When the South African hit series, The Polygamist landed on Netflix, Jonasi’s (S’Dumo Mtshali) infinite sexual rendezvous monopolised attention within and outside the series, not Menzi (Wonder Ndlovu), Jonasi’s teenage son who was exposed to his philandering father’s toxic ways. That towering focus made it possible to shuffle Menzi and the toxic environment he grew up in into the background. This, sadly, is the quotidian reality of the average Nigerian and African boy child. They grow up observing, studying, and absorbing their domineering fathers, uncles, teachers, and other defining male figures diminish their existence while they navigate the complexities of defining boyhood and manhood often alone. From viewing centres, fields, films, songs, public spaces, gatherings, and schools, the men they watch often socialize them for a violent, unfilling, and tragic lifestyle. As Culture Custodian wrote in its review of the series, “as Menzi watches his father morph from being a truthful to a conniving husband and father, the pendulum of accepting or rejecting his father’s toxic image keeps swinging in his consciousness.”
As a Nigerian boy and teenager, the definition of masculinity is hinged on two sets of men: the one inside and outside your life. For the former, you share familial relationships: father, brother, uncle, grandfather, and others. For the latter, you share social, educational, religious, and other connections: teachers, pastors, neighbours, friends, barber, egbon adugbos, and others. By watching and communing with these men, the impressionable boy child absorbs and desorbs what it means to be a man. From a social and political lens, they learn that a man must “man up,” be aggressive, loud, domineering, and violent. In this decade-long teaching, they don’t learn to be whole. Rather, the definition anchors itself of doing what men do. It’s such an exhausting performative act. Thus, the emotionally damaging of young men starts even before they have a keen sense of self. Outside this familial and social interaction, the boy child is confronted with this image in the media. From music, film, literature, and art, he’s exposed to the image of an emotionally unaware, violent, abusive, and incomplete man. But, in 1997, Nigerian veteran filmmaker, Tunde Kelani’s romantic drama film O Le Ku was made and released. Produced by his company, Mainframe Film and Television Productions, the movie was shot in two parts and adapted from the 1974 Yoruba novel of the same title, written by Prof. Akinwunmi Ishola.
Kelani’s Oleku follows Ajani (Yemi Shodimu), a final-year student at the University of Ibadan, under intense pressure from his mother to settle down. In Ajani’s quest for a partner, he becomes entangled in a romantic quadrangle with three women: Asake, his long-time girlfriend; Lola, a first-year student; and Sade, a childhood acquaintance who eventually becomes central to the drama that unfolds. The archetypal upward-mobile young man, he’s caught amongst the throes of youthful expectations, cultural duties, and romantic entanglements. For this essay, what’s interesting about Ajani is how layered he’s written and performed by Shodimu as a flawed, torn, intelligent, ambitious, and vulnerable man. In Nollywood’s parlance, he isn’t the conventional hero but merely a young man navigating conflicting values, personal desire, and communal expectation. Although the two-part film doesn’t directly examine the concept of performative masculinity, it presents a contrary image to the single image of masculinity in Nigerian cinema. The film presents the simple story of this average man who isn’t an embodiment of patriarchal violence, power obsessed, and domineering figure.
Conversely, if Nollywood, as one of the country’s culture shapers, is committed to corrective cinema and global storytelling, it needs to aspire beyond its single framing of men as connoisseurs of violence, provider, and rigid. It needs to create more Ajanis that feel real, who embody our cultural contexts with nuance, and who invite reflection rather than spectacle. Ajani teaches us that cinema doesn’t always need explosive villains or over-polished heroes; sometimes, the power of a film lies in showing us ourselves, confused, hopeful, human. There is, unfortunately, slim literature dedicated to studying the absence of a positive masculine image in Nigerian and African screen. The Nigerian and African screen industry is monopolized by the long-suffering, uncouth, toxic, and rich but bland man whose presence poses a physical and psychological danger to a growing male teenager and woman. Hollywood and global cinema frequently features this man too not as a bland portrayal but as a creative and ideological decision to expose the rot within elite spaces. From Patrick Bateman in American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, Fifty Shades of Grey’s Christain Grey, Nate Jacobs in Euphoria, to Park Dong-ik in Parasite, the presentation is similar but the philosophical force varied. Mainstream Nollywood, by design, is rather unsophisticated in its portrayal. Sadly, these learnt behaviors aren’t dust that one shakes off with ease; it requires a lot of psychological pruning and detangling. And, Nigerian cinema can contribute to that cultural and social deliverance.
Nollywood has catalogued the damage of socialized dominance hierarchy. What it has scantily done is present more male characters like Ajani, even though they exist. Per Oleku, Ajani, despite his flaws, stands out in a film landscape that often reduces men to extremes: the wealthy playboy, the ruthless villain, the long-suffering patriarch. He embodies a softer, more introspective masculinity: unsure of himself, capable of love and loyalty, yet vulnerable to confusion. Ajani’s character is steeped in Yoruba cultural context (family pressures, respect for tradition, and the significance of marriage), but he never becomes a caricature. His struggles highlight cultural realities without reducing them to clichés. Additionally, Ajani represents the tension of youth and the timeless dilemma of choosing wisely in love and life. For younger audiences, he mirrors their own confusion in a society where expectations are heavy, and options are overwhelming. His character bridges generations, reminding us that at the heart of storytelling is empathy. Also, that his conflict is internal makes for a nuanced representation. Nollywood needs characters who can carry a story without being “larger than life.” Ajani shows that ordinary young men, students, dreamers, sons, can be compelling leads. His ordinariness makes his character compelling. Nollywood needs more characters that portray authentic Nigerian experiences with complexity rather than stereotypes.
After Ajani, Nollywood has created an alternative image of masculine figure and responsibility. There’s Mofe in Chuks Esiri’s Eyimofe (This is My Desire) who wears the provider instinct without machismo and the doting father-son relationship between Romade and Mr. Akande in Bunmi Akingbola’s Teacher’s Boy. These films present an image of a Nigerian man that isn’t readily available in Nigerian society and screen. Its existence rather than challenge existing factual representation, forces us to expand the image of a Nigerian man in our consciousness. And, for that Nigerian boy child who might chance on these films, they counter the dominant idea of a man being loud, stubborn, and violent.
In Bell Hooks’ We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, she argued that black men are forced to repress themselves in white America, and that racist and sexist attitudes in American culture have criminalized and dehumanized black men in ways that have harmed the broader Black community. For her, Black men need to divest from patriarchal masculinity and its pattern of dissociation, and frames a Black man caring for his own inner life as itself a refusal to be a victim. Donald Bogle’s Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks names the stereotype categories Black men and women have historically been boxed into on American screens. Black men were restricted into three distinct, caricature-driven screen stereotypes: the Tom, the Coon, and the Buck. The Tom represents a servile, submissive caregiver, while the Coon acts as a lazy, buffoonish, and comic relief character. The Buck is framed as a dangerous, hyper-masculine, and violent threat to white societal order. These stereotypes stripped Black men of their humanity by reducing complex identities into flat, dangerous caricatures designed to justify systemic white supremacy. By flooding American media with submissive, foolish, or violent imagery, Hollywood normalized racial biases that directly fueled real-world segregation, violence, and economic discrimination. Furthermore, it trapped generations of talented Black actors in demeaning roles, severely limiting their ability to portray nuanced, dignified human experiences on screen.
Nollywood’s portrayals of toxic masculinity often reflect a post-colonial overcompensation for the exact historical castration Bogle described. Under colonialism and transatlantic slavery, Black men were systematically stripped of power and forced into submissive archetypes to soothe white anxiety. In response, post-colonial societies and media frequently embraced an exaggerated, hyper-masculine ideal as a defense mechanism to reclaim power, resulting in onscreen narratives that equate true manhood with absolute dominance, emotional suppression, and patriarchal control. The many Nollywood tropes —such as the ruthlessly aggressive political thug, the occult-driven billionaire, or the violently and benevolently controlling husband, inadvertently replicate Bogle’s “Buck” archetype. Hollywood created the Buck to make white audiences fear Black men as dangerous and primal, Nollywood often repackages these exact same traits of raw physical power and financial intimidation. However, instead of framing these traits as a societal threat, Nollywood reframed them as distorted symbols of status, street authority, and successful masculinity.
Contemporary Nigerian filmmakers should pivot from these flat, hyper-masculine caricatures by creating complex characters who suffer the psychological fractures and self-destruction caused by toxic expectations. By exposing the vulnerability underneath the hard exterior, Nollywood is capable of both confronting homegrown patriarchal myths to restore full humanity as experienced with Ajani. These nuanced images not only emboldens the Nigerian boy child, but also tell them there are varied images a Nigerian boy is capable of absorbing.
