NOSC crisis: Kenneth Gyang resigns as Oscar extension for film submission runs out

Kenneth Gyang has resigned as a member of the Nigeria Official Selection Committee (NOSC).

The film director announced his resignation via his Twitter handle on Friday. He, however, didn’t precisely state his reasons.

With his resignation, Gyang becomes the latest committee member to exit the NOSC.

The NOSC has been submerged in a heated dispute over its decision to not submit an entry for the international feature film (IFF) category of the 2023 Oscars.

Shaibu Husseini, the journalist, and Mildred Okwo, the filmmaker, had earlier resigned from the committee.

On September 3, the NOSC voted on three films to pick an entry that would represent Nigeria in the IFF.

The entries were Biyi Bandele’s ‘Eleshin Oba’, Kunle Afolayan’s ‘Anikulapo’, and Femi Adebayo’s ‘King of Thieves’.

NOSC’s 15-member committee had, thereafter, reached 8-5-1-1 votes with the majority voting “no film eligible”.

Some members pained by the turn of events wrote to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the organisers of the Oscars, seeking its intervention to allow filmmakers to vote again and submit an entry.

AMPAS eventually granted the NOSC a one-week extension to “reconvene” towards reviewing its decision not to submit.

NOSC has since been divided against itself, with the discord resulting in rancor and even more resignations.

Some members had argued that redoing the voting process could amount to asking filmmakers who already voted consciously to backtrack on their judgments about the earlier vetted entries.

The AMPAS extension for Nigeria to submit a film for this year’s Oscars is to expire on October 21.