Actor, Chiwetalu Agu, sits with the host of #WithChude, Chude Jideonwo to discuss his dramatic arrest for wearing Biafran colours, sexual harassment and the gender wars, and how he survived death.
Speaking on his dramatic arrest for wearing the Biafran colours, he shared, “I was in Onitsha; I was buying bread. I came out to buy 4,000 worth of bread for the masses of Onitsha. I didn’t know when I bought more than that. By the time the soldiers came, I had bought 10,000-naira worth of bread. I had finished a shoot in Asaba, and I came to Onitsha just to say hello to some people. These people way-laid me out of hunger, and I had to stop to buy something for them. But, as I was buying, the population was multiplying. I didn’t even know the time the soldiers came. It is not a thing that you can find in civilized countries. What I heard from the grapevine was that an APC Man was watching the crowd multiply and was thinking that I was gathering votes for PDP. If you had seen me politicking, it would have made sense, but I was never seen anywhere. Anywhere I go, for all the (political) parties, I play father. And a father will always be neutral. If, for any reason, they put me in politics, I can’t play it the way you people are playing it.
“The only grounds for suspicion must have been that I was wearing Biafran clothes which I wore out of fancy. I didn’t meet any IPOB, IPOB is always in the mentality, and because they are fighting for a good cause, we can afford to talk about them all the time”, he added.
On his thoughts on sexual harassment and the outburst that followed, he shared, “The situation today is that women are now dominating. It is no longer men harassing women, women have taken over. Men no longer go to hotels or brothels, because women now confront you in the street, they don’t wait for you to come and see them in the hotel. That time is gone. Society has changed, women are now in control and men are dodging. Society is better now because when men were mounting pressure, there was bound to be rape, but today things have been changed”
Speaking on the attacks he faced, Chiwetalu Agu shared, “People were looking at me as if I were dying. I was shrinking. These were deadly arrows. Pins, cowries, sea stones, fetish substances were inside my body. I scratched. Then I will go to Prophet Ugo, who is somewhere. He has his office in a place called ‘Maryland area’. He’s a man I will call my man. We all have seen this world from peculiar angles where your enemy, personal enemy or family enemy, would just use medicine what Yoruba would call ‘juju’. Y
‘ou won’t know when they enter your body. Until they begin to scratch you, to give you hell, that is to pain you as if you’ll die the next moment. But if you go to Prophet Ugo, he will bring his holy oil to treat you. If you say, ‘it’s here’, he’ll bring the oil, rub here, rub it this way, and hold and feel it. If he feels the pin in your body, he’ll pull it. The picture is on Instagram. They’re still at my place, fresh. I’m keeping all of them for D-day. When I’ll say, ‘God, let me go and give special thanks to you’. I’ve been thanking God every morning in my prayer, but this one I’m going to do it for God. Even many who were vast in using ‘medicine’ to kill fellow human beings, they saw me when I survived some of their attempts and they marvelled”.
