“We Are Not Banning Ghanaian Actors”- Segun Arinze

The President of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN) has expressed resentment at the “malicious information making round in the media attributing that his outfit had issued a statement to the producers in Nigeria to stop engaging the services of Ghanaian actors in their movies”.

Speaking via phone from his Nigeria base Segun Arize told Hi Newspaper that, “Ghanaians are our brothers and we cannot stop producers from engaging their services. We were only cautioning our producers to hire more Nigerian actors; say 80% Nigerians and 20% Ghanaians in a typical Nigerian movie. We issued that statement to the producers and not to the media hence very worried about how the media especially, the internet have twisted it negatively.”

This issue has generated the worst comments, baseless and non-unifying verbal war between fans of Ghanaian and Nigerian movie stars in the last couple of days in the Naija press and internet. The most annoying comments, Hi Newspaper gathers, were posted by unidentified Nigerian movie fans on www.nigerianfilm.com.

Mr. Arinze, better known to his Ghanaians fans as “Black Arrow” has himself acted with some Ghanaians such as Jackie Appiah and Nadia Buari. He said, “Even Ghanaian actors would want to be seen more in their movies than other nationals so we didn't mean any harm with that statement. The content of the statement we issued reiterated the need for producers to use at least 80% Nigerians and 20% other nationals (especially Ghanaians), which is not something to be alarmed about.”

In a related development, Segun Ariunze and other Nollywood notables would be coming to Ghana a few weeks after the South Africa 2010 World Cup for an undertaking with their GH counterpart. “The rational of that is to foster a more cordial relationship between both industries” Arinze said.