br anding bin laden 187home village, following a successful thieving spree. Bin La, who turns out
to be Joshua’s son, has a long beard and wears turbanlike headgear in the
style of the real al-Qaeda leader. His helper, Clifford, on the other hand,
is introduced as a bogeyman by his very name, alluding to Clifford Orji,
the “Cannibal of Lagos.”^5 The two men continue their criminal escapades
in Ozallanistan, eventually “terrorizing” the villagers by extorting protec-
tion money. Just as the Village Council is on the verge of hiring a militia
to remedy the problem, American soldiers arrive, ordering the village
chief to hand bin La over to them within one week, as he is wanted for the
attacks on the United States. At this point, the movie ends and the audi-
ence is told not to m iss t he upcom i ng sequel, Osama vs. America. However,
because the sequel was never produced, it is likely the video was not the
blockbuster Jesus Team had hoped for.
Even though the movie was made in the Igbo language, it did not go
completely unnoticed in the Hausa-speaking north. Abdullahi Aliyu, the
editor of the magazine Duniyar Fim (Film World) published in Kano,
wrote an ironic comment in which he seethed indignantly about the dis-
torted image of Osama bin Laden promoted by the movie and cited the
film as an example of why northern Muslims should not allow southern
Nigerian Christians to meddle in Muslim culture and religion (Aliyu
2002). In the same commentary, however, Aliyu noted with some dismay
that the movie’s northern counterpart, Ibro Usama, which was released
in May 2002, was not any better; admittedly, it did not portray bin Laden
in a discrediting manner—but he deemed it simply a bad movie. Ibro
Usama has some of the typical features of Hausa camama videos. This
slapstick genre, produced cheaply and quickly, even by northern Nigerian
standards, thrives on a limited number of comedians whose acting is char-
acterized by clownish exaggeration and the obscene. The recurring, most
essential motif of these movies is the constant violation of social norms.
Rabilu Musa Danlasan (aka Ibro) is the undisputed star of the genre. The
face of this comedian, shown on the cover of any videocassette or disc, is
sufficient to increase sales, and it is safe to assume that this inspired the
producers of Ibro Usama to cast the cream of northern Nigerian comedi-
ans in their debut feature (the vhs cassette cover for which can be seen in
figure 6.5).^6 However, when Mato na Mato, the scriptwriter of the movie,
was asked by a journalist about his motives for writing the screenplay, he