Veteran Nollywood actor Nkem Owoh, popularly known as Osuofia, has clarified his views on the beginnings of Nigeria’s film industry, stressing that Yoruba filmmakers pioneered home-video productions but did not start Nollywood.
Owoh made the remarks during an appearance on the YouTube show Curiosity Made Me Ask, hosted by comedian and content creator Adebayo Abidemi (Bae U). The interview was released on Saturday.
He was responding to reports that he had claimed Yoruba people, rather than the Igbo, founded Nollywood. Owoh rejected that interpretation, noting that the name “Nollywood” did not even exist when early filmmakers began producing movies.“First of all, you have given me this wrong accusation that I said Yoruba started Nollywood. No. Yoruba started this film on… when did Nollywood come out? When we started the thing, there was no Nollywood as a name,” he said.
“We sat together and we’re banding, you know, ideas and all that, how the thing is going to come to fruition. And eventually, we chose Nollywood.”He gave credit to Yoruba filmmakers for making home videos popular in Nigeria, naming veterans Hubert Ogunde and Adebayo Papa as key figures whose work he admired.“So, Yoruba started the thing.
They made the thing very popular home video and all that. Yes, they did. And I’ve said it several times. Okay. Ogunde and Adebayo Papa. These are the people I love to watch their thing,” Owoh stated.When the host jokingly suggested Ogunde might have been Igbo, Owoh firmly disagreed: “Ogunde is not Igbo. I’m telling you that Yoruba started it. When Ogunde was out, I don’t think there was any Igbo man who was that popular in that.”He summed up his position clearly: “The Yoruba did not start Nollywood. They started Home video.”
The comments come amid ongoing discussions about the roles different ethnic groups played in building Nigeria’s film industry. In August 2026, the late actor Francis Duru had argued that Igbo entrepreneurs drove the growth of the modern home-video market in the 1990s and early 2000s, while noting that Yoruba filmmakers later became more dominant through better organisation and promotion.
Historical records show that Yoruba travelling theatre groups, led by figures such as Hubert Ogunde and Duro Ladipo, moved from stage performances into early film and video work long before the 1990s boom.
The commercial direct-to-video era, however, is widely linked to the 1992 Igbo-language hit Living in Bondage, produced by Kenneth Nnebue, which helped popularise the format that later became known globally as Nollywood.
The name itself only emerged years after those early productions as the industry gained international attention.Owoh’s clarification adds another voice to the long-running debate over the respective contributions of Yoruba and Igbo filmmakers to Nigerian cinema.
