Who Is Vijah Eldred Opuama? A Biography

Some Facts You Do Not Know About Liberation Movement Governorship Aspirantaspirant: Vijah Eldred Opuama .

VIJAH INOWEI Eldred Opuama was the most regular face at the Bayelsa State Library , Swali, Yenagoa, in the early days of the state. He was so regular that staff of the library thought he had been sent by Alamieyeseigha to spy on them. He was the first reader to arrive every morning, and the last reader to leave at close of work. Sometimes, he was the only reader throughout the whole day. Anyone would have thought he was studying for a doctorate degree in some highfalutin discipline.

Vijah was that obsessed with his mission, and his mission was to read all the qualitative books on cinematography and film making. He had this burning desire to be an actor in a class of his own. For that reason, he felt obliged to know everything there was to know outside the university, about making a movie. He was looking forward to many adventures in the studio, on set, and on location. He thought it worthwhile, therefore, to prepare for the many roles he would play in the days to come.

He chose the name Vijah for himself. Nobody did, not even his father. To be alive, for him, was to take a determined walk to victory under God’s name. His father was a popular young socialite from Southern Ijaw called Victor Opuama. Therefore, Vijah saw himself as Victor Jr, arrogating to himself all the properties that pertain to victory. He had no doubt that, even in his journey to becoming a celebrated actor, a credible figure in theatre and film making, he would emerge victorious.

It all began when Inowei was a kid in primary school. It was an interest that took its foundation in Christmas shows and end of year parties for children. He did not insist on being noticed. He was simply noticed for who he was: a frank, focused and forward looking spirit with a knack for concentrating on the things that matter, and a compulsive will to set things aright, according to his cultivated worldview.

In his odyssey to become an actor of note, Vijah is glad to have worked with Ndubuisi Okoh, and the famous director, Taiwo Oduala. He was only twenty when he went into full time film production, an indulgence that saw him travelling around Nigeria. His early routine of devouring books on film, directing and cinematography at the Bayelsa State Library, Swali, took him beyond Bayelsa, and he was soon counted as one who could speak with some authority on the subject, one who had done his research well.

“In 2014 alone,” says Vijah, “the film industry in the world raked in four billion dollars. Actors and actresses abroad are idols. That’s why Danny Glover was under tight security even in his hotel when he came to Nigeria. He never came back to make the movies he had in mind. Let him come to Nembe, stay for one month, eat isemi fulo, and do a movie about the swamp.

“Danny Glover himself is a tourist attraction. If he’s cast as a fisherman along our creeks, for instance, the world would get to see the beauty of our topography, and the full stretch of our coastline. If I had my way, I would invite him to come and do a movie on the Akassa Raid.”

After consuming a lot of literature on cinematography and having practised with short films, Vijah had his first opening into Nollywood. Taiwo was directing the movie entitled “Century” and the location was Yenagoa. Vijah won a role, and was named as the personal assistant to the director who saw something he could harness in the young enthusiast.

“I carried his drink about,” Vijah recalls with a chuckle. ”The real opportunity came when Taiwo got stuck in a toilet scene, and I volunteered an idea that turned out to be the solution to the problem. I got a playful knock on the head for keeping the idea to myself all the while. He then announced to the producer, Favour Ogosi, that I had become an assistant director.

“The next director I worked with was Ndubuisi Okoh of blessed memory. We would spend time in his hotel room to plot shots and movements before we hit the location. I worked with him on the movie “Amalagha.” This was early 2000. I have done many jobs after that. Television commercials, short films, feature films, television series, within and outside Nigeria.

Vijah was working on a movie entitled “Goddess Of Beauty,” before his attention was taken up with politics. This was a film that set out to promote Ijaw culture. There’s a wrestling championship, an Egbelegbele dance, and an Ofirima masquerade display in the movie. None of these spectacles have been captured in an Ijaw film, and I intend to do that.

“Our cultures and traditions are not promoted in Nollywood movies. I have taken it upon myself to preserve them in tell-tale movies. “Goddess of Beauty” was to be shot for the cinemas. It was to feature Columbus Irisoanga, Emmanuel Okutuate, and Yibo Koko among others.
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Before all this, many years ago in far away Australia, Vijah appeared in a television series entitled “Moko Island.” His face was already popular on the Australian television network in a commercial stressing the power of water over alcohol. He also appeared in a movie where he was required to speak a northern Nigerian language. “When I exhausted the smattering of Hausa I knew, I spoke Nembe and had a good laugh. The Australian director was happy with me, not knowing the difference between the two African languages.

“Having done jobs on the Gold Coast in Australia in big Hollywood studies, I have the connections to bring Hollywood A-listers to make movies in Bayelsa. I see myself bringing international film makers to Bayelsa State to make movies. I have stories written since 2001. One is about wrestling and I want to feature Arnold Schwarzenegger popularly known as Commando. At the time I conceived this idea people thought I was dreaming too big. Now I have the contacts so I am getting there.

But why bring all those celebrities from abroad? Why can’t we tell our stories by ourselves and work with our own faces? “If you want your story to go global,” says Vijah, “you bring in global faces. The Ijaws want to go on CNN to tell our struggles to the world because CNN is global. We also need to use the Hollywood celebs to sell our stories. If I am producing a story about militants abducting a white man, I will not use an albino as a white man. And if I’m using a white man, I will use a face that will sell the movie.

“Danny Glover can play the role of a king and speak Nembe. He sells the movie, but the story remains ours. When our people get famous acting beside the Hollywood stars, we wouldn’t need them after a while.”

Vijah has a hefty grudge against the African Movie Academy Awards, AMAA, hosted repeatedly by Bayelsa in times past. The entire jamboree, in his opinion, was a comedy that failed to make people laugh.

“AMAA missed the point. It was a joke that failed to make the audience laugh. Movie festivals and awards promote film making. On the contrary, what AMAA did was to promote people’s pockets. Billions were spent on AMAA. After the ceremony, Bayelsa has remained quiet and dry. The celebrities never returned to make films in Bayelsa. No Bayelsa actor has earned worthwhile cash through film making. No film village was built as promised, not even one single movie studio was set up in the name of government. No one thought of donating standard cameras to subsidise the efforts of indigenous film makers.

“Two hundred million naira would have created a lot of jobs for the indigenous film makers. Electricians, bricklayers, plumbers can be hired by film makers. Governments around the world build film studios and give incentives to films so they can create jobs. We don’t really need a film village now. We just need a couple of studios to do our films.

As far as Vijah is concerned, poor standards are killing Nollywood. In the American film experience, he maintains, Hollywood did not have digital high resolution cameras from the first day. But the old analogue film loading camera movies of Hollywood are still better than a lot of twenty-first century Nollywood movies.

“Only in Nollywood do you see a feature film stretching for thirty-five minutes. Only in Nollywood does a character get shot through a glass window and the window remains intact. The bullet did not shatter the window but the character dies. And then the director deliberately lengthens shots just to make the movie longer. That can only lead to boredom. What’s more, the stories are so predictable even from the posters. It’s a shame.”

Born on Friday August 28, 1981, in Nembe, Inowei attended Young Women Christian Association, YWCA, classes for three years. At age six, he moved over to St Luke’s Primary School, Nembe, then to Nembe National Grammar School where he studied from 1992 to 1995. Again, he moved over to Community Secondary School, Ndele, and finally finished there three years later in 1998.

In 2001, he enrolled at the Bayelsa State College of Science and Technology, BYCAS, to study Public Administration, and rounded up in 2003, while working part-time as a linesman in a survey company. In 2009, he won a place at the Sunshine Coast Institute, Tafe, Queensland, Australia, to study Conservation and Land Management. While there, he met a striking Australian damsel, Abby, and married her. The union is blessed with four gorgeous children, three boys – Iduate, Inowei, and Ibomo, and the baby girl of the family, Faith. He returned to Nigeria in 2015.

Vijah is virtually a white man in black skin. In 2017, he was taking an evening walk up Alamieyeseigha Road when he was attacked by two bandits. They seized his phone, hit him with the barrel of a hand gun and left him bloodied in the face. That encounter with the underworld in Yenagoa left a lingering bitterness in Vijah’s mind, and he blamed it all on wrong orientation arising from wrong leadership.

Those fellows could have done worse. His Australian wife and children are still living in Queensland. He dreams of the day they can relocate to Nigeria, and make Bayelsa home. But he would rather see a new Bayelsa that would conform to the decent, secure, well-regulated society he had become familiar with in more civilized climes. He believes he can make the difference, if given a chance to direct the affairs of his homeland.

For that reason, Vijah took a stake in the politics of Bayelsa. He was the gubernatorial candidate of the Liberation Movement in the November 2019 elections, the youngest aspirant in the race to Creek Haven. His campaign manifesto covered the ambit of progressive policy ideas, and his eloquence was fully on show in the intervening period.

His party did not come anywhere near winning the election. But Vijah Inowei Opuama found fault in the electoral process. For many anxious weeks, he virtually held the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, by the scruff of the neck, and yanked it for faith. Opuama’s election suit caused appreciable concern in the public space, and palpable turmoil for Bayelsa’s new Deputy Governor, Lawrence Ehurudjakpor, who was invited to tender his certificates before the election petition tribunal in Abuja.

Opuama increased the heat on the governing party when he recorded the telephone conversation of two mediators, advising him to back down in the interest of peace, and reach a sensible compromise with the government of the day. Opuama said he would dive into an empty swimming pool, rather than accept bribes in the millions from the PDP.

It was rra resolution that would have made his mother proud. In the days after Bayelsa State was created, his mother was the first independent female journalist from the old Rivers State. She also became the first female publisher of her own newspaper in the new state. Her name was Sungumote Millicent Ikurite, a noble daughter of Nembe. Her ancestry revealed her to have originated from the intercourse between the early British missionaries and the Nembe people along the Niger Delta coastline.

Millicent Ikurite passed away over a decade ago. If she were still alive, her paper would have carried the unfolding story, to say nothing of the courageous exploits, of her second son in loud headlines. Win or lose, Vijah Inowei Eldred Opuama has endeared himself to the hearts of many for his bold resolve to stand by his conscience.

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