Emeka Enyiocha tells why he left Nollywood to become a beer seller

 

During the late 90s, Nollywood actor, Emeka Enyiocha, held sway in the Nigerian movie industry and he was a poster boy of some sort. However, when the ovation seemed loudest, he disappeared.

Saturday Beats caught up with the movie star who had been missing in action for over seven years. He explained why he left the movie industry.

“I left the industry because I got married and I started having kids. Immediately I got married, I started having kids and I had more responsibilities to deal with. I had to be closer to my family and kids so that they would not call me uncle when they see me. Marriage and family slowed me down. It definitely slows someone down except you do not want to take care of your family. I tried to combine marriage with work because I was doing my production. While I was away from the industry, I was into partnership with a close friend of mine. We did productions together. We did ‘The Patriot,’ which is a fight against fake drugs and adulterated products. We did ‘School,’ a movie about rich kids causing trouble in the school and we did ‘Champions of Our Time,’ in partnership with the Lagos State government. It is about the physically challenged and letting them to know that their status does not amount to a mental disability and we won so many awards with this film,” he said.

The actor said that while he was on hiatus, he explored other businesses one of which was that he became a bar operator. In his words, he learnt a lot from being a ‘beer seller’.

“In the process, I opened a bar and became a beer seller. I was trying to know the other side of life which actually taught me a lot of lessons. I saw a lot and it taught me to be humble. It taught me how to be humble to the lowest. It also taught me how to save money, respect and appreciate money. As an actor, when you get money, it is in the booth and you don’t have time to do anything, so money does everything for you. You go from one location to another and at the end of the day, you would find out that there is nothing left. I am no longer running the business. I stopped because I want to go into the hospitality business on a large scale,” Enyiocha said.