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Glamour Boys Of Nollywood Take Their Turn

By Editor
03 July 2015   |   11:17 pm
IT was the glamour girls in the last two weeks. This week, readers want attention shifted to the unofficial club of top Nollywood actors who are still single. The ‘ayes’ have it.

IT was the glamour girls in the last two weeks. This week, readers want attention shifted to the unofficial club of top Nollywood actors who are still single. The ‘ayes’ have it.

Although it seem as though the list of members of the club has been depleted because prominent members of the club such as Mike Ezurounye, Chinedu Ikedieze, Emeka Enyiocha and OC Ukeje have since found their soul mates, there is a still a long list of top Nollywood actors who are still in the hood and who observers believe are not in anyway in a hurry to quit the unofficial club of Nollywood singles otherwise called the Guild of Nollywood Bachelors (GNB). .

Jim-Iyke-4 CopyJim Iyke
Although it is rumoured that he has found love in Ghana and at a time in far away America, Iyke’s position as a leading member of the ‘Guild of Nollywood Bachelors’ in the estimation of keen observers of Nollywood, cannot be challenged.

An actor’s actor who at the last count has grossed over two hundred movies in terms of appearances and has also funded the production of two big budgets flicks- ‘Ebony’ and ‘Good Evening’, Iyke is still single and would not agree to be drawn into a discussion on when he would quit bachelorhood. ‘I have never been known to follow the crowd’ has been his usual response.

But the movie crowd has always been fed with tales of his love exploits. There was a time an industry-based magazine reported that he Iyke has found ‘an apple in former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s orchard.

The magazine had linked Iyke to one of the daughters of the former Vice president who is studying abroad. Iyke would not confirm or deny the story.

Iyke also come under close scrutiny when he was linked with a fellow actress whose marriage to a London based actor has since hit the rocks. Later the talks zeroed on his alleged ‘love romp’ with the acting diva Genevieve Nnaji. For that he posted a tacit ‘I have never dated Genevieve’ as response.

When producers felt that they could pair Iyke and the actress Rita Dominic and achieve results, insinuations mounted again. An industry-based magazine not only linked them together but the writer suggested that both Rita and Iyke were ‘seriously considering wedlock’. ‘Here they go again’ was how he reacted to that insinuation when asked what it was that Rita was exactly holding in trust for him. ‘

We are merely friends and professional colleagues with no string attached’ Iyke explained with a tone that came through as if his explanation should be considered a final take on the matter. The latest is that he may walk the aisle with top Ghanaian actress Nadia Buari. ‘No comment’ was his terse response to an enquiry on the matter.

A celebrated actor whose face dots the cover jackets of most of the sectors commercially successful movie offerings such as Arrested by Love, Blind Love, Break Up, and A life to Remember, Jim Iyke has risen to become a dazzling success, and one outstanding personality who has garnered enviable wealth of experience on the turf.

Described by a soft sell journal recently as a ‘sex symbol’ and an actor who represents to some youths, everything they want to achieve on the acting turf, there was a time in Nollywood when a movie was said to be incomplete without the face of the philosophy graduate of the University of Jos.

But will the surprisingly humble and unassuming actor who was born and raised between Gabon and Nigeria formally quit the singles hood this year? That’s a question that only the one album music star and later day philanthropist can answer. .

KALU IKEAGWU222 CopyKalu Ikeagwu
The well built, good looking and unpretentiously friendly son of a deceased university teacher is not known to many to be formally engaged. So observers still consider him a prominent member of the singles club of Nollywood.

Always the one who is cast to play a lover boy in movies, Kalu has in all his media interviews avoided questions that border on his marital status or his love life.

He has always maintained that such issues are better dealt with outside the pages of the newspaper. But Kalu is still single even though he hinted in a recent interview that he is not searching.

A darling of most movie goers who has shown with his engaging runs that in most cases it is really not how long but how well, Kalu an English graduate of the University of Nigeria shot into national limelight playing Jeny, a loving and very supportive husband to Ada in the television soap ‘Domino’.

Fans of the actor who had a felt passion for literature, which was why he studied English, are hoping that he will also establish his presence among the comity of the married men in Nollywood otherwise called Nollywood men of excellence.

OSITA IHEME MFR 22 CopyOsita Iheme
They are two of a kind. One is named Chinedu Ikedieze and the other Osita Iheme. They are both diminutive and they share the same hopes and aspiration- that of ‘taking on the world’ and becoming ‘great men’ in their chosen profession.

But while Chinedu has decided to have his name deleted from the list of prominent members of the singles club, Osita Iheme doesn’t appear as though he has marriage on his wish list, at least not this year. But the fact that he still belongs to the singles club has not reduced the fact that he is a big name in the Nollywood industry.

A recipient of the national honour of the Member of the Federal Republic (MFR), Osita Iheme aka Ukwa have within a short while risen to become a crowd puller and household name who is cheered at to the point of deification and who is currently rated among the industry celebrated acting figures. The other glamour boys—-Gideon Okeke, Blossom Chukwujekwu, Benedict Johnson. CelebrityExtra and More….

zulu cut CopyAnd Zik Zulu Okafor leads AMP to America
Here is some good news. By the time you are reading this, about 35 members of the Zik Zulu Okafor led Association of Movie Producers (AMP) will be airborne on their way to California, the United States.

They will be in the US, specifically at the University of California for about 8 weeks for a course on production management and film financing. The training is funded in whole with grants from the ProjectAct Nollywood, a funding scheme for the Nollywood industry approved by the former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Over 200 practitioners have benefitted from the training diet of the ProjectAct Nollywood grant. The former President had approved the release of N3 Billion to be disbursed as capacity building, distribution and film production grant for the Nollywood industry.

Over 70 production companies have benefitted from the film production grant while the distribution grant is about being disbursed. It was an elated Zik Okafor who called yesterday to break the news of the departure of the AMP delegation. ‘’We are off to UCLA. 35 of us are going and I am leading the delegation.

We were supposed to be thirty-eight in all, but about three members were refused visa by the American Embassy. So we are off’ to learn and be equipped’ he enthused.

Pioneer filmmaker Pa Francis Oladele laid to rest in Oyo Town The remains of the pioneer filmmaker Pa Francis Oladele was committed to mother earth on Wednesday at his Forest Home residence in Lapiti Estate, in Oyo town. Pa Oladele is recorded in history as the first Nigerian to produce a feature length celluloid film in the country.

He produced the screen adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s class Kongi Harvest in 1970. He was also the first Nigerian and first African to head the film unit of the Western Nigeria Television.

A very resourceful cineaste and a source of inspiration to the second generation of filmmakers in Nigeria, Pa Oladele would be remembered as a pioneer of the industry that has a name carved on gold, being the first Nigerian to go into film production.

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