Film Industry Dying In North – Stakeholder

The North’s content of the creative landscape of Nigeria’s film industry is conspicuously missing in the global arena.

A Nigerian producer and director, Prince Daniel  Aboki, stated this while presenting a northern movie, Mai Martaba, in Kano yesterday.

He said between 2016 and 2022, NETFLIX invested about $175 million in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa without anything going to the northern film industry.

Daniel added that there is no structured industry in the North that can compete with other parts of the country with the trend of modern film making.

He added that there is need for technical capacity, scaling up of production in value and equipment as the industry can employ many people based on its value chain.

He cited the ‘Mai Martaba’, termed the most expensive Hausa movie ever produced, and currently selected in the award route in one of the biggest festivals in Europe, Septimious Awards in Amsterdam.

He said the North is not accessing the available funds for its content.

“Yes, funding is the biggest challenge. People in the North don’t even believe in the industry and so every dime you spend will have to be your hard earned money. Nobody invested a kobo in the production.

“Again, we are glad that nobody invested their money, because they might not have the patience to wait for the gestation period of a film. This film has been on for two years six months, from shooting to post production, working on it round the clock, and okay, if it was somebody’s money, we can’t sleep. This is an industry they don’t seem to understand, and so funding is the critical problem.

“This is talking about a lot of money. In record they say, for now, it is the most expensive Hausa film ever shot. I will give you just an aspect of the production, like equipment alone, to rent equipment alone was over N25 million. Just equipment, we are not talking about the cars, we are not talking about accommodation, and that you have to move everybody, we moved everybody to Daura.

“I brought in the crew from Lagos, equipment from Lagos, because the main problem is that in the North, we hardly have high-tech equipment, so you have to bring them from Lagos.

“We filmed ‘Mai Martaba’ on ARI, that is the highest equipment for now and you can’t find it anywhere in the North, not even Abuja. So you have to rent it from Lagos and bring handlers and then the special effects make-up came from Imo. Because again, there is capacity gap.

“So the challenges are enormous and if we begin to view the challenges we would have not been able to do the film,” he stated.

However, he sent a message that would ginger the North in the sector by exposing some of the available funds they can access and pushing forward the content he has created.

“The message to the North is that, is a bit tricky. Tricky in the sense that averagely in the North  don’t want to take loan because it comes with an interest. If not, even in the last administration there was so much money for the creative industry in the Bank of Industry where you can access as much, in fact for people who do cinemas, you can take as much as N500 million and is a single digit interest, it was just 9 percent. Even the moratorium is supposed to be two years and then the loan is 10 years.

“But nobody in the North accessed it. Some for the reason that it would come with an interest, others because of documentation, they might not be able to have all that is needed of the paper work to do.

“Most of the people who do big films in Lagos have accessed the Bank of Industry facility.

“Now with IDICE, it’s budget under the office of the vice president there is almost $617 million (N990,285,000,000). But what comes to the North is left for the North to decide if they can tap into the resources of the creative industry.

“Even the Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, Barr Musawa, has talked about the projection of the creative industry. She’s looking at a hundred billion.

“So there is money, but how do you tap into the money? To be honest, we wouldn’t say the federal government hasn’t given attention to the creative industry, there is money. I just spoke of $617 million, how much is it in naira? But how much comes to the North?” he added.