They achieved their goal. They taught us the harmful effects of drug counterfeiting. However, the PSA that followed after the end credits was rather ignorant.ย 

The people they had in the PSA all made seem that just by telling people to stop or asking the government to prosecute offenders, is the solution to the piracy problem in Nigeria – which isn’t, but we will talk more about this after the recap.

The Recap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA9vmc6NT6c

Inspector Okon arrives Makoko with his team to raid a drug counterfeiting syndicate.

As they arrive, a certain fellow called Mustapha a.k.a Schoolboy runs to alert the others that the police is around.

The police march straight to where the lab is and break in only to find nothing but a box filled with money and a note inside.

At the actual lab, Mama T arrives and tells Schoolboy to stop calling her every time for little things they can handle.

While she is talking, she picks up a pack for a cough syrup they are making, looks at it and drops it back in the table.ย 

As she continues to talk, her phone rings and she picks up, talking excitedly about meeting her baby.

When she is done with her phone call, she bids her boys goodbye and leaves.

On her way out of Makoko, some of the residents sing and dance for her as she sprays them some money.ย 

After the dancing, she proceeds to the where to canoes are but is stopped by Inspector Okon who calls out to her.ย 

He calls her Ms Williams and asks her what a nice person like her is doing in a dangerous place like that and she replies thatย “looks can be deceiving”. She then discloses to him that she visits the area once in a while to assist the community with food and money.ย 

After they are done talking, she asks Inspector Okon to help her into a canoe of which he does, and they bid each other goodbye.

While she is on the canoe, her boys make a delivery to the owner of a pharmacy.ย 

In the pharmacy, a customer walks into and requests for cough syrup for children. The pharmacy owner brings out an original cough syrup and tells her the price is 1,200 naira.

The customer objects saying that it is too expensive and way beyond her budget. He then goes inside to bring out the counterfeited cough syrup and tells her that it goes for 400 naira.

The customer exclaims and tries to beat the price down to 200, but the pharmacy owner pushes back saying that 300 naira is the least amount he would take for it. The customer pays for it and she walks out of the store to enter into a car.ย  ย 

Inside the car, the driver asks her why she chose to buy from that pharmacy instead of the one on the island as they were instructed to, and the lady replies that the ones on the island are too expensive. She then gives the driver his share of the loot and he pockets it happily.

Inspector Okon still at Makoko captures Schoolboy and takes him in for interrogation. Throughout the interrogation, Inspector Okon repeatedly asks Schoolboy who a certain Mama T is but Schoolboy keeps mum.ย ย 

While interrogating him, a lawyer, Abigail arrives at the police station and makes a call to the DPO to have Schoolboy released.

Mama T arrives home to meet her daughter and granddaughter. Her daughter tells her that her granddaughter has been coughing all day, and she just administered cough syrup to her.

Mama T then goes into her bedroom to change her clothes but is disturbed by her granddaughter’s cough getting worse.ย 

She rushes out to find out why the cough is getting worse and her daughter says, she doesn’t know. She then asks if her daughter has administered the cough syrup to her granddaughter, and her daughter replies she did only once.

Mama T picks up the bottle to administer the cough syrup but stops when she realises that it is one of her counterfeit products. Surprised to see her product in her house, she asks where her daughter got it from and her daughter said the maid bought it.ย 

When she asks the maid, the maid says she got it from a pharmacy on the island. Mama T strikes the maid on her back and rushes to her bedroom to go get her phone. Her daughter fearing for the worst rushes out to the hospital alone.

Mama T meets her daughter at the hospital and she is told that her granddaughter suffered drug poisoning.

Her daughter then excuses herself and Mama T sits down beside her granddaughter, remembering when her quack chemist warned her about using the codeine in the children’s cough syrup because of how dangerous it is.

She had refused back then because children’s drugs were the most profitable.

Back at the hospital, Schoolboy comes in to meet her and she instructs him to tell the quack chemist to stop using the codeine in the cough syrup.

Inspector Okon asks to see, Madam Tope but her bodyguard replies saying that Mama T doesn’t want to see anybody.

Inspectors Okon, surprised that she is called Mama T, rushes to his car to collect his phones to call Mama T’s number.

Mama T’s bodyguard, informs her about Inspector Okon and she picks up her purse to leave.

As she is walking, her phone starts to ring and Inspector Okon tries to catch up to her but he is obstructed by the people in the hallway.

He finally finds her in the women’s bathroom and they exchange words. She tells him that she will forever go scot-free because what she does is far above his pay grade.

While they are talking, her daughter comes outs of one of the stalls disappointed.ย 

Later on, her granddaughter dies and her daughter pushes her away when she tries to hug her.

She is seen in the hospital, crying by herself to a backdrop of other parents crying about their deceased children.

https://cdn.clipart.email/45784fb51ca30e022b94d1ca7db21246_the-end-richie-sticker-by-deladeso-for-ios-android-giphy_1920-1080.gif

My Thoughts

This short film delivered its message succinctly which was nothing short of AMAZING!

The plot was meaty. The dialogues were well written. Directed well, edited seamlessly. The cinematography was on point. I especially loved how they did the framing during the confrontation between Inspector Okon and Mama T in the toilet.

The best part of the film was how everything came to full circle – Schoolboy knew Mama T who had a sick grandchild that was administered her fake drug which led to her death.

As for the PSA in the end credits, I have a lot to say about it.

So about the PSA…ย 

They tried to tie drug counterfeiting with movie piracy.ย 

They complained about how these pirates continue to steal their intellectual property without any justice.ย 

They also asked for the government to create an awareness campaign to inform people of the problems with privacy and how it affects them.

It is good and well to cry about your problems, but have you thought about the people that purchase these fake drugs and films?

Have you thought about their socio-economic standing? Their income? It’s great to say, stop buying pirated films but when your monthly earnings can barely feed you, you will take any deal you can get – even if it kills you.

The root cause of piracy is the abysmal minimum wage we have in this country. People are not paid well. We have graduates who are paid less than a hundred thousand naira a month which is awful.ย 

The thing with bad payments is that it trickles down. When you pay someone poorly, they would only purchase cheap things. Things that they can afford and if those things are pirated, so be it.

You can’t pay someone 30k as salary and expect them to spend 10k on your product. That is impossible.ย 

If these Nollywood producers really want to fix the piracy problem killing their business, then they need to attack the problem at the root. The root cause beingย poverty. They need to champion campaigns to help increase the minimum wage.ย 

You don’t see Europeans bootlegging anything. Why would they when they have more than enough money to pay for it.ย 

Fight the root cause. Campaign for the minimum wage in Nigerian to be lifted to 250k a month. When you achieve that, you would have solved three-quarters of the problem.

My verdict

I give this movie a 4 out of 5. It was great as a PSA but it didn’t tackle the root cause of the problem which I understand since it a short film.

PS: It is quite ironic they named this film Fishbone but they didn’t attack the root cause of the problem.

For those who don’t know, Fishbone a.k.a Ishikawa diagram is a method used to identify the root cause of a problem.


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