Sexual harassment has always been a major issue in the Nigerian film industry. Now, the Actors Guild of Nigeria, AGN, says that it is poised to eradicate all forms of sexual harassment of its female members by some alleged producers under the pretext of allocating juicy roles to them in their films.
The newly elected National President of AGN, Emeka Ejezie, told newsmen in Lagos that it was part of his leadership’s efforts at sanitizing the industry.
Mr. Ejezie was recently elected the president of AGN during the just concluded Peace and Reconciliatory Committee’s conference held in Enugu in August.He described the sexual harassment of ladies as a common phenomenon.”And such allegations against film producers by actresses may either be true or false, but we are going to raise eyebrows to ensure it does not exist.We will restore sanity in the industry by campaigning against sexual harassment of our members and ensure it begins to occupy its pride of place,” he said.
The new AGN bossassured that the guild would also develop a database that would checkmate the activities of those who come into the guild with other motives rather than acting.”We are going to expose the bad eggs in the industry if at all they exist by creating a database of actors; this will afford us the opportunity to know the real actors and fish out imposters,” he enthused.The AGN president also announced that the new executive would try to identify producers who were alleged to be extorting monies from young actors with a promise to allocate good roles to them in their films.” Most times, these amateur artistes may end up not getting such juicy roles often promised after they must have sold their bodies to such dubious producers,” he said.
Mr. Ejezie also reacted to the public perception that most styles of story lines were portraying fetish or traditional norms.He said that it was the business of script writers and producers but not the actors.”Actors and actresses are like messengers; we follow the directives of film producers who give us scripts, it is what the script says that we act,” he pointed out.He, however, disclosed that the guild would create an affiliation with the bodies in charge of scripts and producers to fine tune the quality of Nigerian films.
