A voting member of the Oscars and Nigerian actress, Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, has stated that Africans are as skilled as every other industry in the world and, therefore, don’t want to be pitied for international awards.

She told GhanaWeb in an interview at Women of Valour, a women empowerment programme organised by ace broadcast journalist, Nana Aba Anamoah.

Responding to a question about African movies getting international recognition, Omotola said that there have been some nominations for African movies at the Oscars.

“We’ve had African movies. We had the movie from South Africa at the time, Tsotsi. Tsotsi won an Oscar. We’ve had another one, I think Casablanca. So, you know, we’ve had one or two nominations maybe not in the volume that we want but we are working very hard,” she commented on African movies being recognised on international stages.

Omotola also added that Africans don’t want to be mediocre or be pitied for international awards but want to earn them as every other skilled industry in the world.

“We don’t want to be mediocre and we don’t want to be pitied. That’s one thing that I’m hoping we don’t get, we don’t get to a point where they feel like; oww, let’s give it to them because we pity them. Let’s just give it to them because they are an African country. No, we want to earn our place.

“We want to show that we are storytellers, we want to show that we are intelligent and we want to show them that we are as good as every other industry in the world. And the time is now,” she added.

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde, popularly known as ‘Omosexy’ was invited to become a member of the Oscars' voting academy in 2018.



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