1. During a personal conversation in May 2012, scriptwriter Joe Dundun, who wrote the scripts for early Nollywood films such asNneka the Pretty Serpent(1994), expressed concerns that the cultural heritage of Nigerian minority groups were not being preserved or promoted through Nollywood. He cited himself as an example; an Itsekiri whose talent had been put to use but not in a way that promoted Itsekiri culture.
2. Benedict Anderson,Imagined Communities(London:Verso,1991),43.
3. Lila Abu-Lughod,Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt(Chicago:University of Chicago Press,2004),10.
4. Brian Larkin.Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Northern Nigeria(Chapel Hill, NC:Duke University Press,2008),77.
5. Nigeria was the first country on the African continent to develop a television system, an enterprise in which it preceded other countries of the “global North,” including South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland. The political circumstances of the founding of the first television service had much to do with the use of television as a public service tool. Following the central government's denial of right of reply to Chief Obafemi Awolowo, leader of the political party Action Group and Leader of Government Business in Western Nigeria, over the controversial motion for independence in 1953, the stage was set for the regional initiative to establish the station. For an even-handed account of the incident and the subsequent legislative undertakings, seeObafemi Lasode,Television Broadcasting: The Nigerian Experience 1959-1992(Ibadan:Caltop Publications,1993),26–27.