Film makers explain Nollywood's poor outing at AMAA 2014

Our correspondent reached out to a few film makers who shared their thoughts. According to Tunde Kelani, the movies and actors nominated were good, but perhaps didn’t win because it wasn’t Nollywood’s turn to shine this year. On the other hand, Bob Manuel Udokwu cited the environment as one of the possible reasons.
He said the present situation in the country is not conducive for the movie industry to thrive, therefore, such outings should be anticipated once in a while. He added that Nollywood can only compete in the areas of performance and script, but will always lag behind in technology related aspects.
Meanwhile, Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen had a different opinion. He blamed the organizers of the awards for unfairly judging the Nollywood movies and actors nominated.
In his words,  ‘Shame on AMAA, I blame them for that and I have my reservations about the whole ceremony. We must begin to understand that there is a standard for film festivals and awards around the world and until that is practiced, Nollywood may continue to experience such.’‎
Asked if perhaps there was a drop in the quality of the movies produced in the country, Imasuen said

‎‘I would not blame it on that. My colleagues are trying and people can see but when you compare our films to those of the South Africans, this is what we get. The two film industries don’t operate on the same environment. Most of the South African productions are ones that are internationally funded, those guys make their films with grants from around the world and AMAA still calls it an African film and goes ahead to compare it the ones made unlike ours which are usually made with tight budgets.’