5. Gidi Blues
Femi Odugbemi’s Gidi Blues may feature a love triangle involving actors Gideon Okeke, Hauwa Allahbura and Nancy Isime as the plotline but even if you ignore this obvious necessity for drama, the film still works, maybe even better as a love letter to Lagos. Story may not be Odugbemi’s strong suit but visuals are and the thrilling shots of mainstream Lagos as achieved here are almost worth the price of admission.

4. The Wedding Party
Leave it to studio head, Mo Abudu to take on a pivotal role in the team that produced and marketed the feel good movie of the year. Directed by Kemi Adetiba (famous for her work on music videos,) The Wedding Party is a glitzy, star studded slice of contemporary Nigerian life, a send up of that most sacred of Nigerian traditions, the wedding ceremony. The Wedding Party does not aspire to high art and has its fair share of clichéd tropes but it is charming and funny and well made.

3. The Arbitration
The Arbitration is Niyi Akinmolayan’s glittery meditation on corporate power structure and how it plays out between both sexes. A fine, competent outing for most involved, The Arbitration is a Nollywood rarity, a finely acted, adult leaning drama that is big on ideas and wants to be so much more than its obvious constraints. Execution remains a challenge but the team scores cool points for effort.

2. 93 Days
An almost perfect confluence of funding, talent, skill and passion, 93 Days traces the heroics of the health workers who in 2014, put their lives on the line to stop Ebola in its track. Director Steve Gukas balances his cast and crew like a true profession and churns out a movie that though not without its falls, gives a very convincing, competent rendition of a slice of contemporary Nigerian history. Bimbo Akintola and Somkele Idhalama give career best performances.

1. ‘76
Although proudly made in Nigeria with a local cast and crew, the long in the works ’76 wants to play in the big leagues where the best of world cinema comes out to party. Adopting historical events as background for a young marriage’s ultimate test, ’76 is perhaps the most complete piece of work to hit cinemas in a while. Speaking to the Nigerian experience, all the effort put in displayed on screen. The acting is (mostly) rock solid and the technical achievement is stunning to look at. Movies do not have to be perfect to work and this one is proof.