Peace Anyiam-Osigwe: Obituary of the Visionary Lawyer and Filmmaker Passionate About Giving Voice to the Voiceless

When Peace Anyiam-Osigwe was asked about her other projects aside from the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) which she became best known for globally, one of her answers was “building cinemas throughout Africa”.

“We eventually hope to build 5,000 screens on the continent. What we’re trying to do is make sure every village, every local community, has a small cinema hall that can also be used during the daytime to teach young people how to use the Internet,” Peace Anyiam-Osigwe declared with the confidence of a visionary in a 2014 interview. That was just a glimpse of how much love she had for the African creative industry and for telling and distributing African stories.

From having her first article published in the Punch Newspaper at age nine to publishing her first magazine – ‘Clicks’ in the United Kingdom at age 16, hosting her talk show ‘Piece Off My Mind’ by the time she was 18, and pioneering the first pan-African movie awards in 2005, Peace Maria Ogechi Anyiam-Osigwe, a trained lawyer, poet, filmmaker and TV director and producer, who died on Tuesday, January 10, 2023, was an outstanding visionary who lived her dream and left lasting legacies that would serve as good templates for many generations to come.

“Peace, the Ada of the Anyiam-Osigwe family, was an outstanding personality, trailblazer, titan, pathfinder, go-getter, humanitarian, one-of-a-kind creative, and visionary leader in the film and television industry. Peace left indelible imprints on the sands of time,” a family statement announcing her death read.

A visionary, humble soul, and a born leader who ignited the dreams and visions of others, are some of the words friends, family, colleagues and fans have used to describe the personality that was Peace Anyiam-Osigwe.

As one of Africa’s film industry’s most treasured and pivotal visionaries, Anyiam-Osigwe left an ineffaceable impression on the industry and filmmakers.

“Peace was visionary, dogged, kind and generous. She was that power player who was willing to deploy her talent, resources and access towards achieving important company and industry-wide goals,” Efe Omorogbe, Founder of Buckwyld Media and 2Baba’s Manager, told me.

Although trained as a lawyer to fulfil the wish of her mother, Anyiam-Osigwe never practised law, she found fulfilment outside the courtroom, and it was in the creative industry where she had shown a keen interest from childhood.

“No, I didn’t plan to be a lawyer,” she told the Nigerian Tribune newspaper in 2021. “I was really obeying the orders of the matriarch of the Anyiam-Osigwe family, my mother. You dare not disobey my mother.”

In a creative and media career spanning more than three decades, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe was a movie and music video producer, published poet and author, TV host and talent manager who managed some of Nigeria’s leading talents in film, music and fashion. She managed Nollywood actress Kate Henshaw, singing duo Peter and Paul Okoye (P Square), and recently managed Somkele Iyamah-Idhalama, an actor, model and fashion executive.

“When Howie T discovered P Square, we collaborated to launch Timbuktu records so that he could push the superstars,” Anyiam-Osigwe told me in 2020.

Abiola Durodola who worked with Anyiam-Osigwe for three years described her work ethic as topnotch.

“Her passion for Africa and Nollywood is unmatched, and one of her major goals is to make sure that African cinema is celebrated outside Africa,” Durodola said.

Her specialties were stories that spotlight social issues and give voice to the voiceless, and she gave prominence to this topic with her writings, TV show and movies. This topic also took the centre stage in her 2010 soap opera ‘GRA Women’ which addressed the collapse of social values and ‘Fear of the Unknown’ the 2003 film which addressed the Osu caste system practiced among the Igbos in Southeastern Nigeria.

“One of the reasons why I went into film was because I think it’s important to bring to view things that people don’t want to talk about. Some of my films have dealt with Africa’s outcast system. My next big project is a film on women and child trafficking,” she said in 2014.

Zambian actress Chadzanso Mwenda said Anyiam-Osigwe paved the way for African filmmakers “long before we even knew of her. Now we are able to leave our home countries to travel and achieve because of women like her.”

“I appreciate her even in death,” Mwenda told me.

Peace: The Ada of Anyiam-Osigwe Family

Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, who was from Nkwerre in Imo state, southeast Nigeria, was born on March 30, 1969. She was the youngest and the only female of eight children of Emmanuel Onyechere and Dorothy Chinyere Anyiam-Osigwe.

Her father, who died in 1998, was a prominent Nigerian businessman, while her 88-year-old mother who studied journalism, was a professional schoolteacher before joining her husband to run the family’s business. 

She spent her childhood in Nigeria and the United Kingdom where she had her education at all-girls schools – Marymount International School and then at Cranborne Chase School in Wiltshire, England, before entering Oxford Brookes University where she obtained a degree in law and political science in 1989.

“I partially grew up here in Africa and the West. I spent 27 years of my life in the UK. I used to be extremely close to my dad even though he is late. He took good care of me and provided me with all the love a daughter deserves from a father,” she said.

Anyiam-Osigwe told ThisDay newspaper in 2014 that going to an all-girls boarding school was her mother’s way of trying to change her from a tomboy, a lifestyle she embraced from being her parents’ only girl child, “but it was already late because I also had a dad that trained me to be like a boy and to be independent. So it didn’t really matter that I went to an all-girls secondary school.”

How Peace Became A Continental Authority In Film

A member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple for Barristers, Anyiam-Osigwe founded her production company PMO Global Studios in 1990, a year after leaving Oxford Brookes University, and over three decades, the studio produced her TV shows and films, working with notable creatives.

In 2020, Anyiam-Osigwe told me the video for P Square’s 2003 hit single ‘Senorita’ was shot using the PMO Global Studio.

Twelve years after PMO Studios became the hub of producing some of Africa’s biggest stories, she sought a platform to celebrate the creative ingenuity of African filmmakers. This quest gave birth to the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA).

“There was a need to celebrate ourselves because Africa has a way of not celebrating itself. We always look outside the world and try to celebrate them. So the main reason I set AMAA up was to celebrate us as filmmakers from Africa,” she said. But the dream remained on paper for three years without execution until 2005.

“The first challenge to bringing AMAA to life was getting somebody to believe it could happen. I wrote proposals for AMAAs as far back as 2002,” she recounted. “I was taking the proposals around to try and get somebody to believe in it.”

In a rare twist of fate, it was Diepreye Solomon Peter (DSP) Alamieyeseigha, that gave AMAA the first breath of life after Anyiam-Osigwe’s brother pitched the idea to him. Alamieyeseigha, who died in October 2015, was the former Bayelsa state governor who escaped from London to evade justice after he was accused of money laundering.

“My brother said to him, our sister has this proposal, but she’s not been able to get someone to buy into it. He (Alamieyeseigha) said let her bring it to me and I rushed there. He said okay, I’m going to give you a chance, he didn’t see the big picture, but he gave us a chance and that was how AMAA was born in 2005,” Anyiam-Osigwe told CNN African Voices in 2014.

Bayelsa would later host 10 editions of AMAA from 2005 when the maiden edition of the continental award was held in the state. Through AMAA, African films gained more global recognition as they were featured in international film festivals.

In 2010 when Anyiam-Osigwe launched the African Film Academy Fund for African cinema, she said the initiative was “borne out of our commitment to the development of our stories, images and our heritage. We at the Africa Film Academy believe that the African film industry is viable.

In 2014, she stepped aside as the CEO of AMAA and announced that she wanted to focus her time on promoting the cause of the people in North-Eastern parts of Nigeria through the #No BAGA, #we are Baga initiative and other projects across Africa. One of the projects led to the training of more than 5,000 young people in filmmaking across Africa.

Anyiam-Osigwe and her partner Dayo Ogunyemi who took over as CEO of AMAA were working on a project to deliver 5,000 cinema screens across Africa.

Speaking on the project, she said “these ‘Cinemarts’ are community centers in rural and low-income urban areas, anchored by digital cinemas fitting an average of three hundred people, with indoor and outdoor refreshments areas. Each ticket to a show will cost one dollar or less. We have a lack of cinema halls on the continent now. We’re building them so that there is a form of distribution for African films that can make some money for the filmmaker.”

“She still spoke about the project last year during a meeting with some partners,” Abiola Durodola told me. “It’s a community project that would make cinema like football viewing centres but funding delayed the project.”

Before her death, Anyiam-Osigwe’s African Film Academy had trained over 5,000 young and budding filmmakers across Africa.

Durodola, who worked with her, said some of her plans before her death include expanding her training partnership and premiering two films in 2023. 

Her passion for telling African stories and promoting the industry earned her the moniker ‘Queen of Nollywood’.

Ayeni Adekunle, the founder of Netng and BlackHouse Media (BHM) said her remarkable contributions to the development of Africa’s audiovisual industry helped shape the careers of many talents across the continent and took the African film industry to a place of global respect.

A Continental Voice and Leader

In 2020 Anyiam-Osigwe was elected President of the Association of Movie Producers, the oldest Registered Producers Guild in Nigeria. 

She received the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles (PAFF) Channel Visionary Award for her efforts in promoting African Culture through the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA). She was nominated for the Creative Entrepreneur of the Year by the Creative Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria/British Council. She was the overall winner in the film category. She was bestowed with the African Vision Award for Innovative Initiatives for African Cinema at the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

The popular saying that a prophet is not honoured in his own town may not necessarily be true about Anyiam-Osigwe who was conferred with the national honour of the Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 for her contributions to the development of the film industry.

Marriage to Fiberesima 

Although little is known about her love life, Peace Anyiam-Osigwe was married to Greg Fiberesima, the movie director who directed P Square’s ‘Senorita’ music video, and the marriage lasted for a few years before they parted ways.

In a 2014 interview, she opened the lid on the story behind her crashed marriage to Fiberesima by insinuating that she left the marriage over infidelity. “When someone starts to bring another woman into your home, that’s the time to quit because there’s nothing else to stay for. My home is my den and once you enter my space, it becomes another case,” she said.

Anyiam-Osigwe is survived by her mother and siblings.

Peace Maria Ogechi Anyiam-Osigwe may have left at 53, but all who encountered her and those who only got to know her from the TV screen agree that she lived an extraordinary life, made a huge mark and her death is a great loss to the African audiovisual industry.

Durodola, who said Anyiam-Osigwe gave him opportunities to fly his wings and opened the door to many firsts for him, termed her “an institution that has built a lot of people.”

Peace Anyiam-Osigwe’s remarkable contributions to the development of African audiovisual industry helped shape the careers of many talents across the continent and took the African film industry to a place where it is respected globally.

Tributes 

Ayeni Adekunle said Anyiam-Osigwe gave the African TV and film industry her best and a platform to celebrate and promote the creative ingenuity of filmmakers.

“Her impact and the extraordinary life she lived will forever inspire many and be remembered, not only by her family and those who worked with her but also by the many talents across Africa whose careers she helped build,” he said.

Omorogbe who described her contributions to the African film industry as immense, said: “Peace is a giant of the African motion picture industry.”

“Peace was way more than a filmmaker and her shoes would be really difficult to fill. Other passionate and go-getter stakeholders will do their own bits and leave their own unique footprints in the sands of time,” he said.

Zambian actress Chadzanso Mwenda who met Anyiam-Osigwe during a mentorship session at the ‘Being in Nollywood’ house in Lagos said “her words that stood out for me the most were when she said learn to invest especially in real estate, learn to keep your life private especially your Love life, learn to treat all the crew members with kindness and respect not just the producers but the crew as well be yourself find your tribe early on in life real people in your circle, don’t just hang out with anyone and everyone especially in the industry find your tribe genuine people, those where her closing remarks to us.

 

Story by Michael Orodare

Cover Design by SamJoe Mbanefo