Piracy: Kunle Afolayan bashed, regrets outburst

It is advisable to take a deep breath, think things through before ranting on social network, no matter how riled up one is. Kunle Afolayan has unarguably landed himself an unenviable spot on the bench occupied by embattled celebrities that will go down in history for making infamous public comments.

Presently, he is getting bashed, not only by fans but also by colleagues in the movie industry.

The latest slam directed at Kunle is from Ifeanyi Ikpoenyi. Hear him:

“I almost ignored Kunle Afolayan’s useless tweets about Igbos being the only pirates in Nigeria, because to me, Kunle is just an over rated Nollywood film maker. He’s not better than Izu Ojukwu, Teco Benson, Obi Emelonye, Chineze Anyaene to mention but a few.

“The secret of Kunle is his DOP Yinka Davies who does everything for him and at the end of the day Kunle will just come and announce ‘action’… Give him another local DOP and see if Kunle is worth all the praises his kinsmen shower on him. Kunle should thank Peace Anyiam Osigwe for giving him the platform of AMAA as a pedestal to limelight. Trust me, if Kunle walks the street of Onitsha, Aba, Enugu or anywhere outside yoruba land, not even one person will recognise him as a celebrity. I will rather worry myself with the Oba’s threat to Ndi igbo than spend one second of my time thinking about Kunle’s senseless tweets about the Igbos.”

With that revealing lashing, one wouldn’t help to think if Ifeanyi had always wanted to tell the public Kunle Afolayan wasn’t what they think.

Uche Jombo has also tongue-lashed Kunle via Twitter:

“Interesting 2 see any1 in nollywood insult igbos abt piracy since without THEM we might nt even hv Nollywood of today #piracyIsNotTibalAThing”

She may be referring to the fact that Living In Bondage, an Igbo film was the first Nollywood movie.

Kunle should blame himself for opening the leeway for public outrage and insults against him. The award-winning movie director who just picked up AMVCA award for his movie October 1 wasn’t finding it funny, like every other entertainment worker, that his movie is already pirated, let loose his anger via Twitter as he blamed a particular tribe for his predicament. He had ranted:

“it is a fact that most of d pirates I see selling pirated CDs and DVDs are Igbo. 1 even threatened me after I seized my film from him. Why?”

Well, he has since apologised, via Twitter:

“I am a patriotic Nigerian that I portray in all my movies; Phone swap is even more of Igbo film than any other tribe. Again. I am sorry.”

-Ify Chiemeziem

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