IKE NNAEBUE A Road Trip into the Past

Filmmaker Ike Nnaebue embarked on a road trip to Europe over two decades ago with the hope of returning as a wealthy man. But his mission didn’t go as planned. Now, he is on a similar trip for his new documentary.
Vanessa Obioha narrates the filmmaker’s migration ordeal

The day after Burna Boy won his first Grammy award, filmmaker Ike Nnaebue was in Cotonou, Benin Republic, enjoying the sight and sound of the morning rain. From a tender age, the musically inclined filmmaker developed a liking for rainfalls. It’s like watching a musical performance.

Music is an art that Nnaebue evinced an interest in as a child. When he began his music career over a decade ago under the name FloSmith (aka Docto Aiyk), there were very few international music channels that showcased Nigerian music. The music video of his song ‘Brown Sugar’ nominated at the defunct Nigerian Music Video Awards in 2010 was among the first music videos aired on Trace TV.

Like many Nigerians, Nnaebue was enthusiastic about Burna’s win. It’s a validation of the uniqueness of Nigerian music and its ability to dominate world trends. It also spoke volumes of the hard work and tenacity of the artists. The night before, he and his crew had visited a social spot in the quiet town only to find that Nigerian music dominated the airwaves. Their discovery evoked a mixed feeling. On the one hand, they were proud of the prominence of Nigerian music. On the other hand, they longed for something different.

Beyond his love for music, Nnaebue has a penchant for storytelling. He remembered gathering at the village square with his peers to listen to fables spill from elders’ wise mouths or the dinner-time stories by his grandmother and mother that made every meal worthwhile.

“Somehow, my young mind understood that stories have the power to influence people,” he said. Those stories shaped his understanding of life even as he embarked on a journey that shaped his destiny over two decades ago.
Tall, light-skinned, with a bald head that sits on an admirable physique, the soft-spoken filmmaker was born into a polygamous family. However, he has no memory of his father, for he died while Nnaebue was still a toddler. From that young age, the filmmaker understood his responsibility to the family, becoming the backbone of his mother and younger siblings.

His flair for the arts made him a star in primary school. He snapped up roles in singing, acting, and writing school plays such that his teachers predicted a bright future for him. Despite his outstanding academic results, his mother denied him the opportunity to attend a secondary school, although not deliberately. Their pecuniary situation made it impossible to consider education for her first son. Rather, she toed the path most mothers did at the time: sending her son to learn a trade. Nnaebue became an apprentice to a man who dealt in the auto parts business for an agreed period of five years, after which the master was to ‘settle’ him and help him establish his own business. His master orchestrated a fallout plan that left Nnaebue poorer than the church rat as his tenure ended.

Frustrated and disappointed, Nnaebue, who had just turned 20, sought a better life. In his village Ojoto in Anambra, there were tales of young men basking in wealth. These young men returned home with flashy cars, built mansions, and rained money at functions as if they were moneymakers. The secret of their wealth rumoured to be in Europe. Europe, it turned out, was the magic money-making machine. Anyone capable of surviving the harrowing road trip to Europe, particularly to Las Palmas, a province in Spain, and endured the hardship of working in plantations, guaranteed a better lifestyle.
“Everybody wanted to go to Europe then. People were sending cars back home and building houses. To my young mind, it was just a unique opportunity,” he narrated.

The more Nnaebue listened to these stories, the more convinced he was that the greener pastures resided in the lush plantations of Las Palmas. Few of his friends also bought into the idea, and together, they dug out their savings and planned the road trip. But first, they had to figure out how to navigate the journey. They bought an atlas and drew their itinerary with their scanty knowledge of geography.

“It sounded so simple and easy on paper. It was a good plan,” he laughed.
The next hurdle for Nnaebue and his friends was to get passports. A guy in Lagos Island came in handy. He sold passports to them that had other people’s names but with their pictures. They were advised to identify themselves as artists from the National Troupe attending a concert in Europe. A trip to the National Theatre helped them get the necessary documents.
With all their documentation in order, Nnaebue and his friends set out on the adventurous journey.
“We had no fear. It was a lifetime opportunity for us to see the world. We were so elated to get to Las Palmas, start work on the plantation, make money, and start sending cash and cars back home,” he recalled.

The sense of danger would, however, come during a stopover between Gao and Bamako in Mali. A man who overheard them discussing their plans warned them of the dangers ahead. He told them a story of a group of travellers who embarked on a similar mission but lost their way in the desert and eventually died.
“For the first time, it occurred to me that I had made a huge mistake in my young life,” said Nnaebue emotionally. “I didn’t know how to deal with that. It was quite devastating. It’s the bleakest moment of my life to date. The memories still linger.”

Caught in fear’s grip, Nnaebue planned to make a U-turn. He was not alone. His friends, too, were scared to death by the stranger’s story. But just when they were about to abort the journey, another stranger offered them help.
This particular stranger identified himself as a sailor in Austria who was on his way to The Gambia to pick his wife and children. He offered to travel with them and even help them secure a job in Austria. The naive minds swallowed every promise the stranger made with gusto, to the extent that when he proposed to keep their cash to avoid customs tax, they willingly gave it to him. He was to keep the money for the first few days they arrived in The Gambia. Unfortunately, the man disappeared a week later with all their life savings. It gradually dawned on them that the stranger had swindled them.
With no money and no sense of direction, the young men became homeless and stranded in Banjul. Mobile phones were not available at the time, so Nnaebue’s efforts to reach his family proved futile. Back home, his mother was worried sick. It took him almost two years to reunite with his family.

Fortunately for them, they found a Nigerian community in The Gambia that sheltered them.
“The only recurring thought I had in mind was survival. How do I get my meal for the next day? Of course, I was hungry most of the time. I remembered I was offered a job at a restaurant. I was so excited. It didn’t come with monetary payment but just two meals per day. I was so excited to have that offer and applied myself so passionately to the job as if my life depended on it, which was the reality at the time. I also understood my condition wouldn’t last forever, so I was always looking for something better.”

Indeed, he only lasted two months at the restaurant. He would transition to a newspaper vendor in the mornings, a shoe repairer in the afternoons and the evenings, a bread hawker. Eventually, he offered classes to primary and secondary students.

“It was a big deal for me because I didn’t go to secondary school. Most of the things I taught them were from textbooks. I would borrow them, study them all through the night and teach the students the following evening.”
His students performed remarkably at exams that their parents began referring friends and families to the filmmaker. While still teaching, he got an opportunity to play a lead role in a soap opera ‘Colour of Love’ shown on GamTV.
The success of the show reawakened his passion for music and film. He bought a guitar and saved money to attend a film school in Nigeria.

The guitar became the only possession he returned home with. If Nnaebue feared his mother would be unhappy with him, he was mistaken. On his return, she hugged him, plastered him with kisses, and would have slaughtered a goat to celebrate his return like the biblical father of the prodigal son if their financial status allowed it. After all, his son was once lost but now found. Her joy replaced any fury she felt. Rather, she encouraged him to pursue his dreams with vigour. In fact, she contributed financially to his trip to Jos where he honed his filmmaking and directing skills.

“That journey was a defining moment in my life. I had two options: either to beat myself up and stay in The Gambia until I had something to show off or swallow my pride, return home and pursue my passion in film and music. I made the decision that my future was better than what society thinks. I embraced my failure. Of course, people mocked me. My half-brothers laughed at me, but I was focused on my future.”
All of this happened over two decades ago. Now, Nnaebue is taking a trip into his past to document the experiences of migrants taking the harrowing journey to Europe by road. The documentary with the working title, ‘No U-turn,’ will be his first.

Although he’s been toying with the idea of telling his story for a long while, the opportunity finally came when he stumbled on an open call by a non-profit media organisation in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2019. The organisation was looking for people with migration stories across Africa. He sent his proposal and was accepted. The project was to kick off in 2020, but the pandemic happened. However, he attended four workshops in different countries, including Spain and Ghana.

In ‘No U-turn,’ Nnaebue, known for his film such as ‘Loving Daniella,’ will travel across four African countries — Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania — to Europe. His ultimate goal with the documentary is to understand why people still embark on the journey even with the copious tales of danger on that route.
“There are still people who embark on this risky journey,” he said. “Someone once told me that he would rather die in the desert than return to Nigeria.

“People still have this idea that life in Europe is better. To be fair, most Nigerians are not afraid to work. They are willing to work as long as they are getting paid and showing society that they are successful. While some are not willing to work in Europe but delve into crimes such as drug trafficking, fraud, etc. The general perception is that you can make it abroad more than in Nigeria,” he explained.
But more important for the filmmaker, he needed to tell his story, “and hopefully, it inspires people to make a different kind of decision.”