Nollywood filmmaker Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen revealed that the Bakassi Boys arrested the distributor of his 2001 film, Issakaba, in Aba, Abia State, and confronted its lead actor, Sam Dede, over its portrayal of the vigilante group. Mr Imasuen said the group took issue with the film’s portrayal of its activities and questioned how the filmmakers obtained details of its operations.
The filmmaker recalled the incidents in an interview with Channels Television while discussing Issakaba Returns, the forthcoming sequel to the action franchise. “That was one of the most unbelievable moments of my life. The distributor in Aba was then arrested by them, the Bakassi Boys,” he said. “They were dealt with, and they felt like the film went too far. They were asking, how did we know about them?
Sam Dede was accosted in Aba while travelling to Port Harcourt.” Mr Dede played Ebube, the leader of the fictional Isakaba Boys, whose campaign against criminals formed the centre of the film’s story. Mr Imasuen said the production drew directly from events unfolding in southeastern Nigeria at the time, adding that he and his collaborators followed the vigilante group’s activities before its operations became increasingly entangled in political interests.
“They were not fallacy; they were true. Before the infiltration of the actual people that created that, we followed the story tenaciously as it was played in real time. We were making the movie,” he said. The filmmaker said the team understood the risks of dramatising the activities of a group known for confronting suspected criminals through methods that attracted both public support and controversy.
“When political actors started taking advantage of them, we could have localised it and said, ‘Oh, it’s just chiefs’, but we knew what we were talking about at that time,” he said.