It is no longer news that the Nigerian movie industry is littered with the carcasses of many failed marriages. While many have attributed this to the nature of the job, popular actress, Ronke Ojo, aka Ronke Oshodi-Oke, thinks otherwise. According to her, a high rate of divorce is not peculiar to Nollywood. She said, “It is not because they are actors that their marriages crash.
There is nobody that is insulated from what’s happening in the society at large. Generally, there are many marriages that don’t last. I have seen someone that was married for just two years and she left the marriage. It is not because one is an actress or an actor that one’s marriage would scatter; it is because that’s what is ‘reigning’ for now. It takes true love for anybody to remain in a marriage when the two partners no longer have feelings for each other.”
The actress also stated that people who engage in prostitution (popularly called runs) weren’t doing it because they were in Nollywood. She said, “People who do such things would still do it even if they weren’t in the industry. It is because that is who they are. Even if they are in another industry, they would act that way. The president once said that Nigerian youths are lazy. And that’s because everybody, including me, wants free money. Everyone wants to reap from where they didn’t labour.”
On the things she was not happy about in the industry, Oshodi-Oke said, “I wouldn’t say there are some things I don’t like about the industry because there are no jobs in Nigeria and this is the only opportunity many people have. I would have said the way people are coming into the industry is not the way they are supposed to, but people are just trying to make ends meet. We really cannot blame anybody.
There are lawyers, doctors, engineers and other professionals among us who are supposed to be working in other fields. But when jobs are not forthcoming, they have no choice but to join Nollywood. Though I personally don’t like it, there is really nothing we can do about it.”
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