Main Page‘Why piracy is thriving in Nigeria’
Yinka
Ogundaisi is a Nollywood filmmaker and a former consultant to the
National Film and Video Censors Board. In this interview with JOAN
OMIONAWELE, he speaks on the problems plaguing Nigeria’s film industry,
among other issues.
As a filmmaker, what are the issues facing this industry?
We have to push the cart forward. One question we need to ask is, “are the people in government insensitive to our requirements? They are not, we have some people in some entrenched positions who should not be there but they are, it’s like a white goat in a China shop. My first movie in Yoruba was in 2002. It was entitled Omoge, starring Ope Aiyeola, I didn’t receive ten percent of my investment, I’m not saying it’s piracy but I know what it means to invest in something and not get your money back. What I’m saying here is not my way of saying my colleagues are wrong; I’m only saying please, let’s not follow the usual Nigerian pattern of arriving at the answer before the question is properly identified and analysed. I have been privileged to be on various sponsor committees and panels and I’ve also served as a consultant to the sole regulating agency in charge of the entertainment industry so I know quite a bit, I don’t know everything and I’m not claiming that I know everything, but as I said to a young journalist the other day, I am a member of the entertainment industry, I made the first English movie in 1990 before Nollywood. I didn’t know I was the first, I later made Destiny with Olu and Joke Jacobs in 1995.We made no money but in 1999, I felt like making another movie, I approached Olu and Joke Jacobs and they told me “With all your experience in this industry, you should be the one to champion the problem of piracy.”
So how do you think piracy can be managed?
A lot of young people see me as being more business inclined, but I’m also an active member of the industry. Our problem is piracy, as I mentioned in my piece, we have the best of the anti-piracy laws. Nigeria is a member of a copyright commission and there are boundaries that all members of this team subscribe to. At the YPO Conference we learnt that we cannot stand as an island. With due respect to the feelings of my colleagues, we have a piracy problem but the way to solve it is not reviewing the piracy law. The current penalty is a problem that most of my colleagues take an issue with. In Alaba, the big pirates break the distribution chain and the law is not meant for big but for small traders.
The backbone of every business is the distribution channel. Many that sell original music and films also sell pirated ones because the corporation that is supposed to police them has failed to do so. NCC [Nigerian Copyright Commission] is a specialised agency, it’s like a technical support group. In a newspaper setting, you have editors and subeditors. The NCC is a specialised agency and it is not limited to movies and music, but all aspects of infringement. It is at the invitation of the primary agency that the NCC comes in. NCC cannot police neighbourhood retailers until the primary agency that licensed them does its bit.
We have the Lagos State Censors board, so every state has a right to its own censorship board. The licensing should be done by national and state agencies. By involving the state and local government you are giving community distributors the strength they require. But it’s not done that way. Censors board is just licensing and collecting money. They realise that they are not being policed or monitored, so they sell original works less than pirated works. The penalty is three months imprisonment and a hundred thousand naira fine. If you break some of them, you break the backbone of the big time pirates. The pirate knows that even if he’s selling fifty naira, he has people who will subscribe to it. Okadas are not government regulated but they do not cross each other’s territories. We should have territories.
What else do you think the government should do to the criminals?
The issue with having the right to prosecute. Nigeria, as large as it is, has only one distributor, although there is a wide geographical stretch. We had a conference with EFCC and they said if local distributors are properly empowered, anyone arrested will be treated as economic saboteurs. Properly empowered community distributors are not manning territories which is a problem. With the two agencies working together, piracy would have been reduced if only the NCC had done its part with territory demarcation. The police, down to the DPO, told us to give them a list of our authentic distributors. With the list, we would know the legitimate ones. Hawkers should be empowered by respective cooperative societies. It is not a riot squad approach. It is a systematic thing. Some distributors are not clean because there is no distinguishing mark between the pirated copy and the original. A single mark on the original would go a long way so when the it’s pirated, you can trace it. If the censors board watches a movie and asks you to make some corrections, you label it “corrected copy.” This is because after the movie has been sold, the board wants evidence of what they approved and what is being sold. We go through that hassle to differentiate copies to the board, they should do the same when differentiating to the film house. If the movie leakage that leads to piracy comes from the film house, then you would know. At the board, they said they don’t want a distinguishing copy, they raised some issues but they can serially number the copies. From one thousand to five thousand, anyone could pirate these copies but you’d know who it was. For some reasons unknown to the marketers, they don’t want to do that. We want the government to probe the antipiracy law without attending to this. How much amount can the antipiracy come up with? Are you saying we should be reviewing the antipiracy law every three months? Or ask them to pay one million. There was a time when one million was a lot of money, we’ll see what happens in the next two or three years. It is, let’s take an educated approach to the issue in the interest of everybody and not to stampede the new government and the agencies in the hope that Nigerians will cooperate with the agencies and make it happen. Although it does not have to do with cooperation, the current leadership of the censors board believes that a way to solve a problem is to pretend it does not exist.
This might look like I’m hitting the censors board hard because I’m no longer there but I have always been close to the people and various suggestions have been made to me about how we can get out of this problem. I’m not sure if you know that a couple of entertainment giants have said to me at a point “Yinka, let’s propose you as the head of a new institution,” but I said that approach won’t work because censorship is not a Nigerian affair alone. You cannot have effective censorship if that agency does not have the power of distribution.
With the access of all and sundry to the internet, don’t you think there are more problems facing filmmakers?
The issue is that so many people have come up with online streaming but streaming is not a major source of getting back your profit. We may end up reviewing the antipiracy law but if we assume, we won’t get anywhere. We cannot, on our own, do things differently from other countries but we must first scientifically arrive at what will be deterrent enough. We have to know who the pirate is. I understand the pirate to be a man who is big and is at Alaba, who makes use of small distributors to perpetuate illegality. Let the censors board monitor the community distributors. The big guy at Alaba will still have to face someone. When journalists want to find out what the best film is, they go about assembling information, it shouldn’t be like that. If the community board does what is expected of it, they would just go to the board and ask them how many distributors are distributing a particular movie, you will get the information needed in a few minutes. You would also know which movies are top grossing. Let the board first focus on community distributors and use them to break the backbone of pirates. Once the board does what is expected of it, then we’ll go break down the pirates. Cottage cinema houses are a problem. Many artistes think that the government can help by establishing cottage cinema houses but people don’t have as much time and cinemas run on a fixed cost. This means there must be a limited number of attendees or else it won’t work. It was in recognition of this that home videos emerged. We have a problem of economy and transportation but you still want to invest thousands and millions to build cinema houses.
We have to push the cart forward. One question we need to ask is, “are the people in government insensitive to our requirements? They are not, we have some people in some entrenched positions who should not be there but they are, it’s like a white goat in a China shop. My first movie in Yoruba was in 2002. It was entitled Omoge, starring Ope Aiyeola, I didn’t receive ten percent of my investment, I’m not saying it’s piracy but I know what it means to invest in something and not get your money back. What I’m saying here is not my way of saying my colleagues are wrong; I’m only saying please, let’s not follow the usual Nigerian pattern of arriving at the answer before the question is properly identified and analysed. I have been privileged to be on various sponsor committees and panels and I’ve also served as a consultant to the sole regulating agency in charge of the entertainment industry so I know quite a bit, I don’t know everything and I’m not claiming that I know everything, but as I said to a young journalist the other day, I am a member of the entertainment industry, I made the first English movie in 1990 before Nollywood. I didn’t know I was the first, I later made Destiny with Olu and Joke Jacobs in 1995.We made no money but in 1999, I felt like making another movie, I approached Olu and Joke Jacobs and they told me “With all your experience in this industry, you should be the one to champion the problem of piracy.”
So how do you think piracy can be managed?
A lot of young people see me as being more business inclined, but I’m also an active member of the industry. Our problem is piracy, as I mentioned in my piece, we have the best of the anti-piracy laws. Nigeria is a member of a copyright commission and there are boundaries that all members of this team subscribe to. At the YPO Conference we learnt that we cannot stand as an island. With due respect to the feelings of my colleagues, we have a piracy problem but the way to solve it is not reviewing the piracy law. The current penalty is a problem that most of my colleagues take an issue with. In Alaba, the big pirates break the distribution chain and the law is not meant for big but for small traders.
The backbone of every business is the distribution channel. Many that sell original music and films also sell pirated ones because the corporation that is supposed to police them has failed to do so. NCC [Nigerian Copyright Commission] is a specialised agency, it’s like a technical support group. In a newspaper setting, you have editors and subeditors. The NCC is a specialised agency and it is not limited to movies and music, but all aspects of infringement. It is at the invitation of the primary agency that the NCC comes in. NCC cannot police neighbourhood retailers until the primary agency that licensed them does its bit.
We have the Lagos State Censors board, so every state has a right to its own censorship board. The licensing should be done by national and state agencies. By involving the state and local government you are giving community distributors the strength they require. But it’s not done that way. Censors board is just licensing and collecting money. They realise that they are not being policed or monitored, so they sell original works less than pirated works. The penalty is three months imprisonment and a hundred thousand naira fine. If you break some of them, you break the backbone of the big time pirates. The pirate knows that even if he’s selling fifty naira, he has people who will subscribe to it. Okadas are not government regulated but they do not cross each other’s territories. We should have territories.
What else do you think the government should do to the criminals?
The issue with having the right to prosecute. Nigeria, as large as it is, has only one distributor, although there is a wide geographical stretch. We had a conference with EFCC and they said if local distributors are properly empowered, anyone arrested will be treated as economic saboteurs. Properly empowered community distributors are not manning territories which is a problem. With the two agencies working together, piracy would have been reduced if only the NCC had done its part with territory demarcation. The police, down to the DPO, told us to give them a list of our authentic distributors. With the list, we would know the legitimate ones. Hawkers should be empowered by respective cooperative societies. It is not a riot squad approach. It is a systematic thing. Some distributors are not clean because there is no distinguishing mark between the pirated copy and the original. A single mark on the original would go a long way so when the it’s pirated, you can trace it. If the censors board watches a movie and asks you to make some corrections, you label it “corrected copy.” This is because after the movie has been sold, the board wants evidence of what they approved and what is being sold. We go through that hassle to differentiate copies to the board, they should do the same when differentiating to the film house. If the movie leakage that leads to piracy comes from the film house, then you would know. At the board, they said they don’t want a distinguishing copy, they raised some issues but they can serially number the copies. From one thousand to five thousand, anyone could pirate these copies but you’d know who it was. For some reasons unknown to the marketers, they don’t want to do that. We want the government to probe the antipiracy law without attending to this. How much amount can the antipiracy come up with? Are you saying we should be reviewing the antipiracy law every three months? Or ask them to pay one million. There was a time when one million was a lot of money, we’ll see what happens in the next two or three years. It is, let’s take an educated approach to the issue in the interest of everybody and not to stampede the new government and the agencies in the hope that Nigerians will cooperate with the agencies and make it happen. Although it does not have to do with cooperation, the current leadership of the censors board believes that a way to solve a problem is to pretend it does not exist.
This might look like I’m hitting the censors board hard because I’m no longer there but I have always been close to the people and various suggestions have been made to me about how we can get out of this problem. I’m not sure if you know that a couple of entertainment giants have said to me at a point “Yinka, let’s propose you as the head of a new institution,” but I said that approach won’t work because censorship is not a Nigerian affair alone. You cannot have effective censorship if that agency does not have the power of distribution.
With the access of all and sundry to the internet, don’t you think there are more problems facing filmmakers?
The issue is that so many people have come up with online streaming but streaming is not a major source of getting back your profit. We may end up reviewing the antipiracy law but if we assume, we won’t get anywhere. We cannot, on our own, do things differently from other countries but we must first scientifically arrive at what will be deterrent enough. We have to know who the pirate is. I understand the pirate to be a man who is big and is at Alaba, who makes use of small distributors to perpetuate illegality. Let the censors board monitor the community distributors. The big guy at Alaba will still have to face someone. When journalists want to find out what the best film is, they go about assembling information, it shouldn’t be like that. If the community board does what is expected of it, they would just go to the board and ask them how many distributors are distributing a particular movie, you will get the information needed in a few minutes. You would also know which movies are top grossing. Let the board first focus on community distributors and use them to break the backbone of pirates. Once the board does what is expected of it, then we’ll go break down the pirates. Cottage cinema houses are a problem. Many artistes think that the government can help by establishing cottage cinema houses but people don’t have as much time and cinemas run on a fixed cost. This means there must be a limited number of attendees or else it won’t work. It was in recognition of this that home videos emerged. We have a problem of economy and transportation but you still want to invest thousands and millions to build cinema houses.
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