KOK: In the saddle to brew fresh wine for AGN

BY SHAIBU HUSSEINI
The deep actor Kanayo Onyekwere Kanayo has been named President of the National Caretaker Committee of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN). KOK — as the actor is popularly called — is to head a committee that will steer the activities of the guild until an elected National Executive Council (NEC) is put in place. The Prince Ifeanyi Dike-led Board of Trustees (BOT) of the AGN, last week invoked a provision --which it thought found difficult to cite in its constitution —to dissolve the National Executive of the Guild headed by the actor Ejike Asiegbu. The BOT in a statement signed by three out of five members -- Ifeanyi Dike, Murphy Stephen and Emmanuel Ogugua (Sunny Mcdon and Okey Bakassi couldn’t be reached to sign) alleged that the Ejike Asiegbu-led NEC of the guild had overstayed their welcome hence the resolution of the BOT to sack the council. Intermittently reminding his audience of the role of the BOT as ‘custodians of the constitution’, Dike stressed that the board took the decision because Ejike Asiegbu has not only served out his tenure but he has ‘failed, refused or neglected to conduct an election to usher in a new administration’ for the guild. Amidst applause and an occasional ‘that’s right’ from some notable practitioners at the conference, Dike stressed that the BOT took the proactive decision to sack the council so as ‘to restore confidence in the guild’. It was to pave the way for the smooth running of the guild in the face of the ouster of the Asiegbu-led NEC that the BOT, according to Dike, decided on the setting up of a National Caretaker Committee (NCC). The NCC to be headed by KOK and assisted by Bimbo Manuel, as Dike explained, will ‘run the affairs of the guild for six (6) months tenure with an option of renewal’. The NCC, he said, working in consultation with the BOT to appoint other members of the NCC; will work assiduously to reposition the guild and build alliances as well as promote peace and unity amongst all the interest groups and factions within the guild. The NCC is also to ‘audit the accounts and properties and render a proper documentation of all registered members of the guild’ and ‘as a matter of urgency take immediate possession of the properties of the guild’. The ‘ousted’ President Ejike Asiegbu has, however, described the dissolution of the NEC by the BOT as a ‘charade that will be challenged frontally’.
Kanayo O. Kanayo’s acceptance speech as President of the NCC after he was sworn into office by the legal adviser of the BOT, Obusi Phillips, was short and pointed. Flanked to the left by the actress Clarion Chukwurah and to the far right by the actor Charles Okafor, who he had named as spokesman of the caretaker committee, Kanayo said he accepted the responsibility to serve the guild out of humility and out of a deep sense of service. He pledged not to disappoint stakeholders and solicited their kind understanding in their quest to build a virile actors’ guild.
BORN Anayo Nwachukwu in Umueze, Aboh Mbaise Local Government in Imo State Nigeria, Kanayo O. Kanayo joined the industry in 1992 as a member of cast of the phenomenal ‘Living in Bondage’. Prior to that time, Kanayo was a major part of some of NTA’s drama programmes. A mass communicator, who is considering a career in law, Kanayo was named Best African Actor in a leading role at the 2006 edition of the African Movie Academy Award. He runs Yobafa Nigerian Limited, a multimedia communication concern with interest in public relations, advertising and event management.

shaibu70@yahoo.com