Veteran Yoruba actor Yemi Solade has refused to walk back his claim that he entered acting before Nollywood legend Pete Edochie, drawing a sharp line between age and industry seniority in a fresh interview.
Speaking with Feel Right News, Solade said he would still greet Edochie with respect if they met, but he would not accept a version of Nollywood history that, in his view, sidelines Yoruba pioneers.
“Pete Edochie is my senior by age. If he enters this place now, I will go down to greet him, but I am senior to him in this world; we’ve been acting in Yorubaland before Nollywood. His people are always trying to undermine my tribe and say they started Nollywood. We’ve been acting before Nollywood started; even Nollywood, we started it,” Solade said.
He framed the fight as record-keeping, not personal insult.
“I cannot watch and let anyone undermine my tribe, because others not talking doesn’t mean I shouldn’t talk. I want to grow old like him, but I started acting before him, same way some people started before me.”
He cited Peju Ogunmola and Muka Ray as proof that Yoruba screen work existed long before the name Nollywood became common.
“I started before him; Yoruba people started making movies before any tribe in Nigeria. It’s a fact; facts don’t care about emotions.”
Solade also blamed journalists for asking only English-language filmmakers about industry origins.
“The press, media, and newspapers caused this; they only go to English movie makers to ask questions. My people don’t really care about these things, but we need to set the record straight.”
He added that even a senior Yoruba colleague like Jide Kosoko would not get a free pass if the argument was about who came first.
The latest remarks follow Solade’s earlier claim that he began acting at 17 during FESTAC ’77 and had spent about 48 years on the job by then. He has previously named Ade Ajiboye (Big Abass) as an early home-video pioneer and argued that Yoruba theatre simply failed to document its work while others “romanced the media.”
Pete Edochie, in recent interviews has said he began stage work in 1962 at age 15 with The Merchant of Venice, long before film culture took hold in Nigeria, and that his national screen breakthrough came with the 1985 adaptation of Things Fall Apart. He also told interviewers he does not see himself in the same league as other actors and challenged anyone who claims otherwise to say it openly.
Read “I’m Bigger Than Every Nollywood Actor!” — Pete Edochie Declares
The clash sits on an older argument about who “started” Nollywood. English-language home video is often dated to Kenneth Nnebue’s Living in Bondage in 1992, while Yoruba theatre and early home videos such as Ade Ajiboye’s Soso Meji (1988) and Alade Aromire’s Ekun (1989) are frequently cited as earlier. Historians and filmmakers still disagree on what counts as the first chapter: stage, Yoruba travelling theatre, or the Igbo-led video boom.