Yoruba Started Home Video, Not Nollywood — Nkem Owoh

Veteran Nollywood actor Nkem Owoh, popularly referred to as Osuofia, has clarified his views on the beginnings of Nigeria’s movie trade, stressing that Yoruba filmmakers pioneered home-video productions however didn’t begin Nollywood.

Owoh made the remarks throughout an look on the YouTube present Curiosity Made Me Ask, hosted by comic and content material creator Adebayo Abidemi (Bae U). The interview was launched on Saturday.

He was responding to experiences that he had claimed Yoruba individuals, moderately than the Igbo, based Nollywood. Owoh rejected that interpretation, noting that the title “Nollywood” didn’t even exist when early filmmakers started producing films.“First of all, you have given me this wrong accusation that I said Yoruba started Nollywood. No. Yoruba started this film on… when did Nollywood come out? When we started the thing, there was no Nollywood as a name,” he mentioned.

“We sat together and we’re banding, you know, ideas and all that, how the thing is going to come to fruition. And eventually, we chose Nollywood.”He gave credit score to Yoruba filmmakers for making house movies fashionable in Nigeria, naming veterans Hubert Ogunde and Adebayo Papa as key figures whose work he admired.“So, Yoruba started the thing.

They made the thing very popular home video and all that. Yes, they did. And I’ve said it several times. Okay. Ogunde and Adebayo Papa. These are the people I love to watch their thing,” Owoh said.When the host jokingly urged Ogunde may need been Igbo, Owoh firmly disagreed: “Ogunde is not Igbo. I’m telling you that Yoruba started it. When Ogunde was out, I don’t think there was any Igbo man who was that popular in that.”He summed up his place clearly: “The Yoruba did not start Nollywood. They started Home video.”

The feedback come amid ongoing discussions concerning the roles completely different ethnic teams performed in constructing Nigeria’s movie trade. In August 2026, the late actor Francis Duru had argued that Igbo entrepreneurs drove the expansion of the fashionable home-video market within the Nineties and early 2000s, whereas noting that Yoruba filmmakers later turned extra dominant by means of higher organisation and promotion.

Historical data present that Yoruba travelling theatre teams, led by figures akin to Hubert Ogunde and Duro Ladipo, moved from stage performances into early movie and video work lengthy earlier than the Nineties increase.

The business direct-to-video period, nonetheless, is broadly linked to the 1992 Igbo-language hit Living in Bondage, produced by Kenneth Nnebue, which helped popularise the format that later turned identified globally as Nollywood.

The title itself solely emerged years after these early productions because the trade gained worldwide consideration.Owoh’s clarification provides one other voice to the long-running debate over the respective contributions of Yoruba and Igbo filmmakers to Nigerian cinema.

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