To Adaego With Love is a Nigerian romantic drama centred on two young people navigating intimacy and vulnerability against the backdrop of unresolved pasts.
For many Nigerians born after the civil war, history often arrives fragmented. Dates are memorized, slogans repeated, but the emotional aftermath is rarely explored. What happened after the guns went silent is not commonly examined in popular culture, especially through intimate, character-driven storytelling. To Adaego With Love enters that silence deliberately.
Set in 1975, less than a decade after the Nigerian civil war, the film tells a restrained love story between an Igbo schoolteacher and a Northern Nigerian soldier, both navigating a country still learning to live with itself. Rather than foregrounding spectacle or violence, the film focuses on the quieter aftermath of war, where memory, mistrust, hope, and love coexist uneasily.
Through exclusive conversations with the director, producer, writer, lead cast, and supporting actors, The Nollywood Reporter examines how To Adaego With Love approaches history not as a distant tragedy but as a lived experience that continues to shape Nigerian identity today.
Why This Story, and Why Now
Director Nwamaka Chikezie describes the film as both timely and deeply personal. For her, the absence of post-war storytelling in Nigeria is not accidental but generational.
“The importance of history at this time cannot be overemphasized,” she explains. “A lot of people in my generation did not properly learn history. We often hear about the war, but the aftermath is rarely explored. What happened after the guns went silent is something many of us were never exposed to.”
As an Igbo woman, Nwamaka sees To Adaego With Love as an attempt to bridge that gap using cinema as an accessible medium. Film, she argues, can make history emotionally legible without turning it into a lecture.
Producer and writer Brenda Ogbukaa Garuba echoes this motivation. Her script emerged from a desire to interrogate silence rather than retell familiar narratives.
“I was responding to the silence around how the civil war affected everyday relationships,” she says. “We talk about politics and numbers, but not about love, fear, and mistrust between ordinary people after the war.”
Together, their collaboration focuses on how unresolved history lives quietly inside families, homes, and personal choices long after official reconciliation is declared.
Love Inside History, Not Outside It
One of the film’s central challenges lies in balancing a tender romance with the emotional weight of national healing. Nwamaka describes this as a delicate dance that began at the script level.
“The brief was simple but bold. Bring history to a contemporary audience. Bring 1975 into 2026,” she says. “We did not want to drag the audience back in time. We wanted to bring history forward.”
This approach shaped the film’s visual language, from its colour palette to its shot composition. Although the film is set in the past, love is treated as a timeless force rather than a period detail.
Garuba reinforces this balance in her writing process. “I treated the love story as personal, but never separate from the country,” she explains. “Their environment always shapes Adaego and Balarabe. Their private moments are tender, but the world outside keeps interrupting them.”
That interruption becomes the film’s emotional tension, where intimacy is constantly negotiated within public memory.
Characters Rooted in Real Nigerian Histories
The film’s central characters draw inspiration from lived Nigerian realities rather than fictional archetypes. Garuba notes that before the war, inter ethnic marriages were common, particularly between Igbo traders and Northern civil servants.
“The war tore these families apart,” she says. “Balarabe and Adaego are shaped by those broken bonds and the lives that were never put back together.”
Balarabe, the soldier, is inspired by men who genuinely believed in unity rather than power. Adaego reflects women whose education and dreams were interrupted by conflict, yet who continued to carry families and communities forward.
For lead actress Chisom Agoawuike, Adaego’s inner strength stood out immediately.
“I was drawn to her simplicity, her career as a mathematics teacher in an era that was not particularly progressive for women,” she says. “Her vulnerability existing alongside her strength deeply resonated with me.”
Agoawuike immersed herself in research, learning period-specific dialects, studying 1970s fashion, rehearsing choir songs, and even learning to ride a bicycle to fully inhabit Adaego’s world.
Portraying the Soldier Beyond the Uniform
For Adam Garba, playing Balarabe meant moving beyond familiar representations of Nigerian soldiers.
“What drew me was the originality of the story and how delicately it handles a significant period in Nigerian history,” he explains. “Playing the soldier allowed me to portray him as a human being capable of love and compassion, not just duty.”
Garba approached the role with restraint, understanding the sensitivity of the post-war period. His preparation included physical training, historical research, visits to army headquarters, and conversations with veterans.
“I focused on understanding the emotional weight people carried in the 1970s and today,” he says. “I let gentleness guide my performance.”
This restraint is evident in scenes where Balarabe is tasked with reconciliation efforts. One moment involving a resistant community chief, Garba notes, unexpectedly unlocked emotional vulnerability and underscored the moral weight of his character’s responsibility.
Music as Memory and Healing
Music serves a purpose beyond atmosphere in To Adaego With Love. Both Ajayi and Garuba describe it as a narrative force with emotional agency.
“We treated music as a character,” Chikezie tells the Nollywood Reporter. “A full character with its own emotional journey.”
Garuba adds that music offered emotional honesty where dialogue could not. “For Adaego and Balarabe, music becomes the space where they can be honest when words are not enough.”
Agoawuike describes the musical sequences as deeply personal, allowing her to access vulnerability and connection with Garba’s character. Supporting cast member Riyo David, who plays Captain Samuel, also highlights music as central to his character, a military officer who loves music and leads a band.
Listening to artists like Osita Osadebe and Onyeka Onwenu helped shape the film’s emotional landscape, grounding it in cultural memory rather than nostalgia.
Honouring Onyeka Onwenu
The film carries additional emotional weight as one of Onyeka Onwenu’s final performances. Ajayi speaks of her involvement with reverence.
“Working with her was a masterclass in grace and excellence,” she says. “It is deeply sad that she is not here to see the final film.”
Garuba notes that Onwenu’s presence shaped the screenplay refinement process, particularly in how women and elders were portrayed. She represented a generation that lived through the pain with dignity, reinforcing the need for honesty and respect in storytelling.
Ensemble, Mentorship, and Creative Risk
For a first feature, Nwakama Chikezie describes directing industry veterans as surreal. Chioma Chukwuka and Bob Manuel Udokwu’s involvement shaped the film’s emotional grounding.
“Chioma came with her usual fire,” Nwamaka says. “Mr Bob held my hand figuratively and did not let go until we wrapped.”
Agoawuike recalls learning discipline, humility, and emotional truth from working alongside them, while Riyo David highlights the importance of genuine off-screen relationships in building authentic ensemble dynamics.
The film’s biggest creative risk, Chikezie admits, was telling a story that predates the filmmakers themselves.
“My parents were barely teenagers at the time,” she says. “But we did it anyway.”
What the Film Leaves Behind
To Adaego With Love resists easy conclusions. Forgiveness, Garuba insists, is portrayed as slow and imperfect. Hope is fragile, not triumphant.
“There is a line in the film that says, ‘The way to peace and reconciliation starts with dialogue,’” Nwamaka notes. “That is the core takeaway.”
Garba hopes audiences leave with compassion for both soldiers and civilians, while Agoawuike wants viewers to reflect on conviction, service, and quiet resilience.
Ultimately, the film argues that unresolved history does not disappear. It lingers in choices, relationships, and silences. By choosing love as its lens, To Adaego With Love offers not escapism, but an invitation to remember, talk, and begin again.