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Nollywood has a reputation for avoiding political issues, but a genre of “political films” emerged after the end of military rule in 1999. Nollywood extended strategies it had already developed to represent the workings of power in society. Traditional rule by kings and chiefs becomes an allegory for national politics in Kelani’s Saworoide and Agogo Eewo. The money ritual film is a vehicle for analyzing mechanisms of political predation in Nnebue Rituals. The family film, whose melodramatic mode is suited to the highly personalized forms of power in Nigeria, turned to the political elite, as in Dark Goddess and Stubborn Grasshopper, which tells the story of the dictator Sani Abacha. Given the un-ideological character of Nigerian politics, the moralism that Nollywood shares with African popular culture effectively addresses much that matters in governance as well as expressing the grassroots desire for justice.

This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. Awolowo's political memory remains iconic. As one of the three big nationalist leaders during the time of Nigeria's independence, he still inspires pride and respect, even among those who disagree with his political ambitions and ideals. As the first Yoruba leader in national politics, Awolowo also continues to represent a mythical – or potential – Yoruba unity not only to his political heirs but also to his ideological opponents. In this capacity, he furthermore continues to arouse fear and dislike by those who are suspicious of a Yoruba ethno-national politics. But most importantly, Awolowo's rhetoric of devolution, redistribution and education continues to structure intellectual, ideological and even practical opposition to the central government in both southern and northern Nigeria, even if it is usually only attributed to him by Yoruba speakers. Thus, unlike any of his contemporaries, Awolowo has created a political legacy that includes a lasting template for critical engagement with the Nigerian state.

The breakdown of law and order in Nigeria created general terror. A series of scandals linked violence, political power, and occult forces: rumors of money rituals practiced by the elite caused rioting; a vigilante group, the Bakassi Boys, armed themselves with spiritual weapons; many politicians were exposed as clients of a corpse-littered shrine. Nollywood reacted to these scandals, renewing its key symbolic complex, the money ritual, and creating the new subgenre of vigilante films. Villages are the preeminent imagined community for these dramas, seen as the crucial arena for struggles over governance and for spiritual conflicts among traditional, Christian, and predatory occult forces. The village genre localizes these struggles in a dense social fabric. Other kinds of crime film arose at the same time, around 2000; they show various foreign influences, but Nollywood’s crime genre is distinct, family melodrama and spiritual interventions largely displacing detective work.