Once upon a time, I recapped an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity. The article’s popularity made me turn my recaps into a weekly series named “So You Don’t Have To“, where I find batshit crazy pieces of media (books, movies, etc) and recap them for your pleasure.
Today, I will be recapping the 1999 Nollywood movie, ‘Oganigwe.’
Somebody needs to get this lady on the TV show, Botched, because chile…
All you need to know before we begin is that this movie is a Cinderella story on steroids.
Oganigwe is a Nollywood epic, which means all the actresses in it are dressed in Ankara tube top and mini skirt combos. The movie starts with a girl carrying an insanely enormous bundle of firewood on her head. We learn two things in this first scene.
- The freakishly strong girl’s name is Olamma
- And her stepmother is a huge bitch.
We know her stepmother is a huge bitch because she runs in from the side of the screen like a WWE wrestler and tackles Olamma to the ground. She then literally adds insult to injury by yelling at Olamma for not returning on time from fetching firewood to string her beads. That’s not a euphemism for some hilarious sexual act. She really does want Olamma to string some beads. She then lists a shit ton of chores for Olamma to do.
Olamma is crying the entire time but also looks like she’s thinking:
Olamma’s life is shit. When she was a child, her father married a second wife, a woman so openly evil, she might as well have been a Disney villain. He had two children with his second wife, Ada and Ikem (remember these names). The second wife killed Olamma’s mother out of jealousy and Olamma’s father died not long after, leaving Olamma at the mercy of her evil stepmother.
Ikem is the only one in the family who is nice to Olamma but is very creepy about it. He walks over to Olamma as she’s doing her chores and says:
But he’s a child and Olamma doesn’t want to be mean so she’s just like:
We’re introduced to the village’s royal family. They’re hanging out in their palace (a blinged-out hut) demanding to know why the prince hasn’t chosen a bride, even though there was a maiden dance recently where all the girls in the village twerked around the market square so he could pick one to marry. The prince says he fancied none of them so the king organises another dance so the prince has another chance to pick.
Even though Olamma isn’t allowed to attend the dance because her stepmother has her up to her tits in chores, she sneaks to the market square to watch. Ada has almost gotten the prince’s attention with her sick dance skills…
…when the prince spots Olamma in the crowd and demands that she dance for him.
Olamma impresses the prince and he picks her to be his bride.
Olamma’s stepmother is distraught that the prince didn’t choose Ada. She plots with her secret lover and member of the king’s court, Obasi, to spread the rumour that Olamma used juju on the prince. Obasi somehow sets Olamma up to be caught in a compromising position with one of the palace guards so the king will have her executed. This almost works but the prince begs to spare her life. He says he believes that his wife was set up but asks that she prove her innocence to the king and the royal court by swearing by Oganigwe, the god of the village. Obasi tries to object but the prince is like:
Olamma goes to swear an oath at the shrine of Oganigwe the next day but stops at the last minute because the chief priest twists the words of the oath to get her to agree to something she didn’t do. It’s revealed that Obasi went to see the priest the day before to get him to screw her over. The chief priest decides that Olamma’s hesitation is a sign of guilt and banishes her from the village. The prince has no choice but to accept the decision.
Olamma wanders around the forest for THREE WEEKS before she encounters a guy who’s about to commit suicide because he’s a chronic onigbese. She convinces him not to hang himself and he takes her to his village to live with him and his family. Not long after, the guy’s son mysteriously dies. The guy decides that it’s Olamma’s bad luck that has brought death to his family so he kicks her OUT OF THE VILLAGE.
Meanwhile, the prince has married Ada due to family pressure and it’s clear that he doesn’t give a shit about her.
From this point, things get super chaotic. Ada tries to use juju to get the prince to like her but it backfires and he slaps the shit out of her. Ikem is murdered for some reason. Olamma settles in another village and moves in with a kind family but is kicked out after a member of the family mysteriously dies. After seeing this happen two times in a row, Olamma is convinced that she may indeed be bad vibes and leaves to wander the forest by herself again.
After being quiet for years, Oganigwe finally decides to do right by Olamma by punishing all the people who did her dirty. For being a wicked bitch, he gives Olamma’s stepmother the worst boob job I’ve ever seen.
Then he punishes Obasi by enlarging his penis.
A lot of men would kill for this tbh.
There’s an unintentionally hilarious scene where Olanna’s stepmother is brought to the palace with her giant boobs on an equally giant wooden tray.
Both Obasi and Olamma’s stepmother confess and somebody guesses that the only way to stop Oganigwe’s wrath from wrecking the entire village is to bring Olamma back. The prince goes into the forest and finds her super fast, which makes me wonder just how small the forest is.
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