ANN: Anyone who has been following your track record, from the days you played Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, will no doubt come to the conclusion that you are a very successful person. In fact, your success and wealth of experience are some of the reasons we chose you for this interview. Would you say that education is one of the major reasons behind your success?
CHIEF: Yes, to a large extent. You see, we were colonized by the British. They gave us what we call the lingua franca, that is, a general language to enable us communicate with one another despite our various linguistic groupings so that if a Hausa man comes and you are an Igbo man, you can talk with him. He is also part of that colonial magic; therefore, he must have some English in his head no matter how much he pretends, right? But if we never have that English at all, then you would want to communicate in Igbo and he would want to do same in Hausa, there is a gap, right? So, first of all I got the inspiration to be what I want to be from the films I was watching. Now, why was I watching those films? Because my father insisted that each time I came first in class, he would take me to go and watch films. It was so easy for me because my father was a teacher. He ended as a headmaster before he joined the railways. So most of what we were being taught at school, my father was already teaching me in the house and he bought a lot of books for me. At a stage I was using five dictionaries. There was a reason why my father bought me all these dictionaries, he wanted me to know how each word was used in a sentence, and then he bought me English workbooks. Those workbooks taught me how to use the English Language. Luckily, one of the biggest gifts that God gave to me is that once something gets into my head, it never goes out which is why I think I am a successful actor today. Now, if you have invested so much in conquering Shakespeare, there is no extent which you cannot get, and make no mistake about it, most powerful weapon for communication today is language. If you don’t have language, you are not very useful. So you see, language, the English Language is the most powerful weapon you can use in the world today anywhere. You find out that any part of the world you go to the people endeavour to communicate in English. This is why Britain is a very powerful country. You look at all these Arab countries with all the oils in the world, they all educate their children overseas not in their country. They send them to America; they send them to Britain, right? It necessary; yea, it is.
ANN: Sir, besides education, what other factors helped you in your career?
CHIEF: Very easy to answer that. Eh, the group I found myself in, my peer group. We all had our ambitions, some of us wanted to be singers, some wanted to actors – I didn’t tell you, I also sing and very well too, I mean very well. But I decided not to make singing a career because most of the people I know who sang with me ended up smoking hemp for the rest of their lives. I think they just believed that for you to succeed as a singer (laughs), you must take drugs. And you know, I didn’t think it was the kind of life that suited me. Those friends who sang very well and ended up smoking hemps, ended their lives just like that. So peer group influence helped me a lot but like I said, education specifically is basic. The peer group influence can either help you or destroy you. Most of the people I moved around with would accompany me to the cinema, they would see the cowboys rolling tobacco and smoking and and they concluded that it was hemp the actors were smoking. So they hit it with such an undying passion, it destroyed all of them. The person who managed not to permit it to destroy him was my late friend Enebili Elebuwa. We lived in the same room in my father’s house. What brought us together? Music! Though the war tore us apart; we came together at the end of the war. Because we wanted to be singers and actors, we ended up as actors. Again, because I wanted to be an actor, it affected me while I was in school, I was being a truant. We are supposed to go and rest after preps but I would sneak out to watch films inside town. And listen, it was quite some distance not to talk of the risk involved. In fact, I don’t know how God pulled me out of all that. To tell you the truth, I was a very stupid and adventurous character. Going by the way I lived then, I never knew that today, I would be like this, be a reference material to others, and be a source of inspiration and all that. So, outside education, peer group influence is central and that peer group influence is what determines your proclivity or leaning towards where your interest lies.
ANN: Chief, from what can be seen; some young people in Nigeria are beginning to lose their interest in education. Is there anything the government, parents and teachers should do to re-convince them that education still pays?
CHIEF: That is what I am telling you now. You are not going to grab a cane and flog them, anybody who loses interest in education is a fool, is an idiot, yea. Listen, without education you can’t get anywhere. Most of the problems we have in the country today are because some people misuse the opportunity to educate themselves and just thought that the easiest way to get money is to just drop out and join – look at all these people you find now going to Libya and dying in droves and all that – what are they really going to look for in Libya? Some of them are being sold as slaves, look at them (points at the television). Anybody that has an opportunity for education should thank his God every day. The moment you miss it, you have missed it. There is no way it can come back.
Lack of education is what the country is suffering today. Most of the people you find in the army and in the police, for example, are not properly educated. The reason they lose their temper easily is that mentally they are not developed. Therefore, they lack the capacity to engage you in any meaningful dialogue; they resort to violence as a very poor substitute. Ordinarily, you should talk to a man; listen to him, before you blame him for anything. A soldier will not listen to you, he will slap you first; a police man will do everything possible to humiliate you before even taking you to the office to make some complaints. It is because they lack education. Now, those of them who belong to the officer cadre do not react like that. When you go to them, you see the way they talk to you; you know that they are educated. You see, anybody who has the opportunity for education and decides to drop out because most of those he knows today who made money never actually had a defined career in education does not know the harm he has done to himself.
ANN: Nigeria has been grappling with leadership problems, it’s been there right from independence and it has affected out education. In fact every facet of our national life has been affected by poor leadership. What can young people do to maximize their education without depending on the government?
PETE EDOCHIE: Alright. I use myself as an example. I retired from the civil service 23 years ago. Should I say that I was happy that the movie industry absorbed me? I had something to do which was what mattered. Would you believe that for those 23 years I was not paid my gratuity, and my pension, little or nothing to write home about? If you develop an interest in something, a passion for something, that thing will help to sustain you. One of the things I was taught when I was learning to act is, ‘don’t do things the way other people do it’, that way you become a compulsive cynosure of attention. But if you do it like every other person, there is nothing unusual about you.
The moment you make up your mind that you are going to do something different, you will engage attention and from there, people will begin to look at you and take an interest in what you represent. Phyno, Flavour, all these boys were born in Enugu; they all grew up in Abakpa but today they are all over the place. So, you must develop a passion for something. Luckily enough, the movie industry has had to engage a lot of people who ordinarily would have occupied themselves with some kind of criminal enterprise, but the movie industry took them in, then they were discovered there. If you look at Zebrudaya (alias 4:30), you will not believe that he is a graduate. When he joined us at the end of the war, he hadn’t gone to school. But he later had the opportunity to go to ESUT and he is a very intelligent person. So, after all is said and done, don’t ever blow the opportunity you have to acquire education. It is going to be the biggest regret of your life and I mean every word of what I am saying. If you insist that you must drop out of school, let it not be that you are fascinated by the success of those who dropped out. Let us say that at a stage in your life, you pursued education, got to where it became such a big challenge to you that you couldn’t continue or you did not find people who would sponsor your education, you were now compelled to leave and find something else – because I don’t like the expression drop out. And people who have that kind of story end up being very successful in life. So for those of you who ask questions – people want to leave education because most of the people who don’t have education are making money and all that, political thuggery is not the best way to make money or through crime – no. Every individual has a conscience, get it straight. If you do something bad, there is no way you will pretend you don’t know that what you did is bad. So, don’t ever be fascinated by the success of dropouts. They did not drop out because they wanted to, there were reasons for that.
About leadership, leadership and followership go hand in hand; the expression we used in those days was pari passu. The reason why we appear not to have good leaders is that our values conflict with what is conventionally accepted as the norm. If you got into politics and you don’t steal, your relatives will think you are useless. That is why most people cannot demonstrate good leadership, they want to do something that will endear them to their relatives and so they must struggle to go beyond their means in order to gratify the expectations of others. We assess people through materials things. The person who was formerly the chief of staff in the American Army, Cornell Power who wound up as the secretary of state under I think George W. Bush, said ‘if people begin to assess other not by virtue of their wealth but by the wealth of their virtue, the world will become a better place’ and that’s a very strong statement. A certain musician also said that any day the power of love overcomes the love for power, the world will be a better place. Then Abraham Lincoln said, it is the weakness, folly and jealousy of men that make things so wrong possible, but because men are weak, foolish and jealous the world must come to wisdom slowly, war can only be avoided by destroying its causes. If you go through what all these philosophers have said, you will know why their concept of life conflict with ours. We believe so much in material things, and as long as you believe so much in material things, there is no way you can offer creative leadership to people. So, it is because our priorities are faulty, this is why we have this leadership problem and it has become endemic.
ANN: Sir, What are your final words to young Nigerians on how to make a successful career?
CHIEF: Diligence and a lot of hard work. Except you work diligently, there is no way you can make a career in anything. If you decide along the line to dissipate all your energy pursuing interests that will erode you mentally and stifle your sensitivities, then there is no way you can realize your ambition along any direction.
