Why Nollywood Veterans Struggle Financially – Patience Ozokwo

Patience Ozokwor

Nollywood actress Patience Ozokwo has shared the reason why several veteran actors struggle financially despite years of work. She recently had her say while speaking to the press, and fans have been reacting.

According to her, the lack of a royalty system in Nollywood is a major reason why several actors end up broke in the long run.

Patience added that life as a moviestar is hard because actors are only paid once for their roles, with no earnings from repeated broadcasts of their movies.

Her words, “The reason why Nollywood actors and actresses are poor is because we don’t get royalties for what we do.

We only get paid for our appearance at that time. After that, the movie goes everywhere, and that’s it.

People think we are rich, but we are not as rich as they think because there is no structure that pays us after the job.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.