Back in 2013, the Goodluck Jonathan regime launched what it called ‘Project Nollywood’.
At the time, project Nollywood was launched in a bid to give Nollywood better access to funds and budgets to expand the movie industry. It was a major shift in an industry that otherwise struggled with major funding.
In 2020, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) is creating a situation that will paralyze the industry’s ability to recoup its investments and make a reasonable profit.
A lot of changes in seven years indeed.
While the project Nollywood launched to its own fair share of doubts (there have been valid questions about the benefits of project Nollywood courtesy of Jonathan’s administration) it was the first time in the industry’s young history that a Government will expressly declare its intentions to back it up financially.
It is no news that Nollywood struggles with funding. While the massive film industry churns out hundreds of thousands of films via its DVD market weekly (Netflix sees a high number of Nollywood entries weekly and Cable TV constantly acquires a huge number of original Nollywood content), many of these films are still low budget films. Many of these films still lack a level of quality that makes it acceptable for international standards.
Cinema movies are trying to incorporate better storytelling, good pictures and a quality that can easily travel far and level up with its contemporaries outside the shores of the Continent into their stories.
Perhaps, this is the reason major external investors are beginning to take a deeper interest in Nollywood. With hopes of recouping their investments of course.
In 2019, Nollywood saw a rise in Netflix’s investment. Its first original acquisition, Lionheart made it all the way to Nigeria’s official Oscar entry before it was unfortunately disqualified.
However, Oscar entry or not, Lionheart made quite the impact on the level of quality and storytelling Nollywood now willingly churns out. It travelled far. It sparked conversations.
Lionheart wasn’t alone. Back in November 2019, popular American Professor/Writer, Roxanne Gay tweeted that The Wedding Party and Chief Daddy were some of the Nollywood content she was enjoying at the time.
Nollywood wasn’t only travelling far, it was sparking conversations and catching the attention of people influential enough to grab more audiences for the industry.
And with that type of reach comes investors willing to test the market by investing into it. A good thing, right?
So what happens when the investment made has stifling repercussions? What happens when the regulating body throws a noose around Nollywood’s neck?
According to NBC’s revised code, published as ‘Amendments to the 6th Edition of the NBC Code’ back in May 2020, content owned by any major content provider (think WAPTV, Iroko, Netflix, Amazon etc) has to be sub-licensed at a price that’s not controlled by the initial creators or owners of said content but by the regulators of the code.
In other words, if XYZ network made ABC content for N10 million, it could be compelled to sub-license this content to other networks (read competitors) for N2.5 million. Or whatever amount has been arrived at.
Exclusivity – which is a major bargaining chip – will be thrown out of the window. Sports and news programming will have to be offered to other broadcasters for retail. The ability to make decisions on content created or owned by these platforms/networks/service providers will be flung into the deep belly of Elegushi.
Yes, it is that simple and serious.
NBC which should be enabling more external investors and investments is throwing up the middle finger to everyone who has dared to invest or is willing to invest in Nollywood.
It is basically trying to turn private service providers into some sort of public entities that have to submit to the whims of whoever is in charge in that part of the public sector.
It is no longer news that NBC hasn’t done well over the years to sustain government-owned media platforms/medium/networks. Perhaps this energy should be channelled towards public parastatals that are begging to be re-evaluated?
If Amazon were to decide to stop buying content from Nollywood producers because it cannot find a viable means to make money does that not eventually backfire? Because not only Amazon will make this decision, every right-thinking investor will.
Someone, please stop NBC before they ram into one of the biggest film industries in the world and ruin it with half-baked policies.
Code red, anyone?
