NIGERIA Invest in 2012-13 - Newsdesk Media

The dramatic growth of the
Nigerian film industry to become
the second largest in the world has
had a profound effect on the
country. Martyn Cornell considers
the wider impact of the
phenomenon that is ‘Nollywood’
The single most visible mark of
success for the Nigerian
film industry, according to
John Ugbe, managing director
of digital satellite television
operator Multichoice Nigeria, is “when you
land in Kenya or any other African country,
and the first guy you see says, ‘Oga’” – the
Nigerian slang word meaning ‘boss’.
The fact that much of Africa now knows
what ‘oga’ means is a tribute to what has
inevitably been dubbed ‘Nollywood’ – and to
Nigeria’s incredible output,
currently running at around
900 films a year. Nigeria was
hailed by UNESCO, the
United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural
Organisation, in 2009 as the
home of the second-biggest
film industry on the planet in
terms of sheer output, just
behind India’s ‘Bollywood’
and far ahead of Hollywood
itself, at around 480 films a year.
A report by UNESCO on the world film
industry found that while some 56 per cent
of Nollywood films are made in local
languages, the rest are in English. This is
an important factor in Nigeria’s success
in exporting its films to the rest of Africa, and
its potential for further growth as a supplier of
films not just to Africa but to the world.
The rise of Nollywood has been
explosive, from a standing start in the early
1990s to an industry worth upwards of
N25 billion ($157 million) a year and
reckoned, depending on which source you
MEDIA, TOURISM AND CULTURE 161
read, to be Nigeria’s second-largest employer
after either the federal government or the oil
industry. As the British-Nigerian actor Maynard
Eziashi told Nigeria’s Vanguard magazine in
January 2012, “If we compare the first 10 to
20 years of Hollywood with that of Nollywood
you would realise Nollywood is doing fabulously
well.” There is even a Centre for Nollywood
Studies, part of the School of Media and
Communication at the Pan-African University
in Lagos, which opened in July 2011.
Paradoxically, this success has come in
a country with virtually no formal cinemas –
99 per cent of screenings take place in
informal settings, such as home cinemas. Far
from being a threat to the Nigerian film
industry, the lack of a formal network of mass
cinema outlets has been an opportunity:
Nigeria’s film-makers have been able to film
straight to video, massively reducing their
costs. A single film might be shot in as little
A film might be shot in as
little as two weeks or a
month, using cheap digital
cameras and locals as extras
as two weeks or a month, much of it out on
the streets, using cheap digital cameras
and locals as extras (their ‘pay’ a promise of
a copy of the finished DVD) and for a total
cost of no more than N5 million ($31,506).
Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies are
then sold back on those same streets at
around N250 ($1.58) a time.
Although the history of film-making
in Nigeria goes back at least as far as 1935,
when parts of the Zoltan Korda film,
Sanders of the River, were shot on location
in the country, the first major Nollywood
film is reckoned, by common consent, to be
INvEST IN NIGERIA 2012-13