I AM NOT YET FIFTY YEARS OLD- OPA WILLIAMS REVEALS

I AM NOT YET FIFTY YEARS OLD- OPA WILLIAMS REVEALS

The name Opa Williams is fast becoming as popular as household brands like Omo and Maggi. He is one man who can be referred to as one of the pillars of Nigerian entertainment industry, this respected professional and family man opened up in an interview with Bravo Weekly’s Paschal Chikero, on the secret of his grey hairs and how he has been able to succeed in different genres of entertainment. He also revealed how old he is. Enjoy the excerpts.

A lot of people know Opa Williams the impresario but they don’t know Opa Williams the family man. Please let us into your family life

You can’t know the family man because my family is my private life. I am not the kind of person who likes to expose my family. I don’t like to expose my family too much because they are my roots, if you expose the roots too much, the tree will fall.

Everybody in Nigeria believes that Opa Williams Studios is the name of your entertainment company but entering your office this morning, I discovered that you run a company called Virgin Ltd, what is the difference

Well, I think people know more of Virgin Organization than Opa Williams Studios. Opa Williams Studios is the production arm of Virgin. The studio does equipment leasing, editing and productions, the TV contents and the events.

How was growing up for you

I have said this over and over but I grew up like every other kid. I think a lot of people know where I grew up. I grew up in a C Class family, not a silver spoon family. Normal face me, I face you thing. Where your parents have a lot of mouth to feed. They give you what you have to eat and not what you have to play with.

How did this experience shape who you are today

Like they say, it is what you feed the kid he or she becomes. It was what I was fed that has shaped what you see now. I come from a very disciplined background, a God fearing background. One that says you shouldn’t waste things in life because there are a lot of people struggling for it. That has actually affected my life style. My father will always tell you that there is nothing God has given you he has not given somebody else so don’t think you are a super star. Just know that God has given you something and there is a reason God has given you that thing. All these have shaped what I am today.

At fifty, how do you feel?

I am not fifty yet and not even more than fifty. People are making mistakes. I invited somebody to my birthday he went out to broadcast that I am fifty, well it makes me more responsible, it is also a prayer for me. A couple of years from now I will be fifty.

Let’s talk about your grey hair, I guess it is one of the things confusing people, how did you start nurturing it

Some years ago when I went to Ghana, I met this young guy with grey hairs. I loved it so I went to him and told him. He then told me the secret. I tried it and it worked.  I had some grey hairs coming out naturally; all I needed was to enhance it.  I used to shave my hair with shaving powder and that kills the black cells and white hairs grows out and I like it. I just wanted a different look.

I follow a lot of your TV contents, why did you create the soap opera, Just the Two of Us. Does it have anything to do with an experience you had?

I want to be an agent of change. There are so many things going wrong, funny enough some of us have conformed to them. If you have the power of the media, the media is one thing the people embrace. It empowers the people, it educates by informing the people. It tones the people’s thoughts. So when I wanted to do the soap, I decided to do something that I could use to bring back some morals to the family so Just the Two of Us is about a father and his daughter playing out the expectations of the Nigerian families. We just distilled a total family into just two people. The father is playing the character of a father, a brother, a friend, a husband then the young girl is playing a sister, a daughter, mother, wife and friend. At the end of the day, the lessons could be learnt from those characters. For me they are a special vehicle that could be used to influence our mind sets. We are very corrupt; when I say corrupt I don’t mean just economically, we are corrupt socially and morally. So how do you rectify this, things got corrupted in the first place through wrong information so you need to redress them with the right information, this is what I call the moral re armament of the society.

Let’s talk about your Yoruba soap opera. What do you want to achieve with that and why did you jettison the English language for Yoruba language as a medium

First of all I have two programmes, Just the Two of Us and Living Next To You. You are trying to entertain, you are trying to educate at the same time. A lot of people watch Yoruba films, I watch Yoruba films and a lot of Igbos watch Yoruba films because they make sense, some of them make more sense than the English films. In South West here, 80% of the people living here are Yorubas, they speak Yoruba. If you want to communicate to someone it is best you use his or her language, if you also want to change some one, speak his language, which also involves even the body language. That is why I said let’s try something in Yoruba language. There is no Yoruba Soap. We did our research and we discovered that people liked the idea. The next thing was to find out what drives the eye balls, what do they want to see in it. We discovered that. We are in about the fourth season now and it is doing well.

 You started with movies, why did you leave it

You can’t say I left the movies, yes I have not done the Idumota thing but I have done two movies. One is being shown on DSTV, it is called, After Today, which I did with some kids. I did another one called, Dying Day. These are one hour, ten minutes films. The essence of it all is change. I have decided to do thematic things that make sense that people will enjoy. If you have materials you can influence people with in an environment people cannot get those materials, you look for where people can pick up those materials. Unlike doing anything commercial that is neither here nor there.

As a father and producer, which will you recommend for your kid, a book or a movie?

For me, I think you cannot say one is better than the other, we have books that have been done into movies, and there is a reason they do that. Sometimes you look at the connection with the audience. How do you package a message, if you package your message in form of books then you ask yourself about the interest in books. If there is no interest in books then you must convert that message. Take the Godfather for instance, I have been trying to read that book but I have watched it over and over. Most highly rated movies were books. Now every book that has been converted into movies, you will find out that there are many people who have watched the movie than those who have read the book. That is not to say that books don’t have relevance, no. Another example is Once Upon A Time in America, it’s a book, I was reading it but somehow I couldn’t follow it through but I watched the movie and it hit me.  Again action speaks louder than words. Our time is being chased by so many things, before I used to read one book in a week but I can’t remember the last time I actually read a book, I read books don’t get me wrong, you have to read if you want to survive, the bible says my people perish out of ignorance. Knowledge comes through reading but what I am saying right now is that I have not really had enough time to do the reading like I used to. If I am travelling I buy a book, so for the six hours, eight hours I am going to be on air I will be reading. Books and movies are relatives but a book that could take you a week to read, if it were a movie, it will take you one or two hours to finish.

Are you a comedian, why did you go into comedy business?

First of all I always move from one thing to another because I am trying to re invent myself and stay relevant to all the generations I come across. Once you are irrelevant, you are dead. You can take that from Government workers, today he is a Governor but once his tenure is over, the man is dead. I am sorry to say this but look at somebody like Aikhomu, some of us have forgotten about him until he died and people were like, Eh? E still de alive? You must be relevant while you are alive so that people feel you as you grow. When I started movies, at a time, I needed to move to something else so I moved into comedy, from comedy I started doing TV, now I need to move to something else. As long as I am alive I will keep moving but everything I do is within mass communication and entertainment.

We always rush to consume foreign entertainment products when they come into Nigeria, we have not really had a strong and consistent entertainment product that foreigners rush to watch abroad except Nollywood movies, you have taken Nite of a Thousand Laughs out of our shores, why and where are you taking it to

Somebody once told me that your space is defined by you, your height is defined by your own limitations. When you say this is the height I want to get to, I tell you, you will get there. I said to myself that there are a lot of foreign products coming here, you have Big Brother, Apprentice, Idols, Project Fame, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire etc we all buy them, I am sure that if we go out with our own, if well packaged they will buy them. Example is our Nollywood. They buy Nollywood products and gradually we are colonizing them. If you go to Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania we are influencing their thinking, we are even now influencing there architecture because they now want to build the kind of houses they see in Nollywood movies. That means we have exportable products. I have had 15 years in Nigeria; I don’t want to do a carry go thing where you go to London with Nite of a Thousand Laugh with Nigerian comedians, you go to Dublin etc, no impact. I took Nite of A Thousand Laughs to Kenya, I was in South Africa, Uganda, the whole idea is to say , see what we have they are Nigerian brands, export them. Just like the banks, if you go to East Africa , you see UBA, Zenith Bank, they are not banking Naira, they are banking their local currency, that means we have exportable commodities outside Oil. When I went out, in the hotels when I talk they laugh, they are not laughing in my language, they are laughing in their own language. The show in Kenya I am not that the Nigerians that came were up to 200 people and it was mainstream, that means we have a show that can be  Pan Africa, it’s just to package it.

So apart from Africa, do you intend to take the show world wide?

Yes apart from Africa, we intend to take it worldwide but we are not going as a Nigerian brand but an African brand. We are going to stay, that means, we will be there every year. If we have eight slots for comedians we are going to select comedians from eight African nations.

What is your advice to upcoming producers with good ideas but lack the capital to back it up?

You have to take your idea to people. Don’t hoard your ideas. Some how you will find somebody who will be merciful enough to listen to you.

Thank you sir

You are welcome.