Film industry second largest employer of labour – FG

The federal government has described the film industry as the second largest employer of labour in Nigeria which must be supported even as it noted that the industry contributed N83 billion to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2018.  

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed who announced this in Abuja  on Monday at the   inauguration of  the Steering Committee (SC) on the Commercialisation of the Nigerian Film Corporation (NFC), also noted that the country’s film industry had the potential to make Nigeria the entertainment capital of Africa. He added that the Federal Government was now set to reposition the NFC for effective service delivery.

“It is important to appeal, especially to our state governments, to invest in infrastructure in the industry. I don’t think it will be too much for the state governments to ensure they build at least one cinema house in each local government area of their state. That will give us additional 774 cinema houses,” he said.

He lamented that the NFC, which is expected to regulate and organise professional practice in the film industry, is facing a string of challenges, which include the inability to engage in commercial film production, budgetary constraints, operational inefficiency among others.

In his remarks, the Director-General of the Bureau for Public Enterprise, Mr. Alex Okoh, clarified that the reform of the NFC is not a privatisation but the commercialisation of the industry with no transfer of ownership or sale of share, so as to ensure that the values of the corporation are enhanced.
Okoh said the desire is to reposition the NFC to attract incentives as it has great potential.

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