Nigerian actor Nkem Owoh has rejected claims that he said Yoruba filmmakers founded Nollywood, saying his remarks referred instead to the development of home-video productions.
Owoh, widely known as Osuofia, made the clarification during an appearance on the YouTube programme Curiosity Made Me Ask, hosted by comedian Adebayo Abidemi, also known as Bae U. The episode was published on Saturday, November 7.
“I never said Yoruba started Nollywood. When did Nollywood come out?” Owoh said.
He explained that the name Nollywood was not in use when his generation began making films, adding that the term was adopted later after people involved in the industry discussed and agreed on it.
“When we started film, there was no Nollywood as a name,” Owoh said.
The veteran actor instead attributed the origins and spread of Nigeria’s home-video tradition to Yoruba theatre and film pioneers, including Hubert Ogunde and Adebayo Papa.
During the interview, the presenter jokingly suggested that Ogunde was Igbo. Owoh responded: “Ogunde is not Igbo. I am telling you that Yoruba started it.”
“Yoruba did not start Nollywood; they started home video and the rest,” he added.
The debate over the respective contributions of Yoruba and Igbo practitioners to the Nigerian film industry resurfaced in August 2026. It followed comments by late actor Francis Duru, who died in October, crediting Igbo entrepreneurs with helping drive the video-film boom of the 1990s.
Yoruba travelling theatre leaders, including Ogunde and Duro Ladipo, had adapted stage productions for film and early video, helping establish the tradition that Owoh referred to.
However, historians broadly associate the commercial direct-to-video market that later developed into modern Nollywood with Kenneth Nnebue’s 1992 Igbo-language film Living in Bondage.
Owoh’s comments therefore distinguished between the earlier Yoruba-led home-video and travelling-theatre tradition and the later industry that became known as Nollywood.
