The Federal Government is organising a workshop for stakeholders aimed at restructuring and reinvigorating Project ACT Nollywood, the N3billion grant programme established by former President Goodluck Jonathan to solve the main challenges impeding the growth of the Nigerian movie industry.
This was announced in a statement issued by Director of Information, Federal Ministry of Finance, Salisu Na’inna Dambatta, on Friday.
The workshop, which is scheduled for Friday July 1, would be attended by representatives of the key stakeholders in the Nigerian film industry drawn from different guilds.
Representatives of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, National Film and Videos Censors Board, Nigerian Film Corporation and Nigerian Copyright Commission, will also be in attendance.
Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, the convener of the workshop, has stated that the ideas discussed during the workshop would be part of the inputs for restructuring the project to ensure its sustainability.
According to Dambatta, “So far, the Project ACT Nollywood has implemented specialist training programmes in Nigeria and abroad in which 247 practitioners have been trained to improve their technical and professional capacities in the entertainment industry.
“Similarly, 113 film projects, employing 2,436 people, have been co-financed through grants from the fund at the cost of N799 million, while the Innovative Film Distribution Programme has been designed to support viable solutions in film distribution and the prevention of privacy.”
He quoted the World Bank as estimating that for each copy of a Nigerian film sold, nine pirated copies are sold.
The National Bureau for Statistics (NBS), he said, has estimated that the Nigerian Film industry contributed 1.4 per cent to the country’s Gross Domestic Product in 2013 and 2014, and employed an estimated 250,000 people directly.
Jonathan launched Projeect Act Nollywood with a promise to galvanise the Nigerian film industry in the areas of technical capacity building, film production and distribution.
With former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as manager, the project later became a draft tool for supporters of Jonathan’s re-election, with many of the beneficiaries allegedly spending funds received for domestic purposes.
