Why Nigerian Movies Still Not That Good As Their Overseas Competitors

Nigerian movies are popular because they portray African people more accurately, Big Sam explains outside his single-room Lagos office.
They explore African issues rarely touched on in Hollywood – magic, tribal loyalties, the struggle to modernize.

“Stories that you can relate to,” he says.

Ventures Africa business magazine says Nollywood knocks out 2,000 titles a year and is the third-largest earner in the movie world, after Bollywood and Hollywood.
The $250-million industry employs more than a million people.
Artists say Nigeria’s bad infrastructure and chaotic legal system prevent them from making films that are as impressive in their quality as they are in quantity.

“You’ll find that we’re having to make do,” legendary Nollywood actor Olu Jacobs explains at an exclusive country club in Lagos.

Trained at Britain’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Jacobs says Nigerian artists often have the same artistic capacity as their Western counterparts, but not the same financial capacity.

“We’re not happy because the finished product doesn’t have the finish that it should have,” he says.

Later that day, Jacob’s driver inches his car through grinding traffic in Lagos, the African megalopolis as chaotic and bustling as any Nollywood production scene.
A young businessman in an SUV nearly cuts him off. The SUV driver’s eyes grow wide when he recognizes Jacobs, and he smiles like a child meeting Santa Claus. He lets the actor’s car pass in front.

Nollywood was born, so the story goes, when Kenneth Nnebue, a video storeowner, had too many blank tapes in the early 1990s.