Nollywood filmmaker, Kunle Afolayan has again addressed his recent dispute with actor Mike Ezuruonye, saying he wouldn’t hesitate to work with the latter if he has to.
Eelive.ng had reported that Ezuruonye called out Afolayan on social media for posting a DM where he was named a fraudster.
In the DM screenshot, which triggered Ezuruonye to call Afolayan a tribalist, the former was accused of fraudulently dealing with women.
Following Ezuruonye’s tribalism claim, Afolayan explained that him sharing the post wasn’t to spite the actor, as he apologised.
Reacting to Afolayan‘s apology, the Ezuruonye tweeted that the apology should be done properly as it is filled with “very underlined pride.”
“A sincere Apology has Three Parts: I’m sorry. It’s my fault. What can we do to make this work? Not an epistle with very underlined pride,” he wrote.
However, during an interview with Punch, Afolayan explained that he’s not a tribalist as the actor claimed. He thereafter charged Ezuruonye to take a close look into the people working around him, and those who has worked with him on movie projects.
His words: “I have said I am not going to talk about this thing anymore, but I’m just going to say my apology was not because I said anything wrong or whether I was against Igbo or any tribe.
“You can tell from my operations; come to my office and see how many are working there. Go and see my work and see how much I promote the diversity and the unity of Nigeria, Africa and the world .
“Check out my friend’ss list. In fact, check out the girlfriends that I’ve had in the past if you’ll see and tell me if they are all Yoruba.
“If you read Ezuruonye’s post, you can clearly tell that its either he’s hiding something or he hates me. Really, I don’t see why you should come against a whole tribe just because you are having a one on one misunderstanding with an individual.
“But as I said, it’s not something I want to flog , we’ve discussed it. And I think someone was showing me that he wrote something that my apology was not accepted. It’s not even his call.
“And I will use this medium to enlighten people on Ariwo oja (the noise of a market place), which is what they read on social media. There are people that are called internet rat or soldiers and these people, if you want to go against somebody, or just want to create unnecessary tension, they just give them peanuts and all these people would do is to open fake social media accounts, and come and start saying all sorts.
“A lot of these people are not real. They are just paid to create confusion and commotion. We don’t do that. All our friends, my account is a real account, my followers are real followers. I don’t pay to promote my personal ego. and I never would pay to start a commotion or confusion in the space.”
Afolayan further said he’s open to work with Ezuruonye on future project(s) in spite of their misunderstanding.
“To Ezuruonye, I just want to say, it is one small industry, if it is not your time yet to feature in my film, it’s not time; when it is time regardless of what has happened, I would still call you and then you can say no you don’t want to feature,” he added.
Meanwhile, Afolayan’s upcoming movie, Citation, will on Tuesday, November 6, 2020, exclusively premier on Netflix.