How I want to be remembered –Pete Edochie, veteran actor
Trained as a broadcaster by the BBC, Pete Edochie is a treasure and icon to Nigeria and beyond.
From acting as Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart to the present movie, Like Father Like Son produced by Femi Babs, Pete Edochie popularly known as Ogadagidi, continues to derive joy in Nollywood as a thespian, father, teacher and mentor to the younger generation.
In this exclusive interview, the veteran actor opened up on sundry issues, revealing how best he wants to be remembered after finally bowing out of the scene. Please enjoy it.
What are you currently working on, and what do you have to say about the young man, Femi Babs, who plays the lead character in the movie, Like Father Like Son?
I am working with Femi (Babs) for the first time and I think he has a lot of potentials. He is a brilliant young man. No doubt about that. He knows want he wants and he is approaching production in a comic angle, which I think is going to help him in a great deal. It will help him a great deal because most people who approach production from that angle are successful, but they didn’t sustain their success. However, Femi shows a lot of promises. He speaks very good English and has a very clear vision. And to do a mini-production featuring Nkem Owoh and me, and planting himself in between, means he is very ambitious young man.
Does he remind you of anybody back in the days when you started acting?
There are so many people he reminds me of, no doubt about it. I can’t remember their names now. There is one Yoruba comic character that I worked with in Enugu. He was a fantastic humourist but I don’t remember his name now. One other thing about this young man is his ability to pick up something spontaneously. A fellow of mine who was doing that very much was Sam Loco. I think we were only three who had the capability to do that, myself, Sam Loco and Nkem Owoh. Whatever you throw at Nkem, he can pick it up and create something on the spur of the moment. It’s very few people who do that. Unfortunately, I keep seeing young stars and the young men I see are very limited using language, which I don’t understand. Someone wants to speak and he says, Yawa don gas. I trained as a broadcaster in the BBC and by the grace of God, I think I can stream a few words together and communicate effectively. The kind of language these young men use, I can’t fit into their system. But this one is working very well. Femi has a bright future.
Tell us what you like about the character you played in this movie?
‘Kowe’s more than just a movie, it’s an experience’
The movie gave me an opportunity to express myself, to use proverbs and interpret them. This is the kind of role I like to play, where I am free to role and express myself. I enjoyed my involvement with the production. I think this production will go far. Why? It’s because for the first time after many years, I am involving myself with Nkem Owoh in a production. Nkem is one of the actors I admire because he has very sound command of language; he is a good person. He can talk extra spontaneously; very few people can do that. Nkem has a very good memory; working with him again is a joy for me.
You came from the analog era and we are now in the digital age. How do you think we can balance the Igbo culture with Christianity considering the role you played in Things Fall Apart?
Knowledge is never stale, that’s what I want people to understand. Knowledge is never stale. You read a book and you pick up a line from it, twenty years after, it is still the same message you picked up from that book. It remains the way it is. And the white man came to us with his language to enable us communicate with one another, and he convinced us that whatever we had before he came was nonsense. You are told that this is superstition and this is this. But all that was intended to poison us mentally. Now that we are much older and better educated, we can tell that there is a lot of virtue in what we are that is original to us than what they brought. They did their best by bringing gun, bible, mirror and the rest of them, but we had our own way of life before they came. That our way of life produced giants in every aspect of our cosmogony, and this I am very happy about. I am glad that we still have a culture. You know, God has kept some of us for you to tap our knowledge. If there is something they are not clear about it… my door is open. ‘Excuse me sir, what does this thing mean?’ But we don’t see that too often. And I am not happy about it.
What advice do you have for the present generation of actors?
We have a parable in my place: ‘If you know your father, you know the ancient’. I am asking the young producers to tap from us now that they can. I am in my 70s; I don’t know how many moons the good Lord is going to allow me. You know most of my age is gone; you know that only Pete Edochie and one or two other people are still there, so do your best to tap from us before our generation is wiped out. The (young) producers are not doing it and I am not happy about it. We have a culture that we would want to protect and sell to the outside world in its most sacrosanct form. We are not doing right, which is not good. I think they should do the almost to involve some of us that we are still here. That is the advice I can give to them. On my own part, my door is open to any young man who walks in and says he wants to learn something. I’ll do it absolutely free of charge.
What would you love to be remembered for?
I want to be remembered as a man who did his best to entertain people while they lived. That’s right. Whenever I am in a production, I want people to learn or pick something from that production. It gives me joy when I go out and people look at me and embrace me, and then say: ‘this man speaks good English’. I like it because it compliments me. It doesn’t distract from my professional image in anyway. It makes me happy. People look at me and say ‘we like what you are doing’. Good! I feel happy that way.
You once made a remark about the unity of Yoruba and Igbo; what is your take on the incessant tribal fracas in some parts of the country?
The way Yoruba and Igbo have caught along as brothers and sisters for a very long time, but most young people today don’t seem to appreciate that. In 1966, we had the first coup in Nigeria; Ironsi emerged as the Head of State. At a time when he was visiting the west, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi was the governor. The people who organized a reprisal coup then went there to kill Ironsi and Fajuyi said ‘you will not kill this man while he is my guest’. And they told him ‘if you don’t give us this man to kill, we will kill the two of you’. Fajuyi said they should go ahead. So, you see, a Yoruba man sacrificing his life for an Igbo person. The best friend that Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe had in politics was Adeniran Ogunsanya, a Yoruba man. They were that close to the extent that when Adeniran Ogunsanya died, all the Igbos in Lagos closed their shops and came to the street to mourn him. During the war, there were some people in Yorubaland who collected rent for some Igbo in their absence. When the war ended, the Igbo were each given 20 pounds. Some of them went back to Lagos and the Yoruba came out and said ‘this is the rent we collected in your absence’. One of the beneficiaries was Alex Ekwueme who later became the Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So, I believe that we should try to develop some fondness for each other. My son is married to a Yoruba woman and she has never complained that she came to the wrong place, and my son has never complained. It is like that to so many families. I think there should be better understanding between Ndi Igbo and Yoruba; if not for our own benefit, it’s for the benefit of the whole country.
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