Chris Iheuwa is humble about God’s blessings in his life especially with the five children God has blessed him with. He gives us an expose on how he criss- crossed the entertainment and the corporate world, his work with ace director Amaka Igwe, his journey into marriage 20 years ago and the role played by two of his female colleagues towards his marriage in this interview with ORJI ONYEKWERE.
What happened to the New Headmaster, why was it rested?
We shot some episodes before we took a break, unfortunately we lost our ‘Kabiyesi’( Dejumo Lewis) during the break. It now depends on what NTA and Wale Adenuga productions intend to do to resuscitate the program, to give it a new impetus and a new Kabiyesi (King).
Your role as the village headmaster was last played by late Justice Esiri in the old Village Headmaster drama series. How was it like getting into to the shoes of such a respected actor?
To be honest it was very challenging. Aside the fact that I am not one to run away from challenges, it might also interest you to know that I was also part of the old Village Headmaster. I was probably one of the youngsters then and that was in 1988/89. I was invited by the then Director Tade Ogidan, by then I was this skinny, just fresh from high school and we used to go to NTA those days to feature in some of their programmes. Ogidan saw me and scribbled the address of the camp and gave to me because there was no mobile phone then, the camp was in Ajara Tokpa Badagry.
I shot about four episodes before it was rested and we then took a break. It was during the break that Joseph Layode died (Garuba). Apart from following the program, I was part of it and that gave me the confidence but most importantly, the director and the executive producer Wale Adenuga have implicit confidence in me that I could do it. I thank Bath Imorio- the director and Wale Adenuga Snr, the chairman and Wale Adenuga Jnr, the MD of Wale Adenuga Productions and of course Wale Coker, ED Programs of NTA for finding me worthy to play role of Village Headmaster.
You were once an assistant director to Amaka Igwe, how come you did not follow up with that aspect of your career?
I did, but the way Amaka trained me because she had many disciples that time under her belt, you have Gloriana Roberts, Jude Orhorha, John Njamah, and Chris Ihidero among others that she trained. Except people bring these practitioners to the limelight, we are not prone to blowing our trumpets. If you do your research, you will see that I have six different movies to my credit as director. It was much later I decided to tow that line of directing because more of my time was focused on being an actor than a director. Between 2017 and now, I have about six different movies I have directed.
One of the major reasons I have not directed much movies is that apart from being in the arts industry, I also lapped it up with white collar job and this sort of dragged me away from the creative scene. While most of my colleagues were churning out movies as directors, I spent eight years in the bank, another eight years in an experiential marketing, I did about four years in the public relations firm and another two years in an outdoor advertising agency. When you put all these together, you are looking at a quarter of a decade outside the creative industry.
Is that why you had a hiatus from 1999 to 2012?
Yes, more like it because Fuji House of Commotion stopped in 2005 and that was when I stopped working with Amaka Igwe. 2004/2005 was when I stopped working with Amaka Igwe as assistant director. When I left Amaka Igwe, I got a job with an experiential market agency where I worked for a while before I joined an English public relations firm; from there I joined the bank and after the bank, I worked in Johannesburg, South Africa with an outdoor agency. I came back to Nigeria and started off my own production outfit which was more like a multimedia production outfit; we focused on production, event management, security and logistics etc. Once in a while I put my writing skills in order, write and shoot a movie.
Since they shelved the sitcom Fuji House of Commotion, it’s been difficult to replicate such sitcom that dealt on family values and others.
Let me break it down into three different point of discussion. First, Amaka Igwe took her time to put Fuji House of Commotion together which is an offshoot of Checkmate. You had the Edem family, the Fuji family and some of us who were in school in UNILAG and others. She picked people who had some treats that could be exploited visa avis comedy, the major thing wasn’t just to make people laugh but look at yourself in the mirror and look at how things should be done. Who could do this, but to get a man who had three official wives and then girlfriends from outside?
In the house, irrespective of the position you occupy in the hierarchy, you have to give people their respect in everything you did. The characters personified respect, dignity, government involvement in the societal dictate as it were. We had a situation where the power holding company says they will cut our light because we owe, we owe because the money was paid but to the wrong person. No evidence to show that our house has paid but we showed you the evidence that we have paid and so, if you have issues, go to office and sort it out but you cannot come and cut our light. There were also cases of child abuse, domestic violence, pornography and young kids getting pregnant.
Leo Emerenini was my twin brother, I was Taiye and he was Kehinde and we had Bimbo Manuel who was our eldest brother and late Toun Oni was our mother. Irrespective of who your mother was, when it’s time to have breakfaster or dinner you stay on the table and if there’s no space, you look for a place to perch. Sitting on the table has to do with hierarchy, same thing with getting the food and it does not matter which of the mothers cooked the food. If you juxtapose this with what is happening in Nigeria, you will realize that we have to learn that it does not matter if you are Igbo, Yoruba or Hausa. We have one umbrella nation called Nigeria and it’s not meant for one person.
Talking about morals, it also depends on the philosophy of the writer, producer and director. How many TV stations did we have then, the major one was NTA, Thursday 8pm people ran back home to watch Checkmate then, when it was rested Fuji House of Commotion came on screen and a lot of people wanted to stay home and watch the sitcom and laugh and in laughing, they want to learn some lessons. The philosophy of the producer is also important. The Johnsons is not too far from Fuji House of Commotion because to an extent, they also talked about morals but the Johnson’s had only one family compared to that of Fuji House of Commotion that had many families.
However, there is still some level of comic relief embedded in morality in it. It has to do with the philosophy of the producer, director and actors. You cannot have a comedian like Charles Inojie and don’t expect him to make you laugh even when he is being serious about something serious. You also have ‘Flatmates’ created by Kayode Peters, which is comic in nature and also have moral lessons to teach. No other program that I can remember but you have programs like that which thought morality, respect, dignity, equity, nationalism, patriotism and preached against corruption and anything heinous.
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Take us back to how you convinced your wife to give you her number, the role Gloriana Roberts and Ngozi Nwosu played in convincing her to marry you.
Gloriana Roberts is the first daughter from Toun Oni in the Fuji House of Commotion. I had worked in an advertising agency and before I left, they opened an account for us in the bank where my wife works. When I left my marketing job, I teamed up with Amaka Igwe; first as production manager and later as assistant director. The bank was located close to where we have Fuji House office and studio and then her house also was close, so there was a triangle between her house, office and studio.
When I went to her office and noticed her, I was like, is it that I have not noticed this face before and you know when you spot your rib, your heart will be skipping. I worked formerly in a marketing outfit where I was one of the researchers and we were into marketing, event management and promotion. I came up with a strategy and told her that I was conducting a research for a fast moving consumer goods and I will like her opinion. Of course, if I had told her that I like her and would want to have her number, she would not have obliged me. I got her number and told her I will reach out later. Once in a while I will call her, or send text because we close production by 9pm, sometimes she will respond, sometimes she will not because she probably must have slept because she will be going to work the next day.
Once in a while I will take Jude Orhorha or John Njamah to the office to see her. Back then, you had limited TV programs and these faces were popular. When we go into the banking hall, the customers and staff will be like wao Rabiu, Gbenro or see one of the twins. Once in a while in the evenings, I will drag Ngozi Nwosu, we will go to her house but this did not make it easier for her to accept my proposal. At a point Ngozi and Gloriana told me that if I really like the lady, I don’t need to waste much time to make my feelings known to her so that I can have what belongs to me.
The day I proposed to her she rejected the ring and fortunately it was not an open thing, I was with her alone. We had gone to the beach and on our way back, I stopped somewhere within the FESTAC and I told her I want to convey how I feel about her with this ring as a token of my feelings her. She laughed, my brother it was not funny; it was not as if she threw the ring back at me, but she did not collect it. She said she wanted to think about it and I felt like the ground should open and swallow me.
Funny enough my car had issues, so we used her car and then I was staying at Satellite town, she was staying at Ikeja and I had to go drop her at ikeja, then took public transport back home. By the time I got home it was around 10; 30 pm, luckily, it was our day off from camp that’s the Fuji House of Commotion camp. The following day Amaka Igwe was giving orders of what to do for the day because we resume earlier than the rest I mean the production team. When Amaka was telling us what to do, it was going into one ear and coming out from the other ear and Ngozi noticed it. She later asked me what happened which I explained.
You know Ngozi very well; she said that can never happen that we will go to my wife’s house. So when we had a long break which was on a Monday, we went to her office and everybody knows who Ngozi is. Ngozi did as if she wanted to withdraw and approached my wife, so when she greeted Ngozi, Ngozi told her, ‘don’t greet me, you are the one that is causing my brother not to concentrate on his work’. My wife laughed , she knew I would have told Ngozi what happened but she couldn’t explain because she was at work. Yea, she later accepted and I will say, yes they played a major role in the union between me and my wife.
Let’s talk about the joy of marrying someone you love and making all the sacrifices to sustain the marriage in this era people walk in and out of marriages?
We got married in 2004 and by November 20, we will be 20 years in our marriage which is blessed with five children. It’s been fun, it has experienced it is up and down just like every union does. Just like the Igbo proverb says, ‘mete onye din mma enyi ,maka olulu’ (make friends with a good person that you can marry). There’s nothing as good as marrying your friend and someone you love. The God factor in between the two is very essential and once that God factor is there, then the marriage becomes strong because the bible says they will be married till death do them apart.
When you talk about death, people only look at the physical death, but when you have death in trust, infidelity and morality, its problem. See what is happening every day, people with machetes severing the heads of their partners and other heinous crimes against their partners.
Being a father is like a receipt, an added value when you go to buy an item and you are giving a receipt. You feel elated when you become someone’s dad and you nurture that person from when the person is a zygote, to an infant, to a child, to teenage age, adult and all the rest. It’s a fun thing to do because of the transformation between you and that child or children, if you have more than one like me who has a basket ball team. We can’t take for granted the fact that God has a hand in all this, it’s not what to gloat about because you have people that have stayed for 15, 20, 39 years, waiting for the fruit of the womb and so it’s not what you should gloat about. While we talk about the things God has done for us, let’s not gloat over it because there are people who have been searching.
I was watching a program in one of our channels here in UK and it was talking about the boy without a face in Morocco who was taken to Australia for surgery. He left Morocco at three and half years, he did not have eyes or ears and could only speak Arabic. When they were through, while taking him back to Morocco, the lead doctor said good bye and the boy said thank you to him. The whole thing was heartwarming; this is somebody that came from Morocco and was speaking Arabic and when he was going, for the first time, he spoke in English to the doctor and the boy is blind in both eyes.
When you have opportunity of speaking about your kids, it’s nothing to gloat about. You should be humble and thankful about it and pray that God uses you as a tool to bless families who are searching and looking for the fruit of the womb. There’s a difference in being a father and a dad. Anybody can be a father because father is more like a sperm donor but are you there for the kids? When the school says they want to see the father, are you there to represent your child. When the child is in distress are you there to help out and offer advice and words of encouragement. There are many out there who don’t know their father and fathers who don’t know their children.
How did you get that role of Mr. Wonder, the taxi driver in the sitcom drama series Mr. Wonderful?
It was through Zik Zulu Okafor and Emeka Duru, one of our foremost production managers in Nigeria. We just finished one of his jobs titled, ‘The Mantle’ and incidentally that was the last job I did with late Rachel Oniga before she passed on. I was an Oba and she played my wife. In Village Headmaster, she played Olori and after that we went to do Emeka Duru’s job on the Island that was the last before she passed. When we finished, Emeka now said that in a few days he was going to have an audition and he would love me to come and see if I can play a role there. When I went, I did not have intention of playing the role of Mr. Wonderful that’s the truth.
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