Enugu celebrity twins, Chidiebere and Chidinma Aneke are no strangers to movie buffs in Nigeria . The pretty actresses cum producers who were the brains behind such wave-making movies as ’Compulsory Risk ", ‘Ujuaka"and many others have continued to enlarge their profile against all odds in the industry. share their experience and journey so far in the industry with publisher of Islanders Magazine, Ola Muhammed
Recently, you marked your birthday with the less Privilege, was it part of your foundation’s activities, what was the rationale behind this?
Remembering the less privilege in the society has been top on our priority list. Though we have a foundation but it is a responsibility that we’ve been carrying out for over four years. The gifts we took to the less privilege recently only coincides with our birthday, we only came to Lagos to design the poster of our new movie, National Experience. Since we are in Lagos we just felt it was needful for us to put smiles on their faces since it’s something we do monthly in the east.
You said you are in Lagos to design your movie poster, what’s the movie about?
The movie dwells on the National youth service and the issue of parental negligence where parents are so immersed in their insatiable quest for money without caring about the wellbeing of their children. The movie depicts the repercussion of parental negligence. I served in Osun state while my twin sister served in Oyo state, and she told me of her experience with some of her fellow corpers who were involved in sexual escapades with several men. I recall an unfortunate incident of a corp member that died in a motor accident on her way to Abuja to meet with one of her sugar daddies. The movie in essence emphasizes the objectives and benefits of the National youth service it also gives an expose of the danger of sexual promiscuity.
How many movies have you produced so far?
We’ve produced 21 movies, we used to sell our movies out rightly to movie marketers and we’ve sold 12 movies so far. Lately we’ve been marketing our movies single handedly including National experience our new movie.
What’s the experience like now as a sole marketer compared to outright movie sale and how do you cope being an Actress, Producer and now a marketer?
When you sell out rightly you are sure of collecting your money on time but there’s more profit in marketing the movies solely compared to outright sales, so we prefer to market our movies. For every business to succeed there must be adequate planning. If you don’t plan then you’re prone to failure and stress, for example we’re here in Lagos for the movie poster design, we shall be shooting an epic movie next month and we’ve started planning ahead. We don’t want to wait till when the date is close before we put logistics in place. It could be stressful though running around for poster designs which might take weeks for you to get your desired concept, supervision of the dub is another challenging stage but like I said everything boils down to planning.
Why did you decide to go into marketing?
It was a revelation from God! After our youth service my sister and I enrolled in a bible school and on a particular day our pastor gave a sermon tagged compulsory risk. He emphasized on the need for one to take a compulsory risk sometimes in order to achieve your goal. After the sermon I told my sister that message was for us, we contacted someone who was familiar with Lagos and he brought us took us around so as to get familiar with the state. That sermon inspired the title of our last movie, ‘Compulsory risk’.
You both are identical twins, is there anything you both can’t share?
(Chidinma)…..We can’t both share our men! My man is exclusively mine while hers is for her too. Aside that we both share everything including under wears. We normally put identification marks on our stuffs in order to distinguish ownership. There was this particular shoes that we both had, and we didn’t mark them to differentiate, a pair got bad and both of us quarreled over the better pair. We destroyed the shoe for peace to reign. One good thing about us is that we settle our differences on time; we don’t allow it to last long.
(Ebele)…We can’t both share the same man, or don’t you want our mother to have two son in laws?
If Mr. Right proposes to one of you now will you walk down the altar or would rather wait until the other one is ready?
(Chidinma)……Bible said HE and not SHE that findeth a wife has found a good thing and obtained favour from the lord. Whoever is ready doesn’t need to wait for anyone, but right now our priority is to work hard in order to make ends meet.
(Ebele)….. It is our wish to get married same day but it all depends on God’s will, though I’ll never feel bad if my twin sister gets married before me and same applies to her. We believe we’ll get married at God’s appointed time.
What are the qualities that you look out for in a man?
(Chidinma)…….A man with conscience is my ideal man, because no man with conscience will hurt or beat me. I don’t want to get married today and come out of it tomorrow, a man with good conscience definitely have the fear of God in him. Marriage goes beyond the physical looks because, the looks can be deceptive the attitude is what matters. Once you pray to God during courtship to reveal to you that which is hidden about your partner, you’ll start to see the bad sides of the man, however if you decide to manage his bad sides with the consolation that he’ll change, you’re only deceiving yourself.
(Ebele)…. My ideal man is a God fearing and a down to earth man
Do you see yourselves relocating from the east to Lagos?
If God says so why not? Every step in life depends on God’s dictate, if he says Chidinma and Chidiebere its time for you both to move to Lagos then who are we to decline?
From our conversations your relationship with God is evident, how pure are you?
(Laughs) My brother I’m not a saint but I can boldly state that I have a cordial relationship with my God. Everything that my twin sister and I are today is by God’s grace, we lost our dad sometime ago and God has been our father since then. If we tell you our story you’ll be surprise because we are a living testimony and all the glory belongs to God alone.
How true is the speculation going round that most actresses are sexually harassed in the industry?
The issue of sexual harassment isn’t restricted to the Nigerian movie industry alone, it happens in other industries be it Banking, power e.t.c mind you it takes two to tango. When a man makes love advances towards you if you like him you’ll accept his request and if not you have every right to decline. So I don’t really believe there’s any harassment as far as I am concerned. Neither I nor my sister had fallen victims of such. Whatever you’ll become in life depends solely on God’s approval you can only make efforts except God assent to it you can never be successful. Whether you sleep with all the stakeholders within an industry if God doesn’t approve your success in that field you’ll never achieve that feat, I’ll advice that aspiring actors pray and work hard with God they’ll definitely get there.
You both are identical twins, have you ever experienced a situation whereby your boyfriend of mistook you for sister and vice versa?
We’ve had several instances where people find it so hard to recognize us. We attended the same higher institution and I was a class rep , there was a particular day that my sister collected money from her course mates for handouts and they mistook me for her I just noticed that students keep coming to me that they gave me money. We also enjoy playing pranks with people especially when it comes to putting them to test on our identity. I recall an instance of a guy who was asking me out so I gave his full description to my sister and we were both playing pranks on him, she almost got raped by the guy one day when he insist that he must get down with her at all cost since then we stopped playing such pranks.
Recently a picture of both of you half naked was on a Magazine cover and people felt you both were craving for attention, what’s your take on it?
We took that picture for fun and I don’t know the publisher got it but I guess the picture was taken from our friend’s website , we don’t really know how it got to the magazine . We’ve come a long way for us to start craving for attention now, I have every right to my sense of style, the way I dress is my business, I can choose to wear Bra and pant it’s my business and the same applies for my sister.
How do you feel when you saw the picture published?
I can’t kill myself now, I’ve called the publisher severally and he’s not been picking my calls, maybe they appreciate us because we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. I see the picture everyday and I see no big deal in it.
How did you get into acting?
We got into the movie industry in 1999 through our elder sister used to be an actress before she got married, she was on the set of a particular movie and they saw our pictures and the producer asked to see us and since then we’ve been acting. We took part in several movies though I was still schooling then but the producers will wait and pick me up after school hours for the shoot but at a point my mother insist that I stop in order for me to face my studies but my twin sister was still around the camera while I was away, she’ll come around after her exams to take part in movie productions. We resumed fully into acting after our youth service and started producing our movies as well.
Was there a time each of you felt bad when one of you is invited to a movie production and not you both?
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