Mr Ibu came to the limelight in a period when Nollywood was invested in churning out comedy movies by the second, and with a large number of actors. But only a few of these actors lasted long enough to attain the sort of cultural relevance that he did…
By Victory Hayzard Solum
There’s an Old Nollywood thriller from 2006 where John Okafor aka Mr Ibu played the role of a freelance journalist on the run after witnessing a murder. The film was titled The Journalist, and it was directed by Obi Callys Obinali, featuring drama stars like Kanayo O. Kanayo and Carolyna Hutchings. I never did see it, but there was something about the way my old man spoke about the movie after catching it on Africa Magic that told me it was a revelation of potentials much untapped in the Nollywood veteran comedy actor.
Long before he became the Nollywood comedy icon, Mr Ibu was first a hairdresser, a wood seller, a refrigerator repairer, and also a boxer. He succeeded in gaining admission into the Institute for Management and Technology in Enugu for his tertiary education, however, he dropped out later due to a scarcity of funds. But it was not, perhaps, until he was drafted from his sojourn as a passerby into the role of an extra in a TV series titled Hotel De Jordan in 1978 that he got the first hints of the direction his life would eventually take.
My first experience of him as an actor came in the 2002 Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen movie, Uncle Wayward. Of course, by that point, he had already been officially acting for about a decade, albeit in minimal roles. With Uncle Wayward, we were officially introduced to just the sort of character that would typify the bulk of his acting career. In a movie which starred soon-to-be comedy heavyweights like Julius Agwu, Victor Osuagwu, and Charles Inojie who also doubled as one of its screenwriters, Okafor held his own as the titular Uncle Way, a neighbourhood buffoon who must accompany his streetwise co-tenants on robbery operations to make ends meet. Couched in all of the film’s urban-living humour was a tale which betrayed anxieties over the day-to-day realities of incessant armed robberies, the OPC crisis of the early 2000s, and the rise of global terrorism following Osama Bin Laden’s attack on the World Trade Centre the year before.
It was his role, however, as the titular character Mr Ibu in the 2004 Andy Chukwu movie, Mr Ibu, which cemented his identity into the iconic status it currently enjoys. There, in a co-starring role with Osita Iheme, who was probably one of Nollywood’s most popular actors off his turn in the 2002 comedy Aki na Ukwa, Okafor played an overly trusting and frustrated father who must put up with the wiles of his problematic and mischievous son, Muo. In one very memorable scene which has since resurfaced online, Mr Ibu is forced to wrap up his son and deliver him as a present at a wedding ceremony just to get rid of him. Having gifted his grandfather’s name and his personal nickname to the film, John Ibu Okafor would go on to resurrect the character in several more movies.
Which friend can you wrap as a wedding gift? Mr ibu and pawpaw sha 😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/sBBQEojF42
— March 10th baby (@Msmenalicious) May 20, 2019
But it is not to Mr Ibu, the actor, however, that I owe the fond memories I have of him from my teens. It is to Mr Ibu, the musician.
Sometime late in 2004, we were greeted with news that a slew of Nollywood actors had suffered an industry ban for reasons related to acting fees and remuneration. They were getting paid in advance for far more movies than they could cover, thus causing a negative impact on the industry. Not long afterwards, we witnessed a couple of these actors, like Genevieve Nnaji and Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, trying their hands at music in a series of failures. It was, surprisingly, the more comedic actors like Nkem Owoh and Patience Ozokwor whose efforts yielded anything resembling public acceptance. Suffice it to say that by the time of Mr Ibu’s entry, there was nothing decidedly outrageous about hearing a Nollywood actor sing.
Mr Ibu’s efforts yielded songs like “This Girl” and “Annoyed Annoyed”. In “This Girl”, Mr Ibu gives vent to his feelings of having been used and cheated out of a sexual relationship by a woman, after meeting all of her requests. Sung in Igbo, he gives a list of his sacrifices, including chartering a bus for her transportation, providing meals like garri, dodokido, and akpu, and drinks like pure water, golden gin, and big stout, for the skinny girl with a surprisingly large appetite. However problematic the underlying idea may sound in today’s world, it is the ridiculousness of his provisions and the near nonsensicality of his complaints which give the song its comedic essence and appeal.
In “Annoyed Annoyed”, Mr Ibu translates a popular Igbo protest chant, “Iwe! Iwe!”, to English, using it as an avenue to give voice to the frustrations of the masses, in a surprising turn of activism. He deplores the sorry state of the economy, the inactivity of the nation’s refineries, bad roads, and the government’s seeming helplessness in combating these malaises.
As I listened to these songs, including one where Mr Ibu switches personas into that of a lover boy wooing a woman, I had an epiphany. I had been guilty of a peculiar Nigerian tendency to identify actors with their onscreen roles and nothing else. The sort of tendency that had seen Patience Ozokwor abused by would-be avengers in public places for her onscreen acts of witchcraft and villainy. I had come to equate John Okafor with the clownish Mr Ibu persona, with no inkling that perhaps there was more to the man. This was a very good realisation to have that early in life, a lesson that has stayed on with me. What more? The tunes were catchy and I sometimes sang them in class with my mates in secondary school.
It is not, however, for these other things that the man possibly was, or that he may have been utilised for, that we must celebrate the man. No. That would be a statement that, perhaps, he wasn’t enough. We must celebrate Mr Ibu for precisely who he was.
In a slate of over 200 movies, Mr Ibu gave us the gift of his sense of humour. It was a sense of humour which was buttressed by the entirety of his person, from eating mannerisms, to deadpan deliveries of genuine confusion, to his bouncy run, to his moments of trying to pass off as a woman while singing in a convent full of nuns, to Uncle Wayward cluelessly announcing to his gang of robbers that the firecrackers meant to scare their victims have been exhausted. His scenes, whether solo or accompanied, have been memeified and reproduced again and again to suit whatever reaction might be needed online for the moment, and they are myriad.
Mr Ibu came to the limelight in a period when Nollywood was invested in churning out comedy movies by the second, and with a large number of actors. But only a few of these actors lasted long enough to attain the sort of cultural relevance that he did, and that was because the man was a consummate performer who had the courage to give all of his person to whichever role he was portraying at the moment. It is more than heartening to know that it was with that same courage that he faced the protracted illness of his later days that has so taken him from us, soldiering through with that sense of humour and good cheer.
This is us saying thank you, Mr Ibu, for all the many ways you enriched our lives with laughter, for the memories embedded in the heart of a generation, and most importantly, for simply being you. Receive your flowers, Dike.
Udo.
Victory Hayzard Solum is a freelance writer with an irrepressible passion for the cinematic arts. Here he explores the sights, sounds, and magic of the shadow-making medium and their enrichment of the human experience. A longstanding ghostwriter, he may have authored the last bestselling novel you read.