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Women of Substance or Vicious Women: Reading

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18
Women of Substance or Vicious Women:
Reading the Woman in Women of Substance
Ogaga Okuyade
English Department and Literary Studies
Niger Delta University
Wilberforce Island

&
Samuel E. Azugbene
General Studies Department
College of Education
Warri.

Abstract
This essay examines how male film filmmakers employ the video film as a
potent means for constructing gender roles in society especially in politics.
Although, more of a review of the film, Women of Substance, our intension is
strictly to demonstrate that since men are the dominant group in the
screening, production and distribution of film in Nigeria, they exploit this
privilege post and the agency within the confines of the industry to construct
gender roles and sustain the woman's place as marginal even when women are
given enough yardage in films. Consequently, it is impossible to gain insights
into the role of women in the Nigerian society based on their representation
and framing in Nollywood. This gendered story-telling technique inevitably
leads to the exclusion of women and by extension their contributions to
growth and development both at the familial and national levels. Invariably,
this gender bias in the framing of women in Nollywood engenders the

244
alienation of women and the attenuation of female agency and fecundity with
regards the politics of representation. This scheme only further entrenches
patriarchy in Africa thereby constituting a kind of psychologically danger for
women and girls considering the fact that they are the major consumers of the
films.

Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, is arguably the third largest film
industry in the world after the United States of America's Hollywood and the
Bollywood of India (Special Assignment, SABC).1 Considering the evolution
of Nollywood in Nigeria, it has no doubt become the first success story in
popular film industry in Africa.2 Despite financial constraints and technical
challenges, the Nigerian filmic industry has continued to strategically contest
the dominant and mainstream cinematic formats, such as the 35mm films, to
cultivate its own film aesthetic and audience through the “video film” and it
has equally displaced foreign films within the Nigerian screening-scape. This
video film, refers to those films that are “primarily shot on video in a variety of
formats…” (Nathan 2). Nollywood films are sold across the continent and
abroad, they “are one of the greatest explosions of popular culture the
continent has ever seen” (Haynes, 1) and have replaced television and foreign
films in many homes. Indeed, since mass media are cultural industries,
Nigerian video films might be good sources for learning about Nigerian
cultural beliefs, values and attitudes regarding gender. This essay examines
how male filmmakers employ the video film as a potent means for
constructing gender roles in politics. Although, more of a review of the film,
Women of Substance, our intension is strictly to demonstrate that since men
own the means of film production in Nigeria, they exploit this agency to
construct gender roles and sustain the woman's place as marginal even when
women are given enough yardage in films. Consequently, it is almost
impossible to gain insights into the role of women in the Nigerian society
based on their representation and framing in Nollywood.
Gaye Tuchman's article on The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass
Media (1978) in which she uses George Gerbner's (1972, 44) concept of
symbolic annihilation to foreground the argument that by fundamentally
ignoring women and consigning them to stereotypical roles the media
“symbolically annihilate” them. The idea or concept of symbolic annihilation

245
is very significant in understanding gender formation and figuration in

246
Nollywood, because it aptly articulates how gender is constructed in
Nollywood and the placement of women in the films.
The Nigerian filmic industry, offers a fertile ground for critical study on
gendered representational practices in Nigeria in particular and Africa at
large. Dominica Dipio's (2009) reading of Nollywood videos films with
religious themes notes that the films as a primary form of social commentary
on Nigerian culture and society, are somewhat a kind of reflection of societal
attitudes toward gender. Nigerian films, according to Dipio (2009, 86),
“create super protagonists and reinforce the popular hero stereotypes” which
in turn “reinforce the ideologies of power” and to “build an acceptance of the
structures of dominance in Nigerian society.” Citing from numerous
literature on Nigerian filmic industry, Dipio (2009, 86) identifies the
stereotypical images Nigerian films ascribe to women, they include the image
of seductress who tempts and destroys men; witches and marine forces with
sinister powers, the wicked mother in-law who constantly frustrates her
daughters-in-law in matrimony and the weak and almost brainless traditional
African woman who completely relies on the man for her survival. However,
in films where women are educated professionals, they hardly transcend their
gender limitations or survive since they are made to look parochial and self-
centered. They may succeed at the professional level and fail completely at the
domestic sphere. This is one strategy male filmmakers deploy to justify the
marginal position of women in the society – a deliberate scheme to aptly
accentuate the fact that the women belong to the kitchen, sitting floor, garden
and “the other room” and that serious civic business are strictly the preserve
of men.
The fundamental problem with the portrait of the woman in Nollywood
is essentially the fact that African women, “particularly at the grassroots level,
are avid users of media despite a popular belief that they are too poor or busy
with house chores” (Opoku-Mensah, 26). Consequently, it becomes
troubling that the more women are exposed to these films and their
narratives, the more likely they are to consume the contents of the films and
begin to condition themselves to such marginal portrait of the woman.
Jonathan Haynes equally suggests that Nigerian films are “oriented towards
female viewers” (4) because the audience or consumers are predominantly
females. Lamentably, however, there are just a few women working behind
the camera as script writers, producers and directors in the Nigeria filmic
247
enterprise. Significantly, therefore, the establishment responsible for the
production of the films determines their contents. Romy Frohlich reinforces
the above assertion, noting that “the people who make decisions about media
content, may it be news or entertainment, have defining power” (161).
Accordingly, the establishment responsible for the screening of Women of
Substance are men and they decide and condition the content of the film.
Nigerian women, like their male counterpart, shelter themselves under
different social or associational umbrellas, either to fraternize in order to
celebrate womanhood or design ways to negotiate their place within the
society at large or within the family unit. Interestingly, women associations
continue to burgeon by the day as they now attract attention from the male
counterpart. These meetings are avenues used for discussing socio-cultural
problems and the place of women in the African society. These August
Meetings equally discuss how women can negotiate their ways between the
burden of matrimony encapsulated within the cultural domain and the
challenges of modernity. However, the roots of these associations may be
traced to the Igbo3, because it functioned as a very formidable organ of power
at the familial base, it has now assumed a new dimension. Presently, the
ethno-cultural functions of these meetings which essentially created room
for women to come to terms with the burden of tradition and the place of
women in primordial African societies are no longer relevant. Their
functions have assumed varied dimensions as they are now more of a social-
political organisation where women garner support to assert their relevance
in the society where these meetings operate. The August Meetings, which are
most popular among the Igbo, began in the late 1980s and has since become a
very formidable umbrella for women because it provides a platform for them
to hear themselves and work out modalities to check the over-bearing powers
of the patriarchy. It must be noted that the initial purpose for the inauguration
of August Meeting was not for political reasons or to correct the gender
inequity in the Nigerian society, especially at the cultural level and the
primordial base. Its agenda was initially familial, to settle disputes at the
family unit and it affords women the space to fraternise at that level.
Presently it has become a site for power negotiations. Strong male
politicians lobby these women during electioneering campaigns in order to
get across to women. Once male politicians begin to rally around these
women, other women become fascinated in the belief that such male
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politicians will no doubt identify with their cause as a marginal group. These
meetings are avenues used for discussing socio-cultural problems and the
place of women in the African society. These August Meetings equally create
avenues for social conversation or engagement on how women can negotiate
their ways between the burden of matrimony encapsulated within the
cultural domain and the challenges of modernity. However, the roots of these
associations as noted earlier may be traced to the Igbo, because they use to be a
very formidable organ of power at the familial base, it has now assumed a new
dimension. Presently, its cultural function is no longer relevant; it is now a
social-political organisation where women garner support to assert their
relevance in the society where they operate.
To distinguish each of these associations, the women have particular
slogans which they chant or homogeneous attire which distinguishes one
group from the other. Most Nigerian women, both urban and rural are never
totally accomplished or fulfilled except they belong to a powerful feminine
association where they deliberate on issues bordering around the challenges
of womanhood or better still, how contemporary the African woman can
negotiate her way between the claims of tradition and modernity. Women of
substance is not just a film about women struggling desperately to wield power,
but it foregrounds the complexities in the African democracy – an allegory on
the ascension to power and its attendant malaise. Invariably the film can be
read as a national allegory.4 Recently, the word 'continuity' has gained
currency in the Nigerian political lexicology. It suggests the refusal of the
incumbent to relinquish power at the expiration of the tenure.
Women of Substance is about women welded in an association awash with
intrigues. It is an English film set in an urban area. All the main characters are
Igbo. Usually, most of the video films with urban setting with a woman as
protagonist dramatize the persistent struggle women put up with in order to
cope with the challenges of urbanity and modernity. Sometimes these
characters go beyond the stereotypical marginal feminine limitations to get
themselves adequately positioned in the uncertainties that trail the human
enterprise. Okome remarks that Nigerian urban video films are “concerned
with making sense of the experience of the city and modernity” (83). Barber
also suggests that African “Popular arts” has this concern as cardinal. Bearing
in mind the similarities between the narratives of the Onitsha chapbooks and
those of Nollywood, Obiechena, writing much earlier about the Onitsha
249
Market Literature, suggests that most of the chapbooks explore or portray the
complexities of city life informed by the fiery innovations modernity
engenders.
The dramatic excitement and the political intensity of Women of Substance
aside, the film basically captures the fraudulence inherent in Nigeria's
nascent democratic arrangement, precisely, the Fourth Republic, reflecting
the experience, belief and aspiration of the desperation of the political class
and their uncanny love for power. It details aptly how politicians steal their
mandate and at the expiration of their tenure through the rhetoric of
continuity.5 Like many Nigerian Video Films, Women of Substance tells many
stories, and could be read from multifarious dimensions. The main story can
be fragmented into bits and pieces as they move in diverse directions
simultaneously. However, it is Florence Adadiora a.k.a Mixer (Patience
Ozukwor), the protagonist that couples the fragmented bits and pieces into
the grand narrative. The title of the film suggests the strength of women, their
virtue and their nurturing role in the African society. Furthermore, it
foregrounds feminine figures rife with agency and power. It is not in doubt
that women are power brokers within this social context, they have the
paraphernalia for social mobilization, but paradoxically it is a travesty, the
content of the film is a departure from its title. Films with such titles usually
portray suffering mothers, weak helpless women in a desperate struggle for
survival. Or better still, the story of bucolic teenage girls or ladies who visit the
city hoping to leap into sudden opulence and are over whelmed by the
incomprehensibility of the universe and the labyrinthine social geography of
urban life. Consequently, most times such characters metamorphose into
prostitutes as a leeway to contend with the vagaries of urban life. Considering
the title of the film, it could also dramatize the story of house wives who suffer
in their bid to adequately locate their children within the core of morality as
their husbands abandon their responsibilities and obligations to their families
and run after other women. Alcohol is usually the provocative liquor that
facilitates this abandonment. Though the film is written and directed by men,
it privileges women and they occupy the nucleus of the story. Lamentably,
however, the film only gives ample opportunity for the women to dramatize
their vanities. Indeed, it should be noted that the film is not a feminine film,
dramatizing the pettiness of rural women struggling to wield power, if read
from this dimension, it becomes reductionist in temper and its overall
250
message becomes attenuated. The film embodies the pedagogy of moral
awareness and has a positive influence on the way individuals are expected to
conduct themselves in different spheres of human endeavor.
Women of Substance is a film of power, power on the laps of women. The
women in the film are portrayed as shallow, self-centered and preoccupied
with maintaining the hierarchy of their narrow social worlds. The film begins
with an imbroglio and power play. The women of Women of substance
international, talk power, live power and exude power. They are clad in
powerful, aristocratic garbs. The power tussle is between Calister (Franka
Brown) the incumbent chairperson of the association who hopes to use the
power of incumbency to hold on to power and Florence a.k.a Mixer who
promises to unseat the incumbent. Florence has a single agendum – to help
the women “Penetrate the inner caucuses of power” and make them rich. She
talks tough but lacks structures and formula of wresting power from Calister.
The battle line is drawn and the women are divided along a bifocal divide –
the incumbent and the opposition.
Until the 2015 presidential election which brought the Buhari
administration into power, within the African political frame work, the
possibility of the opposition to unseat an incumbent executive political
officer, who has almost all the apparatus of power within his disposal was
remote and unimaginable. Because of this political handicap, the opposition
sometimes goes beyond the electioneering procedure to employ extra
electoral paraphernalia to assume power. Vero, Florence's feisty friend, works
out the recipe. Political struggle lives politicians with no choice but
uncalculated desperation. Rather than use her feminine fecundity to create
something rational, she comes up with a fatal idea which seems amorphous
and innocuous initially. Vero takes advantage of Florence's obstinacy of
clinching the elections at all cost and introduces an inimical scheme. She
comes up with a grand design – Florence must kill her husband in order to
generate funds for her campaign to garner support from the women. Just like
the women, their husbands belong to a parochial association – “The People's
Friends Club”. The club has a policy which is designed to assist the family of
any member at the advent of death. At the demise of any member of the club
the family gets twenty million Naira. Vero makes Florence see the
worthlessness in tending a bed ridden husband who will not survive. Her
dying husband becomes the bait; if he dies, she becomes richer. The act of
251
killing a sick husband who is in a vegetative state becomes innocuous.
Florence is absolutely astounded at this proposals, she insist and shuns the
idea. But Vero prods her on like the temptress, recounting the bountiful
beauties and the power associated with the seat of the chairperson of Women
of Power International, henceforth as WOSI as against the worthlessness of
her dying husband. Florence is drowned in Vero's proposals and gives in to
her prodding. She applauds Vero's prodigious wit and commends her
commitment and sense of camaraderie.
The killing of her husband in the film is only a popular motif, symbolic of
the extent most of these society women go in achieving their goals or meeting
the challenges their association espouse. Since they place so much
importance on these associations they can hardly evade the toll it places on
them. The demands of this association range from wrappers, headgears,
ornaments, hand bags to foot wears, usually acquired at a colossal sum.
Florence disrobes herself of her feminine frailty and becomes feral. She
and Vero leave the seat of power to the location of trado-spiritual power. The
location of power in Africa is usually around the margins of society. As usual,
the journey to this location is bumpy and taxing. They locate power in a mud
house and Vero removes her foot wear and admonishes her friend to do same,
for they are on sacred ground. She hesitates but eventually complies. An old
man emerges from the nearby bush, his garb defines his personality, he is a
sorcerer and has power – the power to make power and give Florence power,
but on one condition. She must state what she wants herself. Although the
sorcerer cannot be exonerated from the death of Florence's husband, it aptly
dramatizes and demonstrates the power of freewill and the nature of African
metaphysics and sorcery, bringing to bear the human will and the elastic
power of the African gods, it is what you want you get – the choice becomes
yours to do with it what you choose. Another intriguing and fascinating motif
derivable from the visit to this location of power is the close affinity of the
game of politics and the act of sorcery in Africa. Politicians not only get victory
from their assiduous campaigns and the content of the ballot box, they also
fortify themselves with powers from the underworld. This scene also
reiterates the African colonial dilemma. Africans seem to pendulate between
the white God and the traditional. The white God is strictly for social identity,
but when confronted with intricate calamities the traditional system provides
the leeway out of the tangle, hence we see Florence successfully foraying and
252
mediating between the two worlds, depending on the demands of the times.
When the moment of decision comes, Florence becomes scared and the
woman in her begins to overwhelm her ambition. She is stuck between a rock
and a hard place. Vero, as usual, gives the much desired prodding. She
acquiesces Vero's proposals and the sorcerer only arranges traditional
euthanasia and Florence's involvement in the death of her husband will
become evasive and remote since he has been bed ridden for months.
Florence is now trapped in the web of her obduracy. The seat she seeks will
claim more than her sick husband's life. Her husband's life will only provide
money to facilitate her campaigns. She must sacrifice something to seal and
fortify her place as WOSI Chairperson. The sorcerer chooses her daughter-
in-law's wombs. Like the harpy that she has become, she assents and the deal
is sealed.
Magnus Okirigwe dies in the presence of his sons, Charles (Tony Umez),
Wilson and Ugochukwu. Florence comes and pours down her tears as
expected of a faithful widow, as it is abominated in most Nigerian cultures for
women not to pour down tears in torrent at the demise of their husbands.
Members of People's Friends Club meet and decide urgently to perform their
obligation to the family of their departed colleague. They dole out twenty
million naira to the family to assist in the funeral ceremony. Like their male
counterpart, members of Women of Substance International meet to
conclude preparations for their bereaved friend's husband's funeral
ceremony. They allot one million naira to their friend's purse. Since most
African societies are patriarchal, Charles by virtue of birth becomes the new
head of the home with the passing of his father. The twenty million Naira is
given to him and not to his mother, Florence, contrary to Vero's assertion and
she becomes disappointed that the money is given to her son. This marks the
high point of the film.
It becomes apparent that Florence's bid to unseat Calister is a forlornly
ambition, and above all, killing her husband becomes vanity. Aware of her
inordinate ambition and the urgent need to get the twenty million naira she
becomes ferocious. When she is informed in a family meeting summoned by
Charles, on how to make the twenty million naira function, Florence insists
and tells her sons to steer clear of the money. Her admonition to them is
relayed with an acetic tone. The money is hers and hers alone. Her sons are
stunned by their mother's sudden incivility and her obnoxious behavior. Her
253
presence in the house seems to aggravate the row because she is antsy. As
stated earlier, women are power brokers, they possess the means for social
mobilization. Aware she is in a quandary, she sorts assistance from the leader
of People's Friends Club. She reveals the woman in her as she breaks into
tears, accusing her sons of patriarchal subjugation and marginalization. Her
tears here is mere simulation, because she runs around without any sense of
obligation and commitment. The money is given to her and she becomes
unbent in achieving her unbridled ambition.
As usual with Nigeria's electioneering arrangement and process, so much
money is dispersed to attract votes. The dual criteria for ascendancy are
multi-partism and conventional elections. Usually elections are won before
voting commences. Calister's cronies' filibustering could not save the
situation. The elections must be conducted and a winner must emerge.
Florence splashes three million naira on her supporters as against the nine
hundred thousand naira Calister disburses. Florence's gifts send shock to the
spines of the incumbent and her cronies and make her own supporters
euphoric. Election is conducted, and of course, Florence emerges victorious
because her victory has long sealed both in the physical and spiritual realms.
The land slide victory surprises Calister who accuses her closest ally Tonia of
treachery. Both women fall apart as Tonia goes ballistic.
By this gesture, it therefore means that all the women receive cash gifts
from the contestants, either from Calister or Florence. The women lack
substance and strength of character. They observe themselves as
professionals, but their moral show-up portray them, as women of vices,
bereft of any virtue.
Florence becomes the chairperson of WOSI, and her sons' matrimonial
bond to their wives begin to loosen because of the wives' inability to get
pregnant and give birth. The ties between wives and husbands become
glacial. As her fame mounts, her sons' family are on the verge of collapse. Her
new office glamorizes her personality. Apparently aware of the fragility of her
sons' families' matrimonial knot and the impending fragmentation of their
families, she tardily invites her daughters-in-law and admonishes them to be
patient. She sums-up the talk of patiently waiting upon God with prayers. As
noted earlier, she is already mediating between the two worlds – the Christian
God worshiped in the church and the African traditional deities approached
in traditional shrines, depending on the temperament of the time.
254
 The felicity over her office does not last long. Her youngest son's fiancée
Gift becomes a threat to her hegemony over her family. Her sons and their
wives have been kept in a state of wretched weakness and subservience. On
her first visit to her fiancé's home, Gift is accorded a warm, though suspicious,
reception. She becomes completely au fait with the ambiance of the home.
Florence espies the impending danger if Gift is not dislodged from her son's
life, as her personal antipathy for her begins to grow because Gift's presence is
like an antidote to the circumscribed world of Florence's family. Gift does not
help matters as she continues to envision imminent doom in the family
through spiritual visions. To avert this doom, Gift recommends fervent
prayers to her fiancé's family. Florence's sudden hauteur attitude becomes a
travesty of the warm reception she accords Gift on her first visit to her home.
Ugo becomes mystified by his mother's sudden change of behavior towards
Gift. Florence begins to intimidate Gift with her feminine aristocracy. She
assures her son, Ugo, that he will never marry Gift even if he brings all his
kinsmen from the village to help out, because Gift belongs to the low-downs,
the margins of society. Ugo dissolves the equable temperament, with which
he has been observing his mother and politely re-positions her as a woman
and relocates her to the margins, reaffirming the premium placed on men in
Igbo society when issues of matrimony are being discussed. Florence knows
too well that she is losing grip of her authority over her family. She goes
berserk and smacks Ugo on the face for being rude and audacious. Her other
sons are stunned by their mother's progressive tyranny and condescension.
Goaded beyond endurance, Charles feels her mother is way beyond her
parameters. He promises to help Ugo out in ensuring he marries Gift. His
reawakening is belated because so much havoc has been wreaked on the
family because of his inability to entrench and impose his personality at the
core of the family business.
The presence of Gift around Florence's family becomes unacceptable to
her yet ineluctable. She harries Gift at any given opportunity. Haunted by the
reality of the etymology of the name Gift and her spiritual cum religious
attachments, she decides once again to visit the location of power, in order to
cement her position by getting Gift off her way for good and drown her
family in ignorance because she knows her personality can no longer stand
probity. The sorcerer promises to redeem her. The sorcerer code switches
from the tongue of mortality to spirituality affirming his individuality as
255
oracle. He reassures Florence of the support of his gods. He gives her a clay
pot and admonishes her not to allow the content pour out. Though assured of
protection, Florence protests vociferously of Gift's spiritual attachment.
However, maybe as result of retribution or karmic laws palpable in society she
becomes nervous as she drives back home in company of her ever-ready
friend Vero. Though the road is bumpy, her thought becomes clouded by the
urgency of getting Gift off her way. She loses her composure, in her
nervousness and the content in the pot spills. She suddenly goes blank with
blandness, and her companion is unable to discern her sudden mental
degeneracy. She pulls up and runs amok. Vero manages to drive her home.
Florence not only loses her sanity, she equally sullies her feminine faculty
and her personality with these injudicious acts which become injurious not
only to herself but to her entire family. Her children have no inkling of their
mother's present state of mental debility. She promises to confess her sins but
begs that her children and their wives be sent out. The priest who is invited to
render prayers to bring her back to sanity insists. She must confess in their
presence. As she begins her confession Vero begs to be excused so that she can
get something from her car. She absconds because she knows too well that she
will be indicted being the eternal accomplice to all the crimes her friend has
committed.
The film promotes an instrumental aesthetics whereby filmic
expressions become a veritable tool for change. Contrary to what some film
scholars like Chuwuma Anyanwu accentuate in the over generalized
circumscribed prescriptive moral reading of Nigerian Video Films. He
suggests that “Nigerian Film makers have preferred to project what is worse
in the society for the sake of lucre” (59). Accessing Nigerian Video film with
Anyanwu's binoculars will produce vertiginous straits. What then is the
essence of the creative art, if not the suspension of disbelief so that the world
can beware. The society is the market from where artists shop for raw
materials for the creative process. Imaginative art does not exist in isolation
but derives its preoccupation from all segments of the human world. These
films only give to society what society is capable of, to better arm society.
The film emphasizes the ethical and moral responsibility of women and
their office not just as builders and nurturers but people rife with agency and
social power. It eloquently appeals to our moral conscious, though this appeal
is dialectical. While discrediting women courting controversies for
256
egocentric reasons, the film enunciates openness to the indeterminate
responsibilities of women in relation to the creative innovations and
dynamism of womanhood. If the question of morality and the functionality
of the Nigerian Video Film are not properly gauged, the totality of the filmic
enterprise becomes inconsequential. Beyond the script of the film, it
becomes glaring that the film makers are no doubt bias about the role of
women in Nigerian politics. The subject of the film is political, how
politicians negotiate power especially in a democratic setting. However,
rather than use male characters, the dominant group in Nigerian politics to
dramatize this all male sphere, women are used. Nollywood is therefore,
becomes one of the potent medium filmmakers deploy to establish the
gender bias in Africa. Using women in this film only goes to show male
ambivalence when it comes to issues of women and politics in Nigeria. The
activities of the women in Women of Substance are some of the reasons men
put-up to exclude women from serious endeavours like politics in order to
expose their pettiness. The film is written and directed by men, and the
subject is masculine, but female characters are used to enact the popular roles
of men in order to justify the exclusion of women from governance. This is
done with a matter-of-factness to entrench the popular gender stereotype
which bifurcate men and women in Africa societies.
The present political dispensation in Nigeria is not far from what the film
enunciates. Politics in Nigeria is not only masculine, but it equally reveals
men's inordinate ambition to sustain themselves in office even when the
electorate becomes bored with their presence in government. The film
reveals that gender is not only culturally constructed, but it is also politically
constructed to exclude women from certain offices in order to demonstrate
the ambition and their extreme love for power. The men in the film are
almost powerless, the usual plight of women in in the real world. This gender
reversal is intended to unequivocally demonstrate that women are heartless
when issues of power are at stake. Invariably, when women occupy the locus
of film, they are only privilege to enact their weakness in order to justify their
exclusion from the serious enterprise of nation building. As already noted
above, most African societies are patriarchal, and are equally historically and
culturally characterized by the exclusion of women from participation in the
major decision-making structures and processes, and from ownership of the
critical productive resources (Zuidberg, McFadden and Chigudu, 2004).
257
 What is evident from the foregoing discussion so far, remains the fact that
positive construction of male identity in media, film in particular becomes a
fiat especially since men dominate the industry. Such media strategies need to
be addressed as they codify negative gender perceptions, which reduces the
participation and attenuates the power of women in national affairs.
Consequently, one pragmatic strategy to counter this filmic annihilation of
the woman, would be to erect structures within national gender institutions,
a kind of gatekeeping scheme to strategically monitor the media in order to
raise ample consciousness against gendered representations and gendered
narratives such as those found in Nollywood.
Women of Substance tries to balance content with form, and message with
ideology, but the question is whether the film will pass as a religious film. Or
perhaps, the director and script writer only try to give it a slick religious out-
look to meet the demand of yearning believers in the triumph of good over
evil or to satisfy the gullibility of the faithful. No doubt, the director and script
writer are influenced by social forces, but then, they are able to balance the
economics of screening and the politics of demand. Regardless of their
intentions, the film would have ended the way it did without Gift's fervent
prayers and vigils. Florence is encompassed in evil and she must pay because
she has altered the cosmic balance of the universe. Like Abena Busia suggests
that “[…] many of our films lack a satisfying sense of an ending”, and yes the
resolution of conflict in Women of Substance is a little sloppy since the film
begins like most urban films and ends as a religious film. It makes the film
stereotypical and a little convulsive. It is indeed sloppy and directionless. The
film is lopsided, but it is geared towards finding solutions to immediate
problems of society. The sound track is understandably consistent, and strikes
a balance with the content. Its functionality cannot be doubted, because it
always leads to the nub of the matter. Though the story is tightly written, the
characters are able to mediate between the script, and the desire to delight.

Notes
i. Hollywood is the largest film industry in terms of revenue.
However, Bollywood (Indian film industry) is the largest industry in
terms of number of films produced per year. In 2003, India produced 877
feature films and 1177 short films as compared to Hollywood which
258
 released about 473 films in the same year (Wikipedia Encyclopaedia).
“Popular” in this context refers to a film industry whose success is located
in its appeal to mass audiences within the African continent as compared
to films whose success is located in elite audiences such as films produced
under the paradigm of African Cinema.
ii. For a comprehensive discussion on the evolution, nature, dynamics,
activities, utility and achievements of ethnic Igbo (“hometown”)
association, see Smock (1971), Osaghae (1994), Akachi Odoemene
(2008) and Moses Ugochukwu Ohaegbuchi (2014).
iii. In 1986, Fredric Jameson made a grand sweeping statement with his
theory that “all third-world texts are to be read as […] national allegories”
(69). While this argument cannot possibly apply to all third-world
literatures because of its generality, it does seem accurate when applied to
this film narrative. As the characters in the film search for identity, their
development parallel that of the nation.
iv. This is another dominant political concept in the present political
dispensation in Nigeria. It details the unwillingness of political office
holders to vacate public offices when their tenure lapses. Some don't even
want to re-contest when their tenure lapses, forgetting that democracy is
founded on electoral principles. The immediate past senate president of
Nigeria, David Mark once appealed to the federal government to allow
PDP Senators to return after the end of their tenure to enable them
complete whatever project they may have begun. This apolitical,
undemocratic request and the popular third term controversy which
trailed the Obasanjo administration before it eventually ambled out of
office fall within the rubrics of this politics. It has become a means of
defying the guarantee of transition programme that characterizes
democracy, an extension of the construct of the winner-takes-all.

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