See Me See Trouble Oh: Actors and Actresses Fighting For Jonathan's 3 Billion Naira

Nollywood as an industry has become another theatre of the absurd by the happenings in the last three months since the president announced the grant at the State House Marina Lagos. It has been accusations, counter accusations, suspicion, lies and falsehood.

In well structured and organised industries, the associations, guilds practitioners and stakeholders will engage and create inter and intra mechanisms to access the grant for members. Sadly, that is not the case; but internal wrangling and accusations over a fund that has not been released. Prior to the announcement of the grant and the appointment of Ministry of Finance as the ministry charged with preparing guidelines for the disbursement of the grant.

In the last week, it has been a barrage of emails from different stakeholders to the ministry on why the guidelines released for the capacity building trench of the grant is fraught with irregularities and why it should not be implemented. According to this group, the conditions set in the guidelines were unacceptable to them, while another group seemed satisfied with the guidelines. As a major stakeholder in Nollywood, I have arrived at the conclusion that Nollywood is like the Israelite who in the Bible keep complaining even when God shows them love.

Of all the sectors in the creative industry, Nollywood remains the first and only industry in the history of the Nigerian state to be so supported with a grant; yet they are not contented. The internal fighting has extended to the coordinating ministry where petitions are being sent daily on why they do not need the grant or why it should not be executed. Any reader of this column will wonder if they were no consultations before the release of the guidelines by the Ministry of Finance. The fact is that they were consultations individually or collectively.

I will start with a brief background: A committee was set up to draft the guidelines for the disbursement of the grant on distribution, production and capacity building and this committee had representatives of the industry which included Prince Jide Kosoko, Dr. Umar Faruk, Stephanie Okereke and Amaka Igwe amongst other committee members from the Ministry of Finance, World Bank, British Council, Ministry of Culture, Censors Board amongst others. The committee met for weeks and then, the industry representatives were told to liaise with their colleagues on a major core component of the grant which is distribution and the driver of the other two components of the grant. At the focus group meeting of a select group of intellectuals within the industry, key decisions and suggestions were reached on the core needs of the industry in the area of distribution.

The focus group, that was broad based and cut across the industry, was condemned by a few who felt they should have been invited and because they were not invited, the recommendations and suggestions were not tenable even when some of the guild and association heads were part of the focus group. Based on the complaints, the Minister of Finance requested for an industry town hall meeting where relevant guilds and association in Nollywood were invited to review, contribute, suggest and fine tune the draft document. The town hall meeting was held at the Eko Hotel, Lagos, where the minister gave a week extension to the industry to make contributions to the draft document.

Ironically, immediately the guidelines were released, a small group of Nollywood stakeholders under the aegis of “Nollywood Summit” who were fully involved in both the focus meeting or the town hall meeting called a rather strange summit to condemn and discredit the N3bn as inadequate to meet the needs of the industry. This argument I consider weak because grants are support initiatives and the industry has survived without grants so saying it is too small makes no sense.

The second argument by organisers of the “Nollywood Summit” is that the assessors of the grants should be made public. But global practices for award of grants do not make public assessors for obvious reasons. Another weak argument by the group was that the grants should be given to the guilds and association to administer; this is laughable because an industry that has over 30 associations and guilds, which amongst these will manage it? Reacting to the Nollywood Summit communiqué, a statement from the ministry last week said those who were not interested in the grant can seek support elsewhere.

When I look at those behind the Nollywood summit, I sympathise with a majority who attended the summit out of ignorance –most of them have come out to disassociate themselves saying they were deceived about the motive of the gathering which was championed by a few failed producers and bankrupt marketers.

Majority of stakeholders are simply waiting to start accessing the grant which will go a long way in developing Nollywood.