The new elected president of the Actors guild of Nigeria, AGN, Emeka Rollas has accused some Nollywood actors of not knowing what it entails to become actors, thereby allowing producers to infringe on their rights and privileges.
In a recent chat with NollyNow, AGN president with over 20 years in Nollywood regretted that actors who are supposed to be living large, are not even aware of their estimated net worth.
“One of the major problems we have in Nigeria is that a lot of actors don’t even know what the profession is all about; some don’t know it is a craft. Some just feel it is an avenue to feed themselves. For instance, a producer approaches you to feature in his film and promises to pay you N10,000 for a job of N50,000. You go ahead and accept the job because your mind would tell you that if you don’t take it, you will die of hunger. No! This is not right. In this country today, everybody can just wake up and say he or she wants to be an actor without knowing what it entails. We need actors to know that acting is a serious business,” he said.
On his election as the new president of AGN, Rollas said his agenda is to consolidate on the achievements of his immediate interim government. Our major concern is to protect the average actor and care about his welfare, either on location or anywhere else. We need to convince the actors that they now have a viable association that can fight for their rights and welfare, “ he stated.
Speaking on how he was able to restore peace in the once troubled guild, Rollas said he reached out to everyone that matters in the guild to give peace a chance. “I had series of meetings with everyone. As a matter of fact, before the general election of the guild, I met with Emeka Ike and he gave me his blessings. Also, from Ibinabo’s camp, I found out that the then National Secretary, Abubakar Sanusi was interested in running for the president of the guild. I didn’t give up; rather I became more interested in contesting for the position. I tried closing up all the gaps, where we had factions.
“I went as far as visiting states that had factionalization issues, just to close up the gap and restore peace to the state guilds and ensure that we work as one family, under one leadership,” Rollas explained.
