Chinedu Ikedieze, the renowned Nollywood actor widely recognized as Aki, has highlighted several challenges afflicting the Nigerian film industry. Aki pointed out that, beyond the persistent issues of piracy and the presence of miscreants, the lack of adequate government support stands as the primary hurdle facing the Nigerian cinematic landscape.
He elaborated that miscreants often intrude upon filming locations, demanding monetary payments from filmmakers prior to permitting the shooting process. Moreover, Aki mentioned that the government encounters difficulties in granting access to their affiliated organizations for filmmakers to carry out their productions.
These insights were disclosed by Aki during 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 can 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.”
