Omar, or Skipper as he’s known on the streets, is the first lead character Nnamdi Agbo will play in a big-budget Netflix film.
Skipper leads a park of four young men in Hijack ’93, that hijacks a Nigerian Airline aircraft in 1993 to protest the military government’s decision to annul an election. The film is loosely based on the true hijacking of an aircraft by Richard Ogunderu, Kabir Adenuga, Benneth Oluwadaisi and Kenny Rasaq-Lawal in the same year.
“Everything has led up to this moment,” Agbo said.
He started acting in nursery school, playing miserly parts put together by teachers for Price Giving Days, End of Year parties, Christmas Carols etc. But after he saw Theatre students from the University of Ibadan present a performance of Hamlet in secondary school, he knew he wanted to be an actor.
“It is very exciting to see that my work rate is being noticed. To be given an opportunity like this shows that people really trust me,” he said.
This is not the first time he has starred in a historical film set in 1990s Nigeria. His breakout role was in the 2021 film Badamasi (Portrait of a General), based on the life of the military dictator General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB). In Hijack ’93, Babangida was the dictator who annulled the elections.
“I’ve always been a fan of historical work,” he said. Like many Nigerians born in the ‘90s, he was unaware of the incident until he was tapped to play the role by the director Robert Peters and Charles Okpaleke’s Play Network. When he was casually told about the story years ago, he dismissed it as a lie.
“Nobody is bad in life. Everything is done with motive,” he said of the four young men. “What they were fighting for was a just cause. They wanted social change in a military-backed government. But they went about it the wrong way. However, they were one of the people that sparked in the consciousness what we’re enjoying today, which is democracy.”
Nigeria has been touted as one of the illiberal democracies in the world, a nation with elected officials who wield so much power that they sometimes can’t be checked or punished. His language suggests there is much to be grateful for, even in this scenario. Will he take it back?
“I’ll say yes, we are enjoying democracy, but a just cause never happens overnight. Whatever actions people are taking today don’t negate that they have fought for what we are enjoying today,” he said.
In preparing for the role, Agbo said he decided to work on his body to get in shape. The hijackers had not eaten for days before they boarded the plane. “I had to work physically on my body because not eating for three days needed stamina,” he said. He also wanted to show how inexperienced the boys were. “These guys had never hijacked a plane before. It was their first time. No matter how good you are, you’re afraid when it’s time for war. I was working with the mindset of fear and trauma.”
The hijackers’ activities have been a source of huge moral contention for people familiar with their story. By hijacking a plane, they put the passengers in harm’s way. Anything could have gone wrong, including the plane crash. Others have called it a just movement poorly planned. Agbo said that it’s the repercussion of years of oppression under military tyrants.
“People do not want to be pushed. But even with #EndSARS, you see how people were pushed into action. At their time, they were under a military government, and only force could have worked. They needed the world to see what was happening,” he said.
Even though the production said the film is fiction based on the true life story, Hijack ’93 has faced backlash from critics who say it deviated too much from the source material. But when Agbo met the real men preparing for the role, they were open with him and blessed him to work on the film.
“They told me stories about the whole thing. They said their parents knew nothing about it. They said their plan was to make a statement on the plane and go. They wanted to talk to the top officials and relay their demands to the government. They shared bills where they wrote down their demands and shared them with the passengers on the plane. They wanted to make sure nothing happened to the people on the plane,” he said.
It will be a long shot for Hijack ’93 to perform like the Kunle Afolayan and Mo Abudu projects that were the topics on X (formerly Twitter) for days after it was released. There has been some chatter about the film, but it’s already suffering from a meagre marketing budget.
Netflix didn’t throw a premiere party for it, a fashion event that would surely increase the film’s visibility. But Agbo said that he is taking the film as an opportunity to show his talents as an actor further.
“I will just continue to get better at my craft,” he said. “Let’s just keep watching, and we’ll uncover my growth together.”
