Nigeria’s Bank of Industry (BoI), has thrown its weight behind the moves by the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB)’s Special Task Force on Uncensored and Unclassified movies, with a cash donation of N500, 000, and two KY 200-26C Kymstone Motorcycles.
Presented with the items at the Board’s Ikoyi office on Monday, Executive Director of NFVCB, Alhaji Adedayo Thomas, was full of praises for the development bank, just as he urged other stakeholders to support the initiative, which, to some extent hitherto, will curb the menace of piracy in the country.
He however revealed that the producer of period film, ‘’76’, Mr. Tonye Princewill has responded to the clarion call, with a donation of N500, 000, meant for the refurbishment of one of the agency’s vans, used for enforcement.
On the two motorcycles donated by BoI, Thomas said they will be quite useful in running the day-to-day affairs of the organization, as well as easing movement in Lagos traffic, during enforcement operations.
Highlighting some of the activities of the agency in the last 12 months, he said: “We have been raiding the markets for unclassified and uncensored works. And we have recovered a lot; the materials we recovered in Alaba market alone are worth over N150million. We did a lot also in Abuja, Kaduna, Benin, and Onitsha. We are on different court cases with the suspects that were arrested during our operations, hoping that the judiciary will do justice, so that the market will be fine and well booming in 2018.”
According to Thomas, the agency’s resolution for the new year is to reduce the illegal activities of pirates on unclassified and uncensored works to the barest minimum, encourage local production, and stopping illegal importation of foreign films, as well as illegal exportation of local films, so that the stakeholders in Nigeria can smile to the bank.
