Omoni Oboli Faces Backlash Over Timing of Alexx Ekubo Tribute Film Release

(Alexx Ekubo. Photo by AlexxEkuboOfficial)

Ossai Ovie, the Delta State Governor’s Senior Special Assistant on Media, has criticized Nollywood actress and filmmaker Omoni Oboli for releasing her film, which starred the late actor Alexx Ekubo, soon after his burial.

As a memorial to Ekubo, Oboli had announced the film’s release on her YouTube account, promising that the late actor’s family would get all earnings from the broadcast.

Ossai, however, expressed his disgust on social media, calling the release’s date unsuitable and claiming that the director was using the public’s grief to increase her online following.

“I find it disappointing that Omoni Oboli used Alexx Ekubo’s funeral to promote and profit from her film.

It is unsettling to use someone’s passing as publicity to increase subscribers, and it is upsetting to profit under the arrogant pretense that “all proceeds from the movie go to the family of late Alex Ekubo” or to preserve his memories.

He added that the announcement might have been postponed out of consideration for the deceased, even though the earnings contribution might divert attention from the main goal.

A funeral shouldn’t be utilized as a promotional event, he continued.

Oboli had previously stated that the movie was the start of her ten-year friendship with Ekubo, who died of advanced metastatic kidney cancer at the age of forty and was laid to rest on Thursday,  Arochukwu, Abia State.