Our Expectations For 2022– Celebrities

As the global community celebrates the dawn of a New Year, some Celebrities in the Nigerian entertainment industry on Saturday spoke on their expectations for the year.

The Celebrities who spoke in separate telephone interviews with THE WHISTLER said while 2021 was very challenging due to the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, they expect 2022 to be much better.

Those that spoke are Bimbo Akintola, Fidelis Duker, Emeka Ike, Blackface, and a movie director, Olamide Wale Akimolayan.

Akintola, while reflecting on events of last year, said, “2021 was not what we expected, talking about the expectations at the end of the year we still have a pandemic that we have not yet been able to clamp.

“That notwithstanding, we all have what we are expecting from 2022, we are hoping that 2022 is going to be a great year for everybody, and there will be a change from the pandemic and it will be over and life can go back to normal.”

On what fans should expect, she said, “We are already working on certain things right now and won’t start making mention of them.”

Also, founder of Abuja International Film Festival Fidelis Duker, said, “2021 was an eventful year for me, it’s the year we came back after having a visual film festival as a result of Covid-19. Thank God in 2021 we came back with a physical festival where we had all our basic activities.

“The year also brought some good things for us, we won some awards for our films and projects, it was a recognised year.

“The year wasn’t so bad, except towards the end of the year, on 12th December 2021 when my car had a ghastly motor accident, thank God I survived it.

“2022 for me will be a year I expect better things to improve what we are doing. We want to move the Abuja film festival beyond where it is. This is the 19th edition in 2022, and we are planning we will be planning the 20th edition in 2023.

“So, basically it’s going to be a year we will put our hands together and see how we can begin to plan ahead of our 20th edition.

“We will be working on a film project, that we hope to shoot by the second quarter of 2022, which will be around May, and the film will be shot in Lagos, Calabar and London. It will film on the well-known boxer, the first Nigerian to win a world title in 1958, Hogan Kid Bassey, so we are trying to make a film on him, is more of a biography.

“There is a lot of films we intend to work on, hopefully, to expand our other projects, and we expect that 2022 will be a more eventful year.

“It will be an important year for Nigeria too, preparing for another election year, so there will be more activities in 2022, and we will try and take advantage of that.”

For Emeka Ike, his expectation is for a total turnaround of the Nigerian television system.

He said “I except a turnaround in the Nigerian television system. We have taken it upon ourselves to make decoders cheap for Nigerians, to have all the channels that they see on any explorer or decoder in the world, for nothing, for one naira.

“So TStv is one of the companies that I partner with on TV. I own a Nollywood channel on TStv. We noticed that we’re being taken for granted by the cable stations.

“The way is done over the world is not the same here. We’ve been able to compress that into our decoder. You can pause our decoder and travel for one week, two weeks and come back and continue from where you stopped. Nobody is going to be billing you. You going to buy your odd channels for N1.

“Every channel N1, if you choose only five channels, you will be paying for some N4, N8 and N1, CNN Ajazera, everything is there.

“Our picture quality is HD. So that is what we have for Nigerians. The better live in TV programming and entertainment.”

On his expectations for 2022, Ike said, “Nigerians should come in and buy our decoders and get events like that, so we want patronage.”

For Olamide Wale Akimolayan who is a movie director and a stand-up comedian, his expectation from 2022 is “Good health, prosperity, and great life.”

He added that fans should expect more works from him, promising that he would do his best for the new year while working on new projects.

Also popular Musician, Ahmedu Augustine Obiabo known by his stage name Blackface said, “All the good things is what we expect from 2022.”

He also added that fans should expect “New music and videos in 2022.”