Nollywood’s depictions of a lot of things are usually straight up bizarre and unintentionally thigh-slappingly hilarious, but the thing that takes the cake is their depiction of the afterlife.
Here’s how things usually go when someone dies in Nollywood:
1. Your soul will literally leave your body.
As opposed to just appearing in the afterlife, Nollywood standards imply that recently deceased souls have to walk there. The lesson, of course, being that exercise is important, even when you don’t have a physical body.
2. In some cases (Mount Zion movies), you’ll be given a tour of hell and heaven respectively by an elderly angel dressed in a poorly-tailored white suit and then sent back to Earth because it’s “not your time.”
It’s amazing how terrible the angel of death in the Mount Zion Cinematic Universe™ is at their job of picking who dies.
3. If it indeed was your time to die and you were a terrible person when you were alive, you’ll be insulted for at least 20 minutes by the elderly angel after the tour and then sent straight to hell.
Angels in the MZCU™ don’t play.
4. In a normal Nollywood movie, you’ll be given the tea on who killed you and why.
Why “killed?” Because nobody ever dies of natural causes in Nollywood. When someone dies, it’s because they were poisoned by a close friend or family member.
5. You will presented with a choice to either move on or return to Earth as an angry ghost so you can haunt the person who killed you.
This has to be how it happens because why else do they all end up choosing this?
6. If you choose to become an angry ghost, your clothes will be taken from you and you will be given a flowing white gown.
I…I don’t even…what is happening in this picture??
7. Also, you’ll be covered in a shit ton of white powder and have cotton wool shoved up your nostrils.
Because being a dead person popping up in the world of the living is not scary enough, you also have to look like you have leprosy.
8. You will then proceed to torment the person responsible for your early demise by appearing to them from time to time and messing with their light bulbs.
You’ll remember that this was Liz Benson’s character’s M.O in Nollywood blockbuster, Diamond Ring. You know why? Because there’s nothing scarier (more annoying) than flickering lights.
9. This “torment” will continue until the person, frustrated by your disappearing acts and electricity tampering, confesses what they did in a public place filled with many people.
Then they either run mad and/or die.
10. Having found peace due to your murderer’s death (preferably by suicide), you will then go to heaven.
Regardless of the fact that you just exacted delicious revenge and God explicitly instructed that we leave that to him.
