The federal government has reiterated the urgent need to protect Nollywood actors, saying they work hard but getting peanuts in return.
Speaking at the grand finale of a stage play titled “Agbarho The Musical”, recently in Abuja, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Mustapha, said the Federal Government would ensure that Nollywood actors get a fair deal from their trade.
“Agbarho The Musical is produced by 30-year-old Patrick Otoro.
According to Mustapha, the proprietary rights of Nollywood actors needed to be protected by the government so that they can derive maximum return from their artistic endeavours.
In his word, the SSG noted that one of the things that government has to do is to make sure that their rights are protected because that is why they lose a lot of money, pointing that there are a lot of leakages in the process in terms of people pirating their products.
He said “Nollywood in the African Continent and even in the world is thriving and big industry. But the actors and actresses, do they receive commiserate benefit from the kind of work they do?” They are not getting value for their output. They train very hard, they perform very well but at the end of the day, what gets to them is peanuts.
“The industry will have to restructure itself in such a way that there will be capable and competent managers that will manage their artists. All of these must be put in place so that whenever talent is exhibited, it will be protected< Mustapha said.
Otoro, a veteran actor in the Nigerian movie industry, stated that the essence of the stage play was to promote arts and culture in the FCT and specially to develop theatre culture.
He explained that the storyline was about the female gender relating to the conspiracy of silence that women deal with in today’s world.
“We can change the narrative. So we are using the arts, particularly this story, and one of my reasons is to use this story to tell about the female gender,” he said.
