MOVIES: CHimamanda's Book Turned Movie Gets Banned In NIgeria!

The widely publicised and internationally acclaimed film, Half of A Yellow Sun which has been premiered in Nigeria has been partially banned by the Nigeria Film and Video Censorship Board, (NFVCB).
New Telegraph gathered exclusively from Abuja, early yesterday that the film promoters are making frantic efforts to remove the offensive sections and get the film approved today. Efforts to speak with the Nigerian promoters met a brick wall as text messages and email were yet to be responded to as at the time of filing this report.
According to an impeccable source, the film is being stopped from getting into the market due to parts that tend to whip up tribal sentiments, especially on issues that led to the Nigerian civil war. The filmmaker further revealed that, “with the Boko Haram insurgency and the Adamawa State governor’s outburst, the NFVCB is living up to its billing.”


The movie will not be shown in Nigeria until 2 May. A statement on the film’s website said the Nigeria release has been “postponed to May 2 due to delays in getting certification from Nigeria Film and Video Censorship Board”.

A scene from the movie: Chinwetel Ejiofor, left,

Board spokesman Caesar Kagho told AFP there were “regulatory issues” with the release, but that the film had not been “officially banned”.
He said the board would issue further details later on Friday.
It was not clear if the certification delay was linked to film’s content.
“Half of Yellow Sun” stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his role in “12 Years a Slave,” named 2014′s Best Picture.

Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie

The Biafra War began after the eastern region tried to secede from the newly independent Nigeria.
The East, dominated by members of the Igbo ethnic group, claimed their tribesman were being massacred in the mainly Muslim north and accused the federal government of failing to provide protection.
Their attempt to create an independent Igbo-led nation, which they called Biafra, was crushed by British-backed federal forces which had military superiority and used scorched earth tactics, including the blockage of all food imports to the breakaway region.

More than four decades on, the Biafra War remains a highly contentious subject in Nigeria.
In his last published work before his death in 2013, acclaimed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, an Igbo, sparked a heated debate about the conflict that raged on television and in newspapers for weeks.
In “There Was A Country,” Achebe accused a revered leader from the Yoruba-dominated West, Obafemi Awolowo, of supporting the starvation of Igbos to further his own political goals.
Yoruba leaders reacted furiously to the charge and the debate further highlighted the lingering bitterness from the conflict.

“Half of a Yellow Sun”, which had its global premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, is already showing in Britain and Australia and is scheduled to open soon in the United States and other countries.