Popular Nollywood actor, Chinedu Ikedieze popularly known as Aki, has stated some of the issues bedeviling the film industry in Nigeria.
Aki mentioned that aside from piracy and hoodlums, lack of government support is the major challenge confronting the Nigerian film industry.
He said hoodlums often invade movie locations to order filmmakers to pay a certain amount of money before they are allowed to shoot.
He said in addition to that, the government also finds it difficult to release their parastatals for filmmakers to shoot.
Aki revealed this in a recent interview with Naija Mouth-Piece.
Ikedieze said,
“People are feeding on other people’s intellectual properties and it’s not good for the business of filmmaking.
“Another thing I want to pinpoint that I see as also part of our challenges is, the kind of relationship we think we would get from people that we are not getting. If you go to shoot, touts will disturb you. They will destroy your camera and even fight you. And those people don’t know how that place came about. They are not paying tax. They are not contributing anything, but they would ask you to pay for the place you want to shoot the movie.
“To even use parastatals to shoot is another problem. The government finds it difficult to release their parastatals for us to use to shoot. To shoot at the airport, you will apply before they would allow you to shoot at the airport. Government is a very big challenge.
“Sometimes, we will script epic stories that would depict Nigeria in a good light, but because of all these bottlenecks, we will begin to manage. We will be looking for ways to cut down the production so that we would achieve a little bit of what we had in mind.
“If we have all these things at our beck and call, of course, it would be easy. We will give our best and we will churn out wonderful movies that will stand the test of time.”