Marketers misunderstand a biz model that could change the fortunes of Nollywood
By Prince Osuagwu in the Vanguard
Published: March 12, 2007
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A week after a rousing  launch of the new distribution framework by the Nigerian  Film and Video Censors Board, NFVCB, before a large gathering of industry players, a section of the movie making industry last Thursday reacted angrily, accusing the Board of preparing the market for a takeover by big multinationals after the locals have nurtured it.

In an open letter to the President, the operators specifically accused the Director-General of the Board, Mr. Emeka Mba of planning to kill the industry with the New Distribution Framework, adding among other reasons that the guidelines will ruin the investments of twenty years in the area of artists development, acquisition of production equipment, marketing and distribution.

“The current venture of Mr. Mba will sound the death knell of the home video film industry: an obituary waiting to happen. This newly designed framework of the NFVCB is nothing short of Mba’s Mephistophelian dismemberment of our home video industry. The attendant effect, Mr. President, will be cataclysmic,” the group sounded apocalyptically.

And then the appeal: “We humbly appeal to Mr. President to come to our aid. We implore the Hon. Minister to rein in Mr. Mba and call him to order. We also appeal to relevant committees of the National Assembly to intervene on behalf of our industry. More aptly, we call on Mr. Mba to retrace his steps and roll back his armada!”
For those who follow the industry very closely, it would have been surprising if this reaction did not come.

For right there at the launch some marketers left the hall shaking their heads that the end of time for their businesses has come. And for an industry where operators are very cynical and extremely very suspicious of each other, such reaction was to be expected.
However, the reaction did not wait for the passage of time to place some judgment on the distribution framework.

In spite of the popularity of Nollywood, its spread across the globe and the cultural projection it has given the country, those who follow the industry closely knew the fortunes of the sector had been beggarly, forcing most prominent movie makers and actors to seek alternative means of livelihood.  Those who have really made money from the industry were the early operators. If it wasn’t pirates, unregistered video clubs and smugglers killing the sector, it was the marketing that was highly unstructured with returns difficult to track, that was killing the fortunes of the operators. Consequently, the finance sector described the industry as woolly and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The industry glittered outside but its fortunes were getting deeper in the mire.

The Leke Alder Consulting estimates the market worth of Nollywood to be over N522bn. Yet this money could not be seen in the sector or on the operators of the industry.

The operators yearned for a radical intervention that could aggregate all their creative energies, give a clearer picture to ancillary operators who want to play a role and redirect the fortunes of the industry.

In acknowledging the subsistence returns of the industry and a radical decision to do something, Mba said: “As a national regulatory agency empowered by its enabling laws to control and monitor all motion pictures distribution, exhibition and marketing, the NFVCB has decided on an initiative of strategic intervention by implanting enforceable standards in the film/movie distribution system with the key objective of:  providing durable and commercially viable structures, which will be accepted locally and internationally.”

“What the Board targets to bring about include erecting a formidable scaffold upon which a truly economic structure for the processes of distribution of films and video works can be carried on. In doing this, the Board is certain that it will bring sanity to the downstream rental activities of movies as well as plug all channels of drain and sabotage associated with piracy and illegal trade in Nigerian movie works beyond the national boarders,” Mba had said at the launch very optimistically.

Instead of some kind of blind faith the framework recommends some kind of financial provision and discipline, and some professional networking to be involved in the process.

Books must be kept and the banks will be involved in the process.
But he assured that there is a role and place for everybody who has been involved in the industry, even assuring that some workshops and legal clinic featuring Nigerian and European lawyers will be organized at BOBTV holding in Abuja next week. This is intended to deepen understanding of the process.

For those who have made movies without making money, they know a lightening rod of hope when they see one. Veteran film maker, Chief Eddie Ugboma, described the marketing model as the power house of the industry and solicited cooperation from the operators in order for it to succeed.

Messrs Mahmood Ali Balogun, who did the launch and Zeb Ejiro who was almost tempted into politics, promised to return to the industry and make movies since the framework has given them a reason to hope that they could now get their investment back.

In spite of the optimism at the venue of launch, quite a few people present were already feeling threatened. It was either they did not truly understand or do not want the industry to grow beyond their capacity or their marketing pattern had not been straight forward.

Stories have been told of some marketers who pirate even their own products just to let the directors or producers know that their movies were not making money. Stories have been told of very successful movies that leave their producers more impoverished.

The framework, from the explanation of Mba, is set to change a lot of things. When it comes into operation, operators will get special security seals from the NFVCB to enable track their movies.

Apart from the early movies like Living in Bondage, Onome, Rattlesnake and some others, when was the last time a local movie really made some good money? This question will be difficult to answer, yet it is such answer the financial institutions will need to encourage them to come into the sector. When the framework is activated it will be possible to get such answers online.

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