It is a tough Christmas for Nollywood as it has lost one of its major producers and directors, Chico Ejiro.
Although his family has yet to release details of the death, Ejiro died this Christmas morning after was was said to be a seizure.
That he might not have been physically ill appears to be evident in the fact that Ejiro, nicknamed Mr Prolific based on his remarkable exploits as a director, had just finished directing another film titled ‘Christmas Eve’.
Born Chico Maziakpono in Isoko, Delta, he was a movie director, screenwriter and producer.
According to one of his profiles, he originally studied Agriculture, and he was drawn into video production because Nigerians would not buy blank video cassettes.
It adds that his enormous body of work is typical of the second generation that started in the 1990s when cheap video-production equipment became available in the country. He owns a production company called Grand Touch Pictures, which is based in Lagos.
Mr. Prolific directed over 80 movies within a 5-year period—each one shot in as little as three days.
“They feature story lines relevant to Nigerians The exact number of movies he has worked on as either director, producer, or both is unknown, but it ranges in the hundreds as of 2007.
“He was profiled in an article in The New York Times, dated May 26, 2002 (“When There’s Too Much of a Not-Very-Good Thing” by Matt Steinglass), and in an article from the international version of Time Magazine dated May 26, 2002 (“Hollywood, Who Really Needs It?” by Stephan Faris),” it notes.
Ejiro was married to Joy Ejiro and they have four children. He had two brothers: Zeb Ejiro, the best-known of the new Nigerian cinema auteurs outside of the country, and Peter Red Ejiro, also a movie producer.
Ejiro was featured in the 2007 documentary Welcome to Nollywood.
