Only Junior Pope’s Wife And Family Members Can Sue Adanma Luke, AGN Can’t – Emeka Rollas

The President of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Emeka Rollas has come out to explain why the Guild did not pursue legal action against filmmaker, Adanma Luke following the tragic death of Junior Pope in a boat accident.

He recently had his say during an interview with ARISE TV, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, AGN could not take legal action because of the work contract Junior Pope signed with the producer before passing, so only the direct family or his wife can take Adanma Luke to court.

Emeka added that AGN will license its actors henceforth because he found out even Junior Pope was not a due-paying guild member.

His words, “Update on Junior Pope, you know I was here, and I said we are about to sue. While interacting with our legal adviser, he said that the AGN did not have the locus to sue from the contract Junior Pope signed with the producer. He said either the direct family or the wife should sue the producer.

We will begin licensing actors because we also found out that even Junior Pope, as of his death, was not a due-paying guild member. He was a big actor who had not paid dues in the last year before his death.

We will return to the structure we discussed. We are trying to change many things because we just returned from Los Angeles. Now, if you talk about benefits, for instance, in the average balance, you must be financially up to date to get benefits.

So now if we change, if we begin to upgrade and say look, you can be active in Nigeria, you can work on, you can be involved in what you’re doing, but you must have a license to practice. And that license you’re given means you are eligible to get everything you need because you have a permit.

We know that in Nigeria today, we have many big companies making films here, and nobody is talking about royalties or residuals paid to actors, which is the major source of an actor’s income.

You see big names when they fall sick, they don’t get any help because their financial remuneration from the work they do does not extend to royalties and residuals.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.