto Lily's emaciated breast, have been robbed of any decent life chances. Yes they hold the key. If the laughter dies down and it will, I fear what will replace it.

As I walked away, I look across to the Gun turret and the bored soldiers in green fatigues and their firepower and just wonder if the current truce is a pyrrhic victory or a lull before the storm. As sure as dawn will come, these young men will rise one day, and I suspect that Agip will need more gun turrets.

I , of course go home to my middle class digs, my dogs live better that Barilei and his family of eight who must live in that shack at the mercy of the mosquitoes and the often unkind river.

Someone makes a joke and they laugh. They will be dancing soon.

Laughter lives here too. Echoes from the wooden
lean-to are as deep and rich as anywhere else. But these people do not deserve to be here. No one does.

They are hemmed in not so much by hope but by a futility of reason. This Nigeria, good people – great Nation?

 

Adaeze and Hope

Adaeze sits in her Toyota Avanza, its engine purring nicely, a child seat in front and at the back. She is making small talk with another parent- it's a post drop children off at school ritual, along with the double parking. She cha chas her goodbye and drives the 1 mile home. Aboki opens her gate, she drives past the drone of the silent gen and a water tower. She sighs, forgotten something, Aboki opens again , she drives to the DSTV office, pays for the subscription - 10k - full bouquet. Husband must be kept at home, this being World cup season and all. The mirror in the office catches her, from 60 to 85kg in two kids. A frown clouds her face, she drives home. This is middle class nirvana. Married, with kids, the holy grail – manacled to her womb and the kitchen sink. Her mum is happy, Dad too, the Pastor is v happy, the church, society is delirious. Adaeze thinks of the Riemann Hypothesis as she often does, the great unsolved of Pure Maths, she thinks her daughter may one day have a chance at it, as she cleans the snails and bastes the chicken, ready for tonight's game – for her banker husband and his friends. I marry 'correct' woman put for house her husband would boast, as they munched peppered snails and roast chicken at half time.

ion saga continues (boring)

I have waited for two months now to hear from you regarding the above. I have patiently hoped that you will exercise some maturity and professionalism and show a tiny bit of respect to me as a film maker and as a person.

You obviously have not. I am certain that you hope to wish me away..that I would disappear.

Me, I am hope so too and I will leave your radar soon I hope. I met Sam Dede, and I agreed with him that we should see that back of this whole saga. I also agreed that people will think that I have a grudge against the Ion film festival because my work was not selected. It is not true but I understand how narrow minded people will see this.

After our conversation I waited for Ion or anyone to get back to me ..no one has.. so here I am again.

If you show my work without any credits ..it is theft. Plagiarism. Simple. If you refuse to apologise for it ..it is even more insulting.

So here is what I propose...
1st you issue an unreserved apology for the 'mistake'. I will copy it to the Governor - RS and the Commissioner of Culture (if you don't).

2nd You return my film Grassmarket. (it is the second un accounted for copy that you have)
3. You pay for the Paean to PH. Your 200k offer (how did you put it - max offer)
is not good enough considering the hell you have put me through.

If you don't do these I will take you to court. I will do it at my own time and in PH. There are no deadlines.

I don't make threats, it will be with a heavy heart that I will go to court and I will. That will be my PNR - my Point of no return, after that point I will not have any more communications with you.


Thank you so much.

deinbofa ere

Ion Film Festival : The Saga Continues

The following took place on the 19th of Dec 2009, between 12 midnight and 12 noon. True – every word.
Ion (Caterina) 19th Dec 12.13 am
Dear Mr Ere, how are you? I had a physical breakdown after the festival. Can you please let me know how much I owe u for the Rivers retrospective ? Thanks . Caterina.
For the Rivers perspective please read Paean to Port Harcourt.
Me to Ion (Caterina): 19 Dec 09 11.06 am
Dear Caterina, I had a mental breakdown after the festival. Pls u owe me 1 million Naira for the work and 1 million Naira for plagiarism…for showing d work without credits..(pls don’t deny this).lol..deinbofa ere
11.09am Missed Call. Ion Film.
11.11am: Me to Ion (Caterina). Pls Txt Thanks.
Ion (Caterina) to me. 11.12am
Why a mental breakdown? What happened? You said it would have not been much – let me know how much I owe you ? Thanks and I hope u r better.
I realised at this point that Caterina and I were not on the same page nor has she read my email.
Me to Ion (Caterina) 11.14am
Refer to my email – subject FYI and btw I am deadly serious. Pls rtn Grassmarket.
Ion (Caterina) to me.11.18 am.
Mr Ere, Please don’t take advantage of me. I tried my best to listen to you and make it a reality-having to change programs. I am crying .I feel like I have been taken for a ride. I just wanted everyone to be happy. You told me don’t worry about the money it will be little. I was expecting something in the range of 200,000 Naira. I don’t have the money to pay.
Me to Ion (Caterina). 11.34 am
I don’t take advantage of anyone .I am the one(sic) taken for a ride. Pls if you cannot see that I was roundly humiliated then this communications is worthless. Be in no doubt - am livid.

Silence