Let us begin this discourse from an anecdotal platform. Years ago Mallam Danladi Bako was the Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission. Quite a young and articulate fellow who cut his teeth very early with epochal programmes on NTA, the sort that have mutated into AM Television across the country today.
Quite a number of efforts at the NBC Office, Race Course, Lagos, and another major one in Cape Town, South Africa, where he had to use leadership masterstroke to resolve a situation that would have grown to become an international scandal to our nation. This was at the annual SITHENGI programme. It is the responsibility of government to create conducive environment for the operation of any business, the reason being that a thriving industry creates jobs, as it is in the entertainment and the telecommunications industries, where individual networth is very high. The government gets generous returns in terms of tax returns and individual well-being. And crime suffers setback.
That’s a great idea. But, the little problem is that the minister in his enthusiasm to do something, under-estimated the very inapposite situation and the very pervasive nature of the creative industry for which the broadcasters supply some of the pipes that carry the real stuff. The minister would never know the crater of differences among industry players which had blunted well-intentioned efforts in dressing up the sector for growth.
BON in the statement signed by its chairman, Sa’a Ibrahim, alerted that three persons on the Committee except the chairman are individuals and not BON members as membership of BON is made up of Organisations that are registered Companies with Corporate Affairs Commission or created by Act of Parliament of Federal or State Government and duly licensed by NBC. BON, therefore, appealed to the minister to do the needful. It sent a list of members to be included in the committee.
He tried to understand Nollywood and to do his best to promote the industry, although that best could hardly be appreciated. The creative industry the minister tries to affect is much bigger and more complex than Nollywood. In fact, it is an integrated industry combining so many subsectors. This is why the minister should have been more circumspect and less hasty.