Today, I will be recapping the 2022 Nollywood movie, The Man of God.
Once upon a time, an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity trended on the internet. I did the dirty work of actually reading and recapping it. The article was so popular that I decided to make 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.
Based on screen time, one of the people on this poster shouldn’t be here. By the end of this, you’ll be able to tell who.
The movie starts at an unspecific point in history, during a church service. Josiah Obalolu (Jude Chukwuma), a pastor, is preaching in front of his congregation, and it looks like everyone in the audience is feeling the holy spirit.
Well, not everyone, sha. The pastor’s son, Samuel, isn’t moved by all the things going on around him.
At some point, Samuel goes outside to play with his homies. When his father notices Samuel’s absence, he goes looking for him, finds him outside playing, and is pissed.
It’s made clear that the pastor is physically and verbally abusive towards Samuel and that these beatings are frequent. After one of such beatings, Samuel reveals to his mother that one day, he’s going to leave them and never return, also promising to leave religion behind. Years later, Samuel (Akah Nnani) has seemingly done this. He has gone off to university and is now the quintessential Nollywood bad boy, who does shady things like sell drugs for money. He also moonlights as discount Fela Kuti in his free time.
After his performance, Samuel meets his friend, Teju (Osas Ighodaro), who he’s known since childhood. She’s come to give him the handout for a lecture he missed, and it’s through her we find out that Samuel has a ton of carryovers because he dedicates all his time to his musical gigs. At some point in the conversation, Teju says, “You owe me 30 bucks for that printout,” and this makes my head jam. Because look at the printout she’s referring to:
That’s a lot of pages for N30. This immediately has me wondering when exactly this movie is taking place. A bulky handout like that could only be N30 in the 2000s, but nothing about what they (or the extras in the back) are wearing indicates that. I’m confused as shit, so I put out this message on Instagram and keep watching.
Actual photo of me watching the movie on the 18th of April 2022.
Samuel receives a letter from his mother begging him to come home but he ignores it. Teju is a church girl and has been trying to get Samuel to come to her fellowship for years. So they come to an agreement that if she attends one of his shows, he’ll go for her fellowship. She attends his next show with her friend from church, Joy (Atlanta Bridget Johnson), who Samuel is immediately smitten with.
But she’s like:
Before Samuel can say more, his girlfriend, backup singer, and fellow drug dealer, Rekya (Dorcas Shola Fapson), notices what’s going on and forces them to leave. Samuel becomes obsessed with Joy and tries to get Teju to give him her room number — not her phone number oh, room number — but this pisses Teju off for some reason, causing her to storm off. While driving one day, he sees Joy taking a stroll and is like:
Can my fellow Barbie Girl fans in the house make some FUCKING NOISE?!!
After driving around for a while and actually clicking, Samuel expresses that he has feelings for her but she doesn’t give an answer. When he notices how uncomfortable she is, he says they can start off as friends, and she agrees. They start hanging out more and he joins her fellowship, which makes her fall for him hard.
Inappropriate because he has a girlfriend he’s cheating on.
It’s revealed that Teju has harboured a secret crush on Samuel for years and is heartbroken by his and Joy’s union, so she vanishes from their lives and the plot of the movie.
Meanwhile, members of Joy’s fellowship don’t like that she’s hanging out and possibly bumping genitals with a bad boy. So they send one of their own, Pastor BJ (Prince Enwerem) to tell her that:
Pastor BJ also reveals that Samuel is the son of the now famous Prophet Josiah Obalolu, which, for some reason, upsets Joy so much that she breaks up with Samuel for not telling her about who he really is. Samuel is distraught. He follows her around campus like a lost dog for days and keeps leaving letters under her door until she caves and starts dating him again. They reunite in front of the school’s library.
Rekya informs Samuel that she has dropped out of school and bought a house in town with all the money from her recent drug deals. She also drops this bombshell:
Let’s pause for a second.
Rekya mentions earlier in the movie that the drug deal she’s embarking on will make her at least N1 million. This brings me back to the question of what time period this movie takes place. Tell me how she was able to buy a house with N1 million. In what economy???
My Instagram story from the 18th of April 2022.
Here’s the TV I’m talking about:
Again I ask, WHERE IN TIME IS THIS MOVIE HAPPENING?!
Rekya japas and disappears from the movie’s plot. A few weeks later, Samuel starts to sense a disconnect between him and Joy. He talks to her about it but she says it’s because she’s been studying for their final exams, something he isn’t doing because he knows he’s going to have an extra year. She assures him that nothing will ever come between them. But at Joy’s graduation party, Pastor BJ introduces her to a fine ass guest pastor named Zach (Mawuli Gavor) and Samuel can tell that something is off.
And he’s right. Immediately after Joy graduates, Samuel stops hearing from her. After four months of trying to find out what happened, Pastor BJ informs Samuel that Joy is now married to — wait for it — PASTOR ZACH. Samuel understandably loses his shit and falls into a deep depression. With both Rekya and Joy gone from the movie, Teju sashays back into the plot and nurses Samuel back to health.
An unspecified number of years later, Samuel and Teju are married and workers at a church headed by Pastor and Mrs Asuquo (Patrick Doyle and Eucharia Anunobi). Samuel hates working at the church because Pastor Mrs is always on his neck about one thing or the other. Pastor Mrs calls for a worker’s meeting after church one day and says that she’s heard rumours of him sleeping with random young girls in the church. Samuel denies it but Teju doesn’t believe him and is like:
Samuel says that if she, his wife, can’t trust him, then their marriage is a mistake. Teju, who doesn’t want to lose the man she’s always wanted, breaks down and begs for forgiveness. She later finds out that Samuel did get a girl in the church pregnant when the girl sends the abortion receipts (?) to their house (and later dies). Teju says and does nothing.
Rekya returns to the movie. She’s rich as fuck now because she’s upped her game from smuggling drugs to something else she refuses to talk about. She encourages Samuel to start a church because church business is big business, and he takes her advice, lying to Teju that God ordered him to start a church.
In no time, they too become rich AF Daddy and Mummy GO. Their church grows so big that ZACH and JOY attend one day, not knowing that Samuel is the pastor. Samuel takes this opportunity to be petty as hell.
Samuel also tries to convince Joy to get back with him.
Samuel’s younger brother, a character who has never been mentioned or shown until now, shows up at Samuel’s house one day to read him for filth because their mother has died of a broken heart.
The insult from his brother makes Samuel decide that he wants to escape to Canada to start a new life. He invests in Rekya’s mystery business so he can cash out and japa, leaving Teju behind. Teju finds out and confronts him which leads to him saying something along the lines of:
Teju is fucking livid.
And she proceeds to do just that.
Samuel gets a phone from the police saying that Rekya is dead (they don’t specify how) and that the mystery business she was involved in is organ trafficking, with his name coming up as one of her contacts. He denies that he’s spoken to her recently, but Teju glams up just to go expose him to the police. He gets arrested, and after an unspecified number of years, returns from prison to his father’s church wearing the most unconvincing head and beard wig combo I’ve ever seen.
My Instagram story from the 18th of April 2022, when I was done watching the movie.
If you expected this to be a story about a guy going out into the world and working through the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father as a child but got served a weird prodigal’s son tale instead, join the club. We’ve got biscuits and tea in the back.
I have questions
- Are we not just going to address his father’s abuse?
- Why is Mawuli Gavor on the movie’s poster? He’s literally in only three scenes and each one is like 10 seconds long.
- What time period is the movie set in?
- What happened to Teju? She knew about Samuel’s shady dealings and did nothing, which kinda makes her an accomplice.
- How did Rekya die?
- Did Joy meet and marry Zach in the space of 4 months?
- Why did Joy do Samuel dirty like that?
- What time period is the movie set in?
- Where was Samuel’s younger brother the entire time?
- At some point in the movie, Samuel’s mother says she’s going to Lagos to look for him. Did she ever go?
- What was the point of having the girl Samuel impregnated die after the botched abortion?
- What was the point of having the impregnated girl’s sister go to the police?
- What time period is the movie set in?
- Why didn’t Rekya care that Samuel was publicly cheating on her with Joy?
- How long was Samuel in prison that his brother and father still looked the same when he got out?
- WHAT TIME PERIOD IS THE MOVIE SET IN?!
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