Veteran Nollywood actor Bob-Manuel Udokwu has once again addressed the controversy around comments he made comparing his career timeline to that of legendary actor Pete Edochie.
“I cannot say I’m older than Nollywood. I think some bloggers put words in my mouth because in a podcast, I said I was in Nollywood before Pete Edochie. In other words, Nollywood wasn’t there when Pete Edochie, Sam Loco and others started acting. Nollywood came with the release of Living in Bondage,” he said.
His comment is the latest chapter in a debate that has followed him for months, over who truly counts as one of Nollywood’s earliest figures.
A controversy that keeps resurfacing
The saga began after Udokwu appeared on a podcast and said he had been in Nollywood longer than Pete Edochie, even though Edochie is older than him in age. He explained that Edochie was not part of the cast of Living in Bondage, the 1992 film widely credited with launching Nollywood as an industry, and argued that Edochie’s earlier fame came from television work, such as the NTA adaptation of Things Fall Apart, which predated Nollywood.
His comments sparked backlash, with reports online claiming he had accused Edochie of “parading himself and deceiving others” as Nollywood’s oldest actor. Udokwu denied ever saying this, insisting in an interview with NollyNow that his words had been taken out of context.
He addressed the matter again in an interview with Chude Jideonwo earlier this year, saying a blogger had stripped away the original context of his statement and that concerns had reached him from people in the East asking him to clarify himself.
The debate was not started by Udokwu alone. Around the same time, Yoruba actor Yemi Solade made a similar claim, saying he was senior to Pete Edochie in the industry, having started acting at age 17 in 1977, while also pointing out that pioneers of the Yoruba film industry, such as Hubert Ogunde and Ade Afolayan, rarely get the same recognition as Nollywood’s Living in Bondage generation.
Why this argument keeps coming back
Part of the reason this debate resurfaces so often is that Nollywood’s true starting point is genuinely disputed among industry veterans and historians. Some trace it strictly to the 1992 release of Living in Bondage, while others argue that earlier television dramas and stage productions, which shaped many of today’s veteran actors, should count as part of the industry’s foundation.
Podcasts and blogs also play a role in keeping the debate alive. Short, dramatic clips pulled from longer interviews tend to spread faster online than the full context behind them, which increases the chances of a nuanced statement being flattened into a simple, controversial headline.
How this affects the actors involved and Nollywood’s image
For Udokwu personally, the repeated controversy has meant having to explain and re-explain the same point multiple times across different interviews, an experience he has described as frustrating enough that he considered stepping back from public commentary altogether.
For Nollywood as an industry, this kind of recurring dispute among respected veterans can shape how the public views its history and its elders. Younger fans following the back-and-forth may come away with a distorted sense of who actually built the industry, while the constant “who was first” framing can overshadow the real, well-documented contributions both actors have made across decades of work.
Possible ways to settle debates like this
Podcast hosts and interviewers should take more care to present full context when publishing clips, rather than isolating the most dramatic line for views.
Nollywood’s professional guilds and historians could work on a more widely accepted, documented timeline of the industry’s origins, so that individual actors are not left to define this history in scattered interviews.
Veteran actors could consider addressing sensitive comparisons jointly or through a shared platform, rather than leaving room for competing claims to spread separately online.
Fans and commentators should be encouraged to seek out full interviews before forming strong opinions based on short viral clips.
A balanced view: both actors have a real claim to Nollywood’s history
Bob-Manuel Udokwu’s point about Living in Bondage marking Nollywood’s formal beginning is historically accurate and worth taking seriously. At the same time, Pete Edochie’s decades of influence, beginning with Things Fall Apart and continuing through some of Nollywood’s most iconic films, have shaped the industry’s identity in a way few can match. This does not have to be a competition with only one winner. Nollywood’s history has more than one starting point depending on how you define it, and there is room to honour both men’s contributions without ranking one above the other.
Our thoughts
I think this entire back-and-forth says more about how modern media handles nuance than it does about either actor’s legacy. Bob-Manuel Udokwu’s original point was a fairly technical one about when “Nollywood” as an industry name formally began, but once it was clipped, shared, and stripped of context, it turned into something that sounded like disrespect toward an elder, which is a serious accusation in Nigerian culture. Pete Edochie has never publicly responded to any of this, and honestly, that silence has aged better than most of the noise around it. Nollywood’s history has room for pioneers from television, theatre, and the Living in Bondage generation alike, and I don’t think anyone needs to lose their place in that history for another person to be recognised too.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
