Film as an agent of Human Rights Advancement in Nigeria: A study of Bloody Night and Somewhere in Africa

Abstract

Human rights are those inalienable rights that are basically accruable to every human person or citizen of a country. In Nigeria, the human rights situation is worrisome to say the least, as the nation goes on pursuing her phantom democratisation objectives. Against the background of a vibrant and popular film culture in Nigeria, this study has investigated the role of film in the advancement of human rights ideals. Using two films produced in Nigeria's vibrant film industry Nollywood,- Charles Offor's Bloody Night and Kwame Boadu & Frank Rajah Arase's Somewhere in Africa; the study paradigmatically interrogates issues of human rights portrayed in the films. The study is qualitative in approach, combining both textual analysis and focus group discussion (FGD). The films under study were subjected to textual analysis while two FGD sessions were conducted among randomly selected students of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria - six discussants for each session. The data from the textual analysis and FGSD were separately analysed. Findings show that the two films are able to project the systemic inadequacies of human rights culture in Nigeria and offer an ideological alternative, and that the audience understood the film's message in the context of the quest for human rights in Nigeria and were able to relate the situations portrayed in the films to their own real life situations as Nigerians.

Keywords: Film, human rights, human rights culture, human rights situation