The call for government’s intervention in the entertainment industry, particularly from Nollywood quarters, has been very loud. However, the loudness of the calls or the seemingly unending complaints, successive governments have always looked the other way.
So, it is sort of coming out of the blues when President Goodluck Jonathan made an announcement regarding a package of $200million for the entertainment at 30th anniversary of the Silverbird Group, which held in Lagos on Saturday, November 6.
When it was time for the President to deliver his speech, it was unexpected that he would talk beyond the Silverbird Group but the knowledge he demonstrated was one of the high points of the night but totally eclipsed by the cheering news of massive funding.
“Silverbird and its dedicated staff, shareholders, supporters and fans, I salute your courage and imagination. To your chairman and my brother, Ben Murray-Bruce, I say keep up the good work. Ben can clearly be said to be a middle-aged man now, but he started at a very young age and that makes him a role model for Nigerian youths to emulate.
“Our youths must be supported and encouraged to choose that part of handwork so that they can use their creative minds to secure the buttress of success for the benefit of our nation. Silverbird opted to develop three industries: entertainment, media and mall development. These three industries today generate hundreds and thousands of jobs and provide hope for millions of young people.”
He continued: “My rating is that Nollywood is getting set to dominate the world. Our music has set Africa on fire. My prayer is that Silverbird will rise to be the most formidable global plan to come out of Nigeria. I recognise the importance of the entertainment industry in the Nigerian economy and the unquantifiable national prize that constitutes our entertainment sector, has a high growth in job creation potentials. In Nigeria, the industry generates over 250million dollars of annual revenue and presents more people with gainful employment. Till date, the chief constraint to the industry’s growth is the absence of long term funding. This government is determined to encourage and support an industry that makes all Nigerians happy and proud. Before coming here, the CBN governor was here specifically to listen to the speech of what we discussed but some how, he left for another urgent engagement but the finance minister is still present. I have given them directives to make sure that forms are created to enable people in this sector have loans. As we are talking, the Finance Minster told me that we have $200million to start with. Two weeks from our post date, the modalities of disbursement of the work starts. I can assure you that that is just the flag-off. I urge you to make more movies; write and produce hit songs, build more malls and more cinemas, provide jobs and give hope to our people. I close by saying congratulations once more to Silverbird Group.”
To say members of the audience especially the Nolly-wood stakeholders were simply thrown overboard with joy, is an understatement.
The ecstatic feeling increased with time as the President’s announcement dawned on them the more as time passed.
In a chat with Saturday Independent, veteran filmmaker, Eddie Ugbomah, applauded the decision but voiced his opinion on how the money should be disbursed.
“I want the money to be shared into two parts between the elderly ones and the young ones in the movie industry. I am in the process of calling on the elderly people in the industry, like myself, Femi Robinson, Olu Jacobs, Ola Balogun, Francis Oladele, Enebeli Elebuwa, Justus Esiri, Enebeli Elebuwa, Tunde Kelani and the likes for a meeting to talk about this issue. All I am clamouring for is that they give $50 million dollars to those of us who are the elders and experienced film makers and then $150 million should go to the young ones. The challenge after-wards is let us meet at the cinemas houses and let us see who will come up with more quality jobs and sell more between the two groups. What they need to do now is to get people like us who are experienced and are unbiased to read stories and approve the scripts that the fund should go into. And another thing is that it is a risk thing and so, again, the money should not be given to just anybody, don’t give the money to people who would go and make some stupid films or sing Nigeria praises all over the place. If you shoot a good film and it sells and goes round the whole world, it inevitably lifts Nigeria’s image but if you say Nigeria, Nigeria and you want to be a hypocrite or sycophant and the film does not sell, it is an utter waste.
“To me, it is the biggest thing that has ever happened to the industry because neither (Shehu) Shagari, nor (Sani) Abacha or even (Olusegun) Obasanjo deemed it fit to do this. So what Goodluck Jonathan has done is a big challenge to those of us in the entertainment industry and we must not let him fail. Bust as I said earlier, they should just allow the young to grow and also let the old live,”he said.
Another veteran, Tunde Kelani applauded the announcement while expressing caution that the implementation of the announcement might be long in coming with biting sarcasm.
“Well in terms of my opinion about it, I don’t know much about it, also because I just heard it too. But the thing about government is that, you know this is Nigeria and when government is thinking about building a bridge in any place in four years, they would rather announce that the people of the mentioned area are going to smile soon because they will benefit from the bridge, which is to be built. Why don’t they first complete the construction of the said bridge and then announce that it has been built for the people? Why do they have to announce it before it is built? This is because as one can see in this particular case, the announcement gives the wrong impression in that everybody would want to be a film maker or an entertainment person overnight. People who are into other businesses would suddenly start to register to become entertainment people and it is simply just because they mentioned some money as being involved.
“Well it is good, because if they mentioned it, that means we would have the benefit of accessing it in three years,” Kelani added.
For Ejike Asiegbu, former President of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), it was a highway of praises for the President, for he believes it is the beginning of a good omen for the whole industry.
“The President has done well and it is a very cheering news, and those of us in the motion picture industry are glad that the President has taken this initiative. It goes to speak volumes about what to expect of his administration and we urge all entertainers everywhere as well as well-meaning Nigerians to appreciate him and in what other ways can we appreciate him than to ensure Goodluck Jonathan remains there to fulfill his promise. For us in the motion picture industry, there is need for us to be more professional because with such largesse comes rules and regulations guiding implementation and only those who are qualified to have it should be able to access it in terms of loans. I also urge my colleagues, those of us that would be lucky to get out of it to be very careful towards ensuring that they come up with only good story lines and efforts with great technical quality that the whole country would be looking up to. This will make Nigerians appreciate Nollywood when it comes to projecting the image of Nigeria culturally and otherwise,” Asiegbu said.
Mahmud Ali Balogun, another notable filmmaker and arts critic whose forthcoming film, Tango With Me is being eagerly awaited had this to say: “I think it is a welcome development, the money will help to energise the industry but I think it should be channelled towards setting up the National Film Fund. This will prevent a situation whereby it is distributed or shared out haphazardly. The Ministry of Information and Communication knows all about the clamour for the National Film Fund already and what should be done now is just to establish it (with this fund). Due to the nature of the industry, the issue of collateral will begin to come up if the money is left to the banks. Therefore, it should be used as a take-off grant for the National Film Fund.”
Segun Arinze, who is currently the President of the AGN, also spoke to Saturday Independent, saying the details are still vague but it is the beginning of something great and unprecedented.
His words: “I agree that the modalities are not specified. How is the money going to be handled or managed? How is the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) going to handle the money and what qualifies you to get loans from that fund to make a movie? Hope we will not begin to do paddy paddy, ‘man know man’ and then mess it up. We have seen so many laudable projects from government that ended up as white elephant projects just like we have seen People’s Bank come up and die a natural death. But the good thing is I think it is the first time any president in Nigeria is talking directly about the entertainment industry, movies, music and what have you. It is a welcome development and Ben Bruce’s speech is the best I have heard over the past 45 years because the speech was articulate, on-point and straight to the point, it had everything but the next question is how do we begin to package and articulate ourselves? I have spoken with some of my colleagues who are heads of other guilds and I believe heads of different guilds making up CONGA (Coalition of Nolly-wood Guilds and Associations) will be a part of it, the Yoruba and Hausa sections of the industry as well as the marketers and distributors to be part of it too. Here is where we need some egg heads, people like Afrolabi Adesanya, Emeka Mba and others to help implement it.
“Let’s do something because I believe if we use this judiciously, the government might even increase it because this is a starting point as he said and we hope the Ministry of Finance, the CBN, the Ministry of Information and Communication under whose purview the movie industry falls, will ensure it is judiciously utilized so that people don’t take money to go and buy houses, pay for rent or buy flashy cars and begin to call themselves the big boys of the industry. So, to Ben Bruce for being the initiator of this, I say thank you and to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, I say a very big thank you, kudos to him.”
Posted by Darey
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