The National Film and Video Censors Board, NFVCB, is considering banning Nollywood film, “Bobrisky in Love.”
According to reports, The National Film and Video Censors Board has set up three separate panels to analyse and classify the recently released movie titled, ‘Bobrisky in Love’, which stars popular Nigerian cross-dresser, Idris Okunneye aka Bobrisky. The board noted that Nigeria has laws that prohibit homosexuality and therefore work of arts that promote it cannot be endorsed by the government.
“When classifying movies, we consider its cultural value, we check whether it is divisive given the fault lines of Nigeria as regards religion and tribe. We check its message, whether it promotes things that we find repugnant in our nation; we check the level of violence portrayed in the movie as well as sexual content and other things,” an NFVCB official stated.
Produced by Nollywood Namaste Production company, with Ken Steve Anuka as director; the movie shows Bobrisky’s portrayal of a transgender woman named Cherechi who travelled out of the country as a man only to return to the village as a woman to the disdain of his fiancée and relatives.
“Latest by next week we will deliver a verdict on the movie. If the movie is banned, it would be communicated to the producers and our enforcement team would mop up all copies of the film on the market and defaulters would be apprehended and fined appropriately,” a representative of the board commented.
The movie, which was released a few weeks ago already has over 500,000 views on YouTube and has garnered thousands of comments, which the board claims to already be aware of, stating the need for enabling laws to be reviewed so that online viewing would also be subject to censorship.
