To the average Nigerian, Faraday Okoro‘s movie
‘Nigerian Prince’ sounded interesting for many reasons. First, it was
reported that he was taking the story of the popular Nigerian email scam
to the big screen, and that definitely caught everyone’s attention.
Everyone knows about the cliche emails which has now graduated to text
messages aimed at getting gullible people (Nigerians and foreigners
alike) to do away with a certain amount of money. Faraday had earlier
won a $1 million grant from AT&T, The Tribeca Film Festival and the
Tribeca Film Institute to make this film after pitching to a jury that consisted of A-list judges such as
Oscar-winning producer, Lee Daniels
and a host of other actors including the President of HBO. According to
Okoro, he was inspired to make this film after he had received a scam
email in his inbox back in college. He would then go on to tie in his
personal experience visiting Nigeria as a teenager and then forced to
stay against his will for a longer time.
The film follows a stubborn first generation Nigerian-American teenager, Eze (Antonio J.Bell) and his cousin, Pius (Chinaza Uche). Eze is sent to Nigeria by his mother to stay with his aunt, Grace (Tina Mba)
against his will and so he teams up with Pius, who is a professional
con artist to scam unsuspecting foreigners in order to earn money to get
a return ticket back to America. The 104 minutes feature film, which is
Faraday’s first was shot in Lagos, Nigeria for the most and also
features other actors such as Bimbo Manuel, Kelechi Udegbe, Gregory Ojefua and a host of others.
To
begin with, there’s the theme of identity which is fully unwrapped with
Eze. It is his first visit to Nigeria and Africa generally, and he
absolutely has no interest in being there. There are uncountable times
where he refers to himself as American and not Nigerian, not to talk
about stylizing his name as ‘Easy’ and not ‘Eze’ which means king in
Igbo. It’s all funny because while he’s counting down to the four weeks
he was originally supposed to spend in Nigeria, his mother had cancelled
his return ticket with the intention of him spending a year and fully
getting to understand his roots. Apart from Eze’s identity crisis,
there’s also the scamming which is introduced when we meet Pius, a
dedicated scam artist, who internet sensation, Joanne the Scammer, must
have had in mind when she said: “A day without a scam is a day wasted.”
Pius goes from sending emails to scamming people of their money while
promising to sell them products for cheaper than the market price.
There’s a lot of hustle that goes in to successfully scamming and you
can see a lot of it in Pius.
The film is generally decent, save
for the anti-climatic letdown at the end of the movie. ‘The Nigerian
Prince’ would also get tongues wagging about the way Nigeria was
represented, as it did at the Africa International Film Festival
(AFRIFF) where it screened as the closing film. However, as one of the
festival delegates mentioned, ‘it is important to tell these stories as
it is’. The cinematography is also worthy of commending, as well as Eze
(Antonio J.Bell) and Grace (Tina Mba), who absolutely owned their roles
and delivered. Apart from Pius’ accent that hibernates between Imeh
Bishop Umoh’s Calabar tone and something from Wakanda, it is an
enjoyable watch. It has its moments of hilarity, and the Nigerian slurs
in it would get you.
‘The Nigerian Prince’ is already in US cinemas and according to the producer, Bose Oshin, there are plans in the works to bring it to Nigerian cinemas.
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