Randy Nollywood producer in confidence trickery

The cancer of sex for role which has been afflicting the Nollywood played out in Owerri recently. A Nollywood producer based in Abuja simply named Ifeanyi played a confidence trick on a family whose daughter is very keen to break into the industry. The drama began about a year ago when Ifeanyi was introduced to the girl, aged 17, by her father shortly after the men struck a relationship. Following a couple of script interpretations by the girl, the producer was impressed by the girl’s amazing acting skill even as a greenhorn. He was convinced that with little brush-up, the girl was going to be a revelation in the industry in the very near future.
However, the father of the girl was very protective of her because she is young and could become vulnerable to antics of movie makers. So, he insisted that the girl would not go to any locations outside Abuja where the family resides. After some months of auditioning with movie makers who made forays into Abuja, she picked some roles which further astounded the producer. Then he began to mount pressure on the father of the girl by making him to understand that his being over-protective of his daughter constituted an obstacle to the girl’s highway to stardom. He cited instances where girls who were by far younger than his daughter go on locations to shoot movies. He confessed that he understood his friend’s apprehension of the randy nature of movie makers whose stock in trade is to take artistes to bed as a precondition for getting roles.
After assuring the father of the girl that he would not only take her as his own daughter but also protect her from his predatory colleagues on location, he lowered his resistance and allowed her to travel with him along with other female artistes for the first time outside Abuja. After all the necessary travelling arrangements were made, the team headed for Asaba in Delta state. The impression given by the producer was that the cast would be conveyed to the Asaba location in his private bus, but the cast ended up in Jabi Park where he funneled them into a commercial bus.
Then, the unexpected drama began to unfold. The following day, the producer put a call to Abuja to inform the parents of the girl that their daughter had disappeared from her hotel room. But unknown to the producer, the girl had put a call to her mother informing her that the producer took them to Owerri instead of Asaba, and that he lodged her alone in a hotel room, while the other female members of the cast were packed in another room. Later in the night he began to send seductive text messages to the girl from elsewhere.  His assumption was that the girl, who was an extrovert by nature, would play ball when taken away from her over-protective father.  When she turned down his advances, he threatened her with role denial, stressing that any actress who was not ready to be bedded for roles had no business in the industry. When she told the randy producer that her parents did not bring her up in that way, he became furious. He did everything to rubbish her virginity status… all through text messages.
Meanwhile, the producer made sure that the girl had no money on her after making members of the cast to pay for their transport fare and feeding on the way. He also borrowed what was left on the girl, saying that he ran out of cash and promising to pay her back later. This was part of his scheme to put her in a tight corner, making it impossible for her to return to Abuja on her own.
When the mother recovered from the shock that the producer who cut a father figure and was preaching righteousness in Abuja had transformed into a sex demon in Owerri, she quickly put a call through to her younger brother in Warri, informing him of the girl’s predicament. The brother, who had lived in Owerri before, swiftly mobilized some policemen friends in the town to rescue her and take her to another hotel owned by a friend of his to spend the night. The cops swung into action, stormed the hotel premises and rescued the girl. It was when he returned to the hotel and was informed that his “prey” had been rescued by some policemen in a commando style that he put a call to the girl’s father, who was out of town, informing him that his daughter had vamoosed from her hotel room. At first, the father thought the girl had been abducted by ritualists until the mother linked up with him to explain the circumstances leading to their girl’s “disappearance” from the hotel.
The next day, the girl was taken to the motor park where she boarded a bus back to Abuja. Meanwhile, the producer managed to wriggle out of the police net. He aborted the assignment and returned to Abuja. When confronted by the parents of the girl, he denied all the allegations. And when the text messages he sent to her were read to him, he down-played them by saying that he wanted to assess the girl’s morality level. The parents of the girl did not buy into his argument and are contemplating pressing charges against the producer bordering on sexual harassment.