The news media is replete with fascinating headlines and pleasant narratives about the Nigerian Film Industry. The story has been told of how Nigeria’s Nollywood has metamorphosed into the second largest film industry in the world, per volume of productions released yearly, behind Bollywood (India) and ahead of Hollywood (USA).

This glamourized status was attained by the industry, thanks to a sect of artistically inclined individuals, whom the contemporary filmmakers have come to appreciate as pathfinders, who laid the founding blocks, of what has come to be appreciated today, as the structured, yet not so structured industry, that we now pride ourselves to have, to the envy of the world. Back then, these veterans were simply driven by talents, and their artistic poise.

We have also read gratuitously aggrandizing testimonials of how after Crude Oil, Nollywood is the country’s biggest export of all time, to the rest of the world. Thanks to efficient global distribution matrixes, and, digitalization, surely, our movies have served as a veritable conduit through which our cultural values, arts and realities have been exported to the global scene.

After our Agricultural Sector, Nollywood has been benchmarked as the highest employer of the country’s labor population. The industry provides employment to more than a million people, either as direct labor, or overhead. Across Nigeria, not less than 1000 filmmakers are on locations weekly filming different production titles.

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Report, in the fourth quarter of 2018, revealed a growth by 2.38%, which represents an increase of 0.27% points when compared to the fourth quarter of 2017, which recorded a growth rate of 2.11%.

While I will not attempt to bore you with figures, the crux of my drift with these numbers is that Nigeria’s economy which is classified broadly, into the, Oil and Non-Oil sectors, has Nollywood as a performer in the Non-Oil sector, including, information and Communication, Transportation and Storage, Agriculture and Manufacturing.

These facts, further, lends credence to the significance of Nigeria’s homegrown motion picture industry to the nation’s economy. However, there is a room for improvement.

With the conspicuous profile credited to the budding industry, with the even inestimable prospects, it remains a paradox, that there abound numerous bottlenecks that more than a few practitioners in the industry deal with.

The average filmmaker that depends solely on their filmmaking trade in Nollywood, cannot boast of a standard of living that measures up to the work they do. For a fact, the average filmmaker that leads a fancy life has other source of income that fuel their lifestyle.

Lamenting about the deteriorating state of the movie industry, and how practitioners live from hand to mouth, veteran producer, Zik Zulu explained: “Cost of everything is going up in this country, only in Nollywood you find everything about the producer’s revenues going down.

“It is a tragedy. At home now the producer is struggling to smile with his family. Meanwhile his works keep the world smiling and having fun with their own families.

“If I depended only on Nollywood to earn a living I would have long come close to committing suicide. Nollywood is in distress. Producers are dying of hunger, of hypertension due to heavy debts from rent, school fees and even chop money.” Zulu remarked bitterly.

Read more here...


https://ngg.ng/2019/06/24/the-bottlenecks-in-cinema-film-production-business-and-the-agony-of-nigerian-filmmakers-by-seunmanuel-faleye/

You cannot imagine the untold hardship these nollywood practitioners go through.