Nkem Owoh Says Yoruba Didn’t Start Nollywood. Why Is the Industry Still Fighting Over Who Did?

Nkem Owoh says he never claimed the Yoruba started Nollywood. On an episode of Curiosity Made Me Ask, released on Bae U’s YouTube channel on Saturday, the actor known as Osuofia called the reports a wrong accusation. He also drew a line that many Nigerians blur online. “The Yoruba did not start Nollywood. They started Home video,” he said. That distinction is at the centre of an argument that has run for most of this year.

In August, the late Francis Duru said Igbo filmmakers built Nollywood through Kenneth Nnebue’s 1992 film Living in Bondage. He added that Yoruba producers now dominate cinemas and Netflix because they organised better. Duru died in October at 57. In April, Chris Obi-Rapu, the film’s director, called himself the father of Nollywood and said Nnebue and Okey Ogunjiofor took credit for its success. A year earlier, Yemi Solade had argued that the first home video was made by Ade Ajiboye, known as Big Abass. In his view, Living in Bondage got the glory because its makers courted the press.

These men are answering different questions. On who first shot Nigerian stories on video, the Yoruba case is strong. Ajiboye’s Soso Meji came out in 1988 and Muyideen Aromire’s Ekun in 1989, and both grew out of the travelling theatre tradition of Hubert Ogunde. On when video became a mass market, most accounts point to Living in Bondage, the first Nigerian home video to become a blockbuster. Obi-Rapu’s complaint is about who deserves credit within that one film. Who made the first commercial video film has been argued over for years, and the name only adds confusion. The earliest known use of “Nollywood” dates to 2002, a decade after the film.

The two camps also overlapped more than the debate admits. Ogunjiofor had a script but no money, so he partnered with Nnebue, an importer of VHS tapes who was already producing Yoruba films. Nnebue’s first film, Aje Ni Iya Mi, came out in 1989, and Africa Is a Country counts at least 27 Yoruba-language titles from him before Living in Bondage. The film most often called Nollywood’s starting point was funded by an Igbo trader whose business had grown through Yoruba video.

The fight keeps returning because there is now serious money involved. Funke Akindele’s Behind the Scenes opened in December 2025, crossed ₦1 billion in under three weeks, then became the first Nollywood film to pass ₦2 billion. Returns like that bring release dates, streaming deals and investors, and much of this year’s argument has been about who gets them. Duru’s real complaint was the shortage of Igbo heritage films on streaming platforms today. Solade’s was that Yoruba pioneers lost the credit because they never documented their work.

In practice, the industry is far more mixed than the argument suggests. This month’s Nollywood releases include Issakaba Returns, a sequel to a video-era favourite, alongside films starring Odunlade Adekola and Femi Branch, who are regulars in Yoruba cinema. Many of the casts mix actors from both traditions.

So the answer depends on the question being asked. If Nollywood began when Nigerians first shot stories on video, Yoruba filmmakers were first. If it began when those videos became a national market, Living in Bondage is the usual marker, though the people who made it still dispute the credit. The problems Solade and Duru named, an unwritten history and unfunded stories, are ones the industry can still fix.

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