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I advice Her to Vacate The Four Cases In Court and Call For Reconciliatory Meeting--- Mr. Ibu to Ibinabor


As Nigerian Film lovers watch the imbroglio between the two film giants  exchange words on the pages of newspapers and efforts reached to calm the duo seems not to have achieved positive result so far, Ajayi Bamidele of www.ashiwaju.org spoke to Mr. John Okafor (a.k.a) Mr Ibu on the way forward to resolving the lingering crisis in the nation Actors Guild of Nigeria President's Seat Tussle.
What led to the recent silent battle between you and the National President of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, Miss Ferebesima Ibinabo?
Before God and man, I don’t have anything at the back of my mind advising her, she is a professional as well as every other person in the film industry, what I did was just to advice her, she keep on insulting me, calling me an illiterate and that I have been going to  President Goodluck Jonathan to beg money, to my best of  knowledge, I feel my advice in not an insult to her, but you know that best advice always bite the ears, but I don’t blame her, she can go ahead and insult me to the level she feels in her mind, and where ever she feels it’s okay for her, let her go ahead and keep insulting me.

I am not insulting her, well I take her insult because she is the president of the Actor Guild of Nigeria, but I tell you, she will finish her tenure, if she wants  to go like four time more, but one day she will come down and be an ordinary member like me and another person will be there,  then she would see how another person who will take over from her will perform, then she will see the difference  in her administration and that of the other person.
What I wanted to do was to make chance for her to write her name in gold as the president of AGN, am not interested  in the seat of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, no no! no!! no !!!
I want to tell you, she is already calling me an illiterate, what I am trying to tell her now is real, that she cannot via for a second term when she has four cases pending in different courts unsettled.
You cannot say you are viaing for a second term, when almost all the chapters have two chairmen each, where one is following you and other following another person, If you are a real president, why is it that real members of the Actor Guild of Nigeria are not working, while non members are working, on occasion while you are the president.
How can somebody come to buy a role, the producers will give them roles because they want to pay big money .
What stops our national task force, we have been having national task force before, that always go about to check who are not real member of AGN, who are almost everywhere to picket who are not members of the Actors Guild on Nigeria, what stopped them from working,
She cannot ask why me single handedly  set up Nollywood Actor Guild in South Africa and brought down their documents, why can't  she also ask why I single handedly set up Actors Guild of Nigeria in Torino, Italy?, And she cannot also ask why Nollywood Actors Guild was set up in UK just by me?  If I don’t want her good or the good of AGN, why would I be doing all these and each time I do it, I call the national body to send me license to me for them to operate and they do, then whatever money they demanded, they pay me and I brought the money home to give the board of trustees.
Let me cut in, In some of the write-ups we read. You were seen as someone being sponsored by Clarion Chukwura, her opponent, to bring her down just to make Clarion be more relevant in the industry, what’s your take on this?
To the best of my knowledge, I feel that anyone is eligible to contest the post of the president of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, they are not even being paid, it’s a volunteer thing, you don’t need to insult anyone before you get there.
I advised Clarion Chukwura, if she knows anywhere she has gone wrong or she might have done anything affecting Actors Guild of Nigeria before, she should try and make it up, so that she can have a good record before she can think of wanting to  contest any election, that is the advise I gave to her.
Another one is that I went to investigate one or two things from the board of trustees of the Actors Guild on Nigeria and asked them questions, I know I talk to Okey Bakassi, he is my very good friend and Okey Bakassi told me the whole truth and I told him fine, I am leaving Actor Guild of Nigeria and I made the move  to set up Screen Association of Nigeria (SAN),I am the one that made the move.
If Actor Guild of Nigeria cannot accommodate me, If AGN cannot accommodate genuine advices, where AGN as big as Nollywood, we do not have national office, we don’t have film village where people would pay as a recreational centres and watch film also to snap photograph with Nollywood Actors or Actresses of their choice and we get small money from them.
Why is it that we Actors Guild of Nigeria don’t have cameras we can rent out for shooting and make money for the guild, rather than going to individuals and hire cameras, why can’t we buy buses and rent it out to anyone that shooting production anywhere, why are we going outside to hire cameras?.
How much is bus, how much is cameras, I know very well that we are capable of getting allocation anywhere in the country and in all sizes, because Federal Government gave us money, all they could do is to go house, collect the  money, process it and eat it alone.
In one of my visits to senate president birthday’s party at Oturukpo, Benue State, I begged the  government to stop giving Actors Guild of Nigeria cash because we don’t know how to use it, I told them to give us landed properties, if we don’t have money to  build, we can get sponsors to develop the properties for us, at least we will get edifices that we will call Actors Guild of Nigeria Projects
What is your advice to the President of AGN and the Nollywood practitioners on how to move the industry to an enviable height that the Hollywwod of America and Bollywood of India are currently enjoying?
My advice I have for her is that I want to urge Ibinabo to first rescinds her decision to run for another term for now and call a meeting for peace, call all the stakeholders to a round table meeting, all the state chairmen, bring them together, all the states that have two-two chairmen, bring everybody together, with  the board of trustee members, everybody will come around, we will dissolve their offices and we will  then reelect them legitimately.
Let us have peace in our places, if we can achieve this peace in Actors Guild of Nigeria, every other thing will follow in line, even if she says she wants to go for a second tenure, everybody will say go ahead because we have peace.
All of us will follow her go to court; cancel the court cases she has in the court, because this entire thing is placing us bad light.
It’s a big distraction to us, where we have viruses in the industry that we are trying to look for a way to attack and other thing is now attacking us from somewhere. We have piracy to attack; we have homosexuality to attack and so many other things that is attacking the industry.
  END


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