Piracy: Producer urges Govt to establish cinemas to act

Mr Sunny-Ken Awoji, Vice Chairman of the Association of Movie Producers (AMP), Abuja Chapter, has called on governments at all levels to establish cinemas in order to effectively curb piracy.

He made the call on Friday during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

According to Awoji, establishing cinemas across all states in Nigeria is the best antidote against the menace of piracy which is currently hitting very hard on the movie industry.

“Government, both federal, state and the local level, should ensure that the cinema culture is promoted by investing in it.

“I urge them to establish cinemas centres in all the 774 local councils to enable producers to screen their films anywhere in the country, before releasing them, and this will greatly reduce piracy.

“Since the pirates get copies of movies from the market, cinemas will prevent the hasty introduction of the movie to the market.

“If a movie shows in cinemas across the six geopolitical zones for a month, the producer of the movie would have recouped his money before it enters the market,” he explained.

Awoji stressed that it was imperative for the government to invest in cinemas since establishing standard one was capital intensive which made it unattractive to private investors.

He added that the few centres currently serving the industry were available in few major cities, and were owned by private investors, which made them competitive and almost unaffordable.

“If you send your movie to a cinema in Nigeria today, it will be in the queue for over 10 months, and that is, if it is accepted in the first place.

“In most cases, the owners of the cinemas will demand 70 per cent of the earnings from such movie, and the producer will be left with just 30 percent.

“This is why we want the government to establish cinemas in all the local governments of the country for producers to get returns for their investment and be protected from piracy as well,” he said.

He, however, added that it was time for Nigeria’s Copyright Laws to be reviewed to effectively tackle piracy in line with modern realities.

Awoji explained that government investment in cinemas would also provide employment opportunities for Nigerian youths besides other job opportunities which abound in the movie industry.

“Producing single movie, depending on the script, can have an average cast of 50 persons, besides the crew members.

“Before you now consider other auxiliary services attached to film making,” he said.

NAN reports that Nigeria’s movie industry, popularly known as Nollywood, is the second largest movie industry in the world, behind Indian’s Bollywood.

It has an estimated one million people directly or indirectly working in the industry; making distributing and screening of movies become the country’s second-biggest source of employment after agriculture.

In 2014, Nollywood reportedly contributed more than 1.4% of GDP – or $7.2bn to Nigeria’s economy.

However, piracy has remained a major challenge to the productive growth of the sector over the years