In her famous 1969 interview, American composer and Jazz artist Nina Simone famously said that an artist’s duty is to reflect the times. Art, in its truest form, must translate society’s struggles and realities for the citizens not in a God-esque, omniscient manner and language but in a questioning, reflective, and meditative tone and framing. True to her words, Simone’s oeuvre translated this philosophical idea into raw, unfiltered music that carries the brutal realities of racism, segregation, and the Civil Rights movement.
This tradition of countering the art for art’s sake philosophy that art should exist purely for its own beauty and aesthetic value can be found in the writings and films of James Baldwin, Chinua Achebe, Spike Lee, Ousmane Sembène, Tunde Kelani, Tade Ogidan, Jade Osiberu, Kemi Adetiba, Abba T. Makama, and countless others. In their works, unmindful of the political and philosophical ideas they champion and censor, these writers and filmmakers allowed their creative works to bear the markings of the heavy economic, cultural, and political conversations of their society.
Nigerian filmmakers have long embraced Simone’s philosophy, utilizing the screen as a canvas to document the socio-political realities and cultural shifts of their eras. Ola Balogun interrogated the Nigerian Civil War in One Nigeria, colonial power dynamics in Cry Freedom!, and socio-economic inequality in Money Power. Ditto Eddie Ugbomah, who tackled violent armed robbery in The Rise and Fall of Dr. Oyenusi and political corruption in Death of a Black President. Operating via Mainframe Film & Television Productions, Kelani carried this tradition. Films like Ti Oluwa Ni Ile critiqued land grabbing and greed, Dazzling Mirage not only raised sickle cell awareness but also addressed social acceptance of marginalized groups.
Ogidan’s Owo Blow and Diamond Ring reflected the social anxieties of a working-class Nigerian youth under the grim heights of the Abacha military regime. In contemporary Nollywood, Kunle Afolayan reflected national and historical trauma in October 1 and the sex-for-grade reality in universities in Citation. Makama’s Green White Green, is a social realist drama that captured the identity crisis, economic stagnation, and digital-era anxieties of Nigeria’s youth. Adetiba’s King of Boys and the convoluted To Kill a Monkey reflect Nigeria’s treacherous political landscapes, godfatherism, and the intersection of power and gender.
From celluloid pioneers to contemporary auteurs, Nigerian filmmakers reflected the desperate struggles, triumphs, and evolving identities of the Nigerian state. But contemporary Nigerian filmmakers, as shown by the highest-grossing Nigerian titles of all time, are tilting away from this cultural and political responsibility. The Nigerian film market, from YouTube, streaming, and cinema, is monopolised by films that inspire little cultural and political reflection and questions. These films suffer a double tragedy of being partially and ideologically bereft, save for minimal exception. A serious look at the numbers and the pattern of scathing reviews and lukewarm conversations they generate signals how far contemporary Nollywood is apathetic towards reflecting the times.
Yes, the stories are Nigerian, the characters bear archetypal familiarity to quotidian Nigerian realities, and they compel Nigerians to the cinemas, but there’s always something unshakably alien about them. The stories, characters, and conversations in these films are culturally and politically dull when contrasted against Kelani and Ogidan’s films. Art, which cinema is, has been repetitively defined as the mirror of society, but what does it say of Nollywood, if its most popular and successful films are apathetic towards the everyday experiences of the common Nigerian? Are Nigerian filmmakers distracting us from the political landscape?
Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous collaboration with the Third Reich represents one of the most controversial intersections of art, propaganda, and ethics in film history. Triumph of the Will, her 1935 work, documented the 1934 Nuremberg Rally and used artistic techniques (camera angles, tracking shots, and aerial photography) to portray Adolf Hitler as a messianic figure and the Nazi party as an unstoppable, unified force. Riefenstahl’s totalitarian loyalty seems distant, but several other filmmakers globally—and within Africa— have historically stepped into the role of manufacturing cinema to serve oppressive state regimes, colonial empires, or authoritarian dictators. In Africa, it manifested through state-controlled film units or directors coerced into glorifying dictators and colonial masters.
During the 1970s, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin heavily weaponized the state’s official filmmaking arm, The Uganda Film Unit. Filmmakers within this unit were directed to manufacture propaganda that framed Amin’s brutal regime as a glorious anticolonial revolution. For example, the 1972 state-backed film Uganda’s Economic War was masterfully edited to make Amin’s inhumane forced expulsion of Uganda’s Asian minority look like a heroic act of national liberation. Before independence, European empires operated highly structured film units across Africa to justify subjugation. In Nigeria, director Lionel Snazelle led the Nigerian Film Unit (and previously worked with the British Colonial Film Unit) and manufactured highly paternalistic propaganda designed to “brainwash the colonies” and legitimize colonial governance and sanitize its bloodstained image.
Contemporary Nollywood filmmakers don’t, as far as public knowledge indicates, operate under Riefenstahl’s loyalty (even if we have filmmakers who are staunch supporters of the regime) nor operate under state-sponsored institutions. The films are privately funded. As Remi Akinwande stated in a Letterboxd review of Funke Akindele’s Behind the Scenes, “While she (Funke Akindele) is obviously no Leni Riefenstahl dutifully manufacturing cinema for the Third Reich, I am increasingly convinced that her films ought to be regarded as a threat to civil liberty-not because they propagate any coherent political programme, but because they wage a war against the very faculties of common sense.” This sentence could be extended to the majority of Nigerian filmmakers and Afrobeats artists who are incrementally making arts and films that dull social and political consciousness.
The structural disconnect in contemporary Nollywood can be traced back to the 90s. During this video-film era, decentralized and low-cost production allowed filmmakers to remain close to the Nigerian reality and create raw narratives that mirrored their economic hardships. Today, the film space is dominated by global streaming giants, wealthy cinema chains, and corporate and venture capitalists. This has shifted filmmaking from being just an artistic expression towards a more profit-driven business. Thus, films are treated primarily as commodities engineered for maximum surplus value and profit. And addressing hyperinflation, government corruption, or systemic labor exploitation presents financial and political risks for corporate investors, filmmakers are actively enforcing the erasure of these material realities. By saturating Nigerian screens with ultra-wealthy Lagos lifestyles, glossy penthouses, and frictionless neoliberal luxury, the industry replaces active political engagement with aspirational desires, suggesting that systemic poverty is an individual failure rather than a structural flaw.
In Ogidan’s Owo Blow, released in the early 20s, the filmmaker used the protagonist’s financial desperation to critique the broader political system. Fast forward to the mid-2020s, and the typical protagonist has been aggressively replaced by an elite tech-bro, a corporate executive, or a socialite living in a frictionless version of Lekki or Ikoyi. This erasure means that the average Nigerian films and onscreen characters exist in a hyper-glossy, neoliberal vacuum where the primary conflicts are reduced to romantic misunderstandings or upper-class family betrayals. By severing its ties to the daily struggles of the street, mainstream Nollywood, courtesy of its corporate affiliations, fundamentally rejects Simone’s mandate to reflect the times, choosing instead to protect the financial status quo of its ruling-class investors.
In the FilmOne released 2025 The Nigerian Box Office Yearbook, the company’s Chief Content Officer and Editor-in-Chief of the report, Ladun Awobukun, spoke in glowing and reflective tone about the 2025 box-office data. For her, 2025 showed that when local stories are told with ambition and scale, they don’t just compete, they lead. The cinema business competed against unfair economic pressure but managed to amass a box office revenue of N15.6 billion, supported by approximately 2.8 million admissions over the course of the year.
Despite the meagre minimum wage and non-existent disposable income, Nigerians in large numbers visited the cinema for numerous reasons. “Nollywood’s performance this year affirmed that audiences are choosing authenticity, quality, and cultural connection, and that these choices are now shaping the commercial centre of the market. Hollywood continued to demonstrate its enduring strength through global franchises and consistent production quality that sustained strong audience turnout throughout the year,” she stated. Her statement carries the cultural impact of Nigerian cinema on the Nigerian mind, positioning it as a transformative cultural event for many. And therein lies the tragedy.
The shift from politically aware to apathetic cinema in Nollywood is not a moral or political failure of individual filmmakers but rather the structural consequence of a capitalist system that forces creatives to adapt or face financial ruin. In Nollywood and Afrobeats, Nigerian filmmakers and musicians have limited control of the dominant distribution, meaning they are compelled to conform to the commercial dictates of the corporate business. As Nigerian culture writer Dennis Peter asked in his essay, who cares about being responsible when there’s money to be made?
In capitalist Nigeria, to survive in an industry with no state-backed safety nets and skyrocketing production costs driven by inflation, Nigerian directors and producers, similar to their Afrobeats counterparts, prioritize profit over political critique. Thus, blaming filmmakers ignores that art, in a profit-driven economy, is systematically reduced to a commodity, and creators are structurally coerced into producing escapist content for the elite rather than revolutionary art for the masses.
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