“Seun Oloketuyi’s Advocacy: Examining Safety Protocols in Nollywood Post-Tragedy”

It is sad and still very hard to refer to Jnr Pope and others who lost their life in the ill-fated boat ride as deceased. Jnr Pope was full of life and hardworking, as I’m sure were those who died with him. Unfortunately, I never met nor did I work with them but having done quite a few productions, I know that except for a few exceptions, these guys live below the line in NOLLYWOOD).

Although I am not someone who likes to look back when these kind of things happen, I will this time because we lost five bright souls.
I think AGN and AMP need to be pro active and ask serious, salient questions going forward:

1. Do Nollywood productions,especially those with high level risks like shooting late at night, have standard safety procedures?
2. Can we organise crash programmes of safety procedures when incidents like these take place so that people know what to do?
3. Can yhe guilds have safety experts in its executives to advise accordingly?

Finally, it is time our actors learn to use social media. Accidents happen everywhere but you won’t see a lawyer do a live video of such events or post pictures of their colleagues’ corpses. It is becoming crazy. In fact, it looked like some were more engrossed in making live videos than helping.

RIP to the dead practitioners.

Seun OLOKETUYI
Founder and Chairman of BON Awards Advisory Board.