What “Dear Affy,” Says About Rape Culture in Nigeria
Written by Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
Note: This article contains major spoilers for the motion pictures it references.
In December 2020, the Shondaland-Netflix Hollywood series “Bridgerton” all but took over the world. There were memes and accolades and everything in-between. Regé-Jean Page became an overnight internet sensation for his portrayal of the Duke of Hastings. But in the middle of all the fuss, there was a serious conversation being had: Did Daphne Bridgerton rape her husband the Duke, and did the series handle it properly?
Earlier the same year, on Valentine’s Day, Nollywood had seen the theatrical release of “Dear Affy”, a romantic comedy directed by Samuel Olatunji. It grossed over forty million naira in its first two weeks of release, despite its run in cinemas being cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic, and eventually became one of Nollywood’s highest-grossing movies of 2020. It won the Best of Nollywood Award for the Movie with the Best Comedy, and in May 2021, it made its way to Netflix.
Dear Affy tells the story of Affy (Kehinde Bankole), a meticulous woman, who is about to get married to Mike (Enyinna Nwigwe), the man she loves. Despite being a planner who has every situation covered, she does not plan for what might happen if her former playboy fiancé has sex with another woman, which he does — albeit for the purpose of picking the bills for their wedding. Her friends (Bimbo Ademoye and Bianca Ugowanne) take her clubbing to help her get over the hurt. By the end of the day, she is too drunk to remember anything that happened. Shortly after, she finds that she is pregnant. Deciding to keep the pregnancy, she and her friends go in search of the man who got her pregnant.
When the man is finally revealed, the circumstances surrounding the event that led to her pregnancy are very much disturbing. It would have been trickier if the man who slept with a drunk Affy had been a drunk guy from the club. Instead, it was her neighbour’s cousin Abubakar (Uzee Usman), fully sober and aware, who had sexual intercourse with a woman he knew to be heavily intoxicated — he literally had to carry her home after she mistook his flat for hers and staunchly argued with him about whose home it was. Yet, despite the large number of Nigerians who have watched this movie, many of whom are recommending it as a fun movie to watch, the event has hardly been referred to by its name: Rape. The movie itself never so much as references the word, and its handling of the incident leaves too much to be desired. In fact, it seems content to pretend that what happened did not actually happen. And Nigerians seem to agree.
To be clear, critics have not all been kind to this movie. In fact, its reception was very much mixed. But the complaints have mostly been about the cheap comedy and casting of popular comic actors and Instagram comedians in unnecessary roles. One review says in its title that Dear Affy was a little shy of iconic. Another just glosses over the incident in its narration of the “Clusterf*ck of Bad Decisions” that characterises the movie. The synopsis on the movie’s Wikipedia page reads that Affy “faces sudden obstacles and challenges after becoming pregnant accidentally even before her marriage.” (Italics are mine for emphasis.)
Let’s start from the very beginning, shall we?
Affy, sitting at a bar, notices a good-looking man, Mike, walk in. She sees him look her way and immediately gets excited. In her words, “Clearly, this is a guy who is used to being checked out by chicks, the kind I hate to give attention to… plenty of hot girls in the bar and it’s me he picks.” When a film starts off like this, you should already know that it is happy to dive right into any and all stereotypes against women without much attention to sensitive issues. So when he walks past her and stops beside another woman, Affy, out of jealousy (which she covers by claiming to just be looking out for the other woman, because how can society see her as a good person if this is about jealousy?) sabotages his chances with that other woman. At least, Affy and that other woman end up being friends rather than enemies (whew! The filmmakers survived that one). But of course, Mike has now developed an interest in her. She rejects him. Suddenly, Mike now goes to the gym she goes to, hangs out at her favourite spots, attends her salsa classes, and sits beside her at her cell fellowship. This is creepy and bordering on harassment. And to get him off her case, she agrees to one date. Except one date becomes a few too many, and they get engaged within a year.
Of course, weddings are expensive. And although Affy is as employed as Mike is, she does not seem to be participating in the wedding costs. The company Mike works at is being threatened with liquidation, and if he does not sign a big account, he will not be able to fund the wedding. Enter Anna Duke (Bimbo Akintola), a woman whose business can save him in exchange for sex. Does that sound familiar? It should.
In late 2019, BBC Africa Eye released a ‘Sex for Grades’ documentary made by journalists who went undercover in the University of Lagos and the University of Ghana. About a year later, Temi Otedola would make her Nollywood debut in Kunle Afolayan’s Citation where a brilliant postgraduate student would go against the system and bring to book a professor with whom she had grown close in the course of her studies and who had tried to rape her and subsequently penalise her for fighting him off. These two projects provided a platform for a nationwide discussion on sexual harassment. Although many were of the opinion that giving in to a ‘sex for grades’ demand makes it consensual, a majority agreed that demanding sex in exchange for grades is as much sexual harassment as penalising a student for refusing sexual advances.
In Dear Affy, not only does Anna Duke demand and obtain sex in exchange for signing with Mike’s company, she also puts his job in jeopardy when he confronts her, essentially forcing him to come back to beg and even offer himself up to her. And his boss (Jide Kosoko) fully encourages this harassment. Yet, there is barely any conversation about it. In fact, at some point, while narrating that “Clusterf*ck of Bad Decisions” previously referenced, that same writer recaps the events of Mike’s apology to Anna Duke at her home, stating that the latter accepts the apology but “still throws him out of her house, because that’s what boss women do. Yeah?” Even as a sarcastic comment, it would still be unfortunate to consider her behaviour to be worth the ‘boss woman’ tag. One wonders why the issue has raised little to no concern with most people. Could it be that viewers feel that the matter was adequately handled because Mike eventually uses Anna Duke’s own offence against her and threatens her with an ethics commission? This writer does not think so.
Let us rewind again. Before the Anna Duke matter gets heated up, Mike’s friend Obiorah (Williams Uchemba) is in a less difficult but equally problematic situation. Munumidun (Fathia Balogun) is interested in Obiorah, an interest that does not seem mutual. It does not matter what he does to show his disinterest, including physically running away from her, she won’t leave him alone. But somehow, they hook up. It is never really clear if Obiorah feels forced into the relationship or if his expressions and reactions are just a part of his comic shtick, but he definitely does not look happy when he marries her. Again, nobody seems to care about how messed up this is. In the first place, this plot was very unnecessary and only added for comic effect. But what speaks about a terrible harassment culture louder than a problematic harassment scene that is only included in a movie as a joke? And what exactly is this movie’s obsession with harassment leading to love?
Back to Affy. Affy finds herself pregnant literally out of nowhere. She is certain it isn’t Mike’s because, of course, she insisted on celibacy before marriage and has never had sex with him. Can this movie even be complete without a perfect woman trope? But she has absolutely no recollection of the man who is responsible. She has to embark on a chaotic search for the unknown man who had sex with her while she was drunk. In the course of this search, she will even be subjected to verbal sexual inappropriateness from her father’s former driver, Capo (Odunlade Adekola), while trying to get him to go with her to an unsafe neighbourhood.
She was that drunk that night, and Abubakar knew she was drunk. being the ‘nice guy’ that he is, he got her home safely, only to then take advantage of and have sex with a woman obviously incapable of giving him any real consent. Of course, it is this same ‘nice’ guy and his ‘nice’ cousin (who clearly knows enough about the incident to expect that she is angry with Abubakar and transferring the aggression to him when she really cannot even remember anything) who would come to her aid after said incident when Mike tries to force himself into her home to reconcile with her in his usual ‘persistent’ manner. If you have watched Hollywood’s Promising Young Woman and followed the conversations it ignited, then you understand why this rape along with the ‘nice guy’ syndrome should have been a popular topic both within and out of the movie.
Instead, a picture is painted of a drunk Affy throwing herself on a reluctant man and pulling him to her couch where he eventually has sex with her — as if that somehow redeems it from being a rape scene. It’s the same tired story: A man is always the stronger sex until a woman who is too drunk to plant her two feet on the ground throws herself at him, and, suddenly, he stops being strong. This is probably one of the many instances Lizzo had in mind when she sang, “Why men great till they gotta be great?”
Frustratingly, as noted earlier, the movie fails to so much as acknowledge how disturbing that incident is. When Abubakar apologises to Affy, he is more interested in why he left before she woke up. Apparently, he just did not know how she would react, so he left. As if it was a fling that she might change her mind about in the morning. Even Affy is more concerned with the fact that it was him all this while, rather than with what he did. Overnight, we see her trying to be friendly with him because she wants her child’s father to be in her child’s life. That is all well and good, but she is never actually given a chance to come to terms with what she has experienced albeit while she was unconscious. She is never allowed to heal. And despite being the perfect Nollywood leading lady, prioritising pre-marital celibacy and being the woman who changes the playboy, Affy still does not get the bare minimum in having her rape acknowledged, even by her. Worse still, she is made to apologise to Mike, with the movie implying that her rape is something she should ask forgiveness for.
Granted, while it may seem clear that a sober man having sex with a woman who is too drunk to appreciate the situation cannot be consensual, there are people who do not agree. Plus, public opinion is still greatly divided, including among women, as to when persistence becomes harassment. But that is exactly why conversations are important. The more conversations we have, the more we understand these issues and grow for the better as a society.
What Dear Affy says about rape culture in Nigeria is that we have so normalised rape and sexual harassment that we do not see the problem in them, even when it is glaring before our eyes, unless the conversation is forced on us and we find ourselves in a situation where we have to pick a side. Nigerians were found in the Bridgerton conversations when the rest of the world was talking about it. We were found in the Sex for Grades conversations when international lenses were focused on us. And we were found in Citation conversations when the filmmakers made it clear where they stood on the matter. But with Dear Affy, we got our favourite celebrities and social media comedians and a movie that painted all sorts of sexual inappropriateness as ‘all fun and games’. After all said and done, one thing is sure: If Dear Affy somehow ages at all, it will not age well.
Vivian is a writer, film critic, lawyer and TV lover who spends most of her time discussing films and TV shows, women issues, and societal biases in general. Connect with Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku on LinkedIn
Edited by Chizulu E. Uwolloh
Zulu, named after Zulu Shofola, is a writer, avid movie watcher and self-proclaimed bibliophile. She is proud to call herself a feminist and when she’s not editing for Sisterly HQ and watching travel vlogs on YouTube, she’s trying to save the world in her own little way. Connect with Zulu on Instagram and LinkedIn
