NOLLYWOOD’S OUTRAGE OVER PIRACY
of Nigerian movie producers lack the financial strength to make DCB and give to the cinema houses. Instead, they’d give cinemas DVD and flash drive. If they put the video in encoded DCB, it must be decoded before it can be used. The alternative for many producers has been to negotiate with pirates.
“You will be surprised that NCC know all these people and they called me for a meeting so that the pirates would avoid my work in the market. So what happens to other jobs? I don’t want to negotiate with criminals. If I tell you how much I spent on getting pirates arrested, that would give you an insight into how we suffer. I had to beg the NCC to follow me to Alaba and they said the last time they went there, their jeep was burnt so if we are going there, we have to get them vehicles. I hired three buses.
“I had to pay police. One group was charging one million and other one N1.5 million; the least charge was N500,000, just to accompany me to Alaba and they even told me that their team would not be enough. I had to go to military. I brought military to bring out their trucks. I won’t tell you what I spent to get the military to roll out their trucks to Alaba. I brought journalists. The NCC team was afraid to enter the market.
“We later learnt that some in the NCC are on the pirates’ payroll. My boys got there and started packing the movies that had been produced by order from different states. I arrested all of them. The market people came to their rescue and if you see the kind of weapons they came out with, you won’t believe that those kinds of weapons are inside Alaba market,” he revealed.
Piracy spells terror for Nollywood. For a high budget movie like October 1 which celebrates our national heritage, it is quite ironical that the criminals are the economic national heroes.
“We have a law against piracy and that law is not being implemented. We have NCC that is not working. The censors’ board has failed too. Only President Jonathan has supported Nollywood since inception. Right now, I have lost over N450 million,” he said.
He expressed optimism that the incoming administration would support the stakeholders in fighting the cabal of intellectual property thieves who reap where they have not sown.
Meanwhile, the stakeholders in the movie industry recently took to the streets in Lagos in an organised civil action against video piracy. The protest march which took off at the flyover bridge at Ikeja terminated at the Lagos State House Assembly where they were received by a member of the Assembly, Hon. Mufutau Adewale Egberongbe.
Unwavering, they continued singing till Governor Babatunde Fashola SAN, accompanied by the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Lateef Ibirogba, and the Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Mr. Lateef Raji, received them.
The governor assured the stakeholders that a bill would be presented to the National Assembly towards making a law that will end the impunity of the video pirates. He advised them to use the media in campaigning against piracy while educating the public on such illegal activities that hamper the creative industry in Nigeria.