Recently, the president of the Association of Movie Producers in Nigeria, Zik Okafor unveiled the commemorative activities lined up for the 20th anniversary of Nollywood as a formidable film industry. According to him, the 18-day event would hold between August 9 and August 26, and it would feature seminars, workshops, lectures, carnivals, clinics and training clinics. He also revealed that plans were already being made by the film industry to build a Nollywood Village. According to Okafor, with the establishment of a Nollywood Village, the film sector would be bonded, thereby making it easier for artistes and stakeholders in the industry to meet and take quick decisions. In the same vein, he said that a Nollywood Foundation, which would cater for veterans in the industry, would be unveiled during this same period.
We salute the courage and resilience of the Nigerian actors and movie producers which have seen the industry progressing from obscurity when its first seeded film, Living in Bondage, debuted 20 years ago, to the current stage of hundred-per-week film releases that has occasioned Nollywood being acclaimed as the third largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood respectively. Indeed, we are aware of the daunting challenges the industry has got to trudge along with from its formative years which is denominated by inadequate funding that has always been a bane of development in the film industry. Other challenges include lack of formal or functional training facilities in the country and the undying flame of piracy, arguably the greatest threat to big investments in the industry.
Obviously, there is no argument about the fact that in spite of its celebrated status as the third largest film industry in the world and a large employer of labour vis-à-vis its short period of existence, Nollywood can hardly be compared, in any form and content, with both Hollywood and Bollywood. This is the area we admonish Nollywood to pay close attention to at this auspicious period of its 20th anniversary celebration.
As it has been asserted severally, people, irrespective of nationality, race, gender, and tribe are confronted with socio-cultural, politico-economic and techno-industrial challenges unendingly. Some of these problems are universal in nature while others are peculiar to various societies or nationalities. In a way, these usually translate to the contents and forms of most movies. In Nollywood and Bollywood, Americans and Indians respectively tell their own stories with visible nationalistic underpinnings.
We realise that the Nigerian movie producers initially leveraged on this and produced movies which reflected our lifestyle, culture, local fashion, burning issues, problems plaguing our society before the mass rush for exportation, which has drastically affected the quality of Nigerian films. At the early stage, Nollywood movies were made for the viewing pleasure of Nigerians with messages to inspire, motivate and correct societal ills. But in recent times, there has been a deviation with massive infusion of some offensive foreign values which apparently debase our socio-cultural ethos and constitution in Nigeria. We implore Nollywood to take a cue from African literary icons and contemporary writers who have ceaselessly denominated their works with Afrocentric issues, tactically forcing the world to embrace key issues of human existentialism from the African perspective.
It is a common knowledge that apart from the very potent issues of inadequate funding, low quality and content production, lacklustre professionalism, piracy, alien and negatively impacting lifestyles of frontline actors and actresses, the industry is being set back by ethnocentric politics, which has resulted in the ‘cluttered work syndrome’ as against the culture of ‘cross appeal’ which has remained the unique selling point of Hollywood and Bollywood movies. A resultant consequence of this is the creation of Kannywood-the Hausa-Fulani answer to the precariously Igbo-dominated Nollywood.
Indeed, we are aware of the good initiative of the Jonathan administration to fortify the emerging entertainment industry in Nigeria with the presidential $200 million Entertainment Intervention Fund, from the $500 million World Bank Small Growing Business Loan Scheme. Unfortunately, assessing this fund has been bedevilled by unbridle power show and ethnic bickering by the top echelon of Nollywood movie makers and practitioners.
Thus, while we congratulate Nollywood for its successes in spite of the daunting challenges it has confronted in these past tortuous 20 years, we implore all its stakeholders to embrace a new future-a new horizon, with renewed vigour, resilience, nationalistic patriotism and uncompromising professionalism capable of truly making it a force to be reckoned with in the world of movies like Hollywood and Bollywood in the next 20 years. Of course, we will like to state that this horizon should denominate most of the activities scheduled for the celebration of Nollywood’s 20th year anniversary between the 9 and 26 of this month.