With its exponential growth, the Executive Director/CEO of the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), Alh. Adedayo Thomas, has hinted that the Nigerian film industry is currently the largest employer of labour.
While adding that in 2019, CinemaCon, the world’s largest gathering of movie theater owners, honored Nigerian Cinema with the ‘Emerging Market Award,’ an award Nigeria still retains unrivaled to this day.
He hinted at this when he paid a courtesy call on the National President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr. Chris Isiguzo, at the NUJ’s National Secretariat in Abuja, stating Nigeria’s cinema had been recognized for three years in a row of exponential development.
According to him , “In fact, since 2017, the number of cinemas in the country has increased to 62. These are clear indications that, as governments at all levels grapple with economic challenges and consider diversification of their economies, the film industry is “the new oil” that can attract investors, create jobs, and boost the nation’s GDP if adequate attention is given to it.
” In the past four years, the current management of the NFVCB has aggressively taken on the challenges facing the Nigerian film and video industry through deliberate and practical steps towards repositioning the sector. These include sustained stakeholder engagement, rigorous capacity building for its workforce, enhanced enforcement operations, as well as building relevant partnerships to ensure that the sector does not just conform with global standards, but attracts investors, and thereby contributes more to the national economy.
” In its bid to effectively tackle the menace of unsuitable contents that threaten the sanity and preservation of Nigeria’s ethnic, racial, and religious harmony, the present leadership took deliberate steps to resuscitate the board’s National Task Force (NTF) that had gone comatose.
“The new task force formation, with the matching order to lead the board’s fight against unclassified films and exhibition centres across the country, is made up of NFVCB staff, industry stakeholders, and security agencies.
“In a bid to fulfill its mandate, the Task Force launched a nationwide raid on outlets selling illicit films and video works across the country, “he explained.
In his response, the National President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr. Chris Isiguzo, appealed to the Federal government to invest massively in the creative industry, saying we do not need to rely solely on oil.
He said that a situation where we run a mono economy will not help the country at all.
He further stated that our creative industry has continued to grow in leaps and bounds and is competing favourably with Bollywood.
