Minister rallies support for movie producers

MINISTER of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has urged governors to encourage and support movie producers in the country by providing incentives and creating enabling environment for the Industry to thrive in their respective states.

The minister, who made the call in Abuja, said if properly harnessed through regulatory and legislative framework, the film industry had huge potential to contribute significantly to the development of the economy.

He disclosed that the government was working with some development partners to provide data and statistics that would encourage the private sector to key into the industry by investing and making profit.

He, however, observed that one of the challenges faced by the movie industry was that it was largely unstructured.

Alhaji Mohammed decried the proliferation of guilds in the industry and said such amorphous structure would not augur well for the industry.

On the issue of piracy, he said his ministry and that of Justice were partnering to curb piracy, noting that the punishment for piracy needed to be stringent enough to discourage the unwholesome practice.

He said, “We need to encourage and support the movie industry from ever part of the country. It is the same enabling environment that we are going to provide for all of them, but I think the state governments should encourage such film-makers also by giving them access to help them because this could be very expensive.

“The state governments will also help by establishing cinema houses to show these films.”

“The good news here is that the artists, the film-makers, the musicians have gone far ahead and are today in a domineering position globally

“We must protect the intellectual property of our artists. We have laws already in place but there are some people who are of the view that the punishment is not stringent enough.