In 1992, while trying to sell a large stock of blank video cassettes he had bought from Taiwan, an excellent idea struck Kenneth Nnebue, the Nigerian trader based in Onitsha. He suddenly realised that his cassettes would sell better if there was something recorded on them. So he shot a fi lm called Living in Bondage, about a man who achieves power and wealth by killing his wife in a ritualistic murder, only to repent later, when she haunts him. The fi lm sold more than 750,000 copies, and laid the foundation of the Nigerian fi lm industry as we know it today.

That industry is considered to be the world's third largest, after Hollywood and India's Bollywood. So big that it has its own name: Nollywood. Though the fi lms are made on budgets of about only $15,000, Nollywood has an estimated annual turnover of over 50 billion Naira (about 4.2 billion US dollars), with a growth rate of 8.5%. According to the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), the industry produces over 2,000 low-budget fi lms every year and employs about a million people in Nigeria, making it the country's biggest employer after agriculture.