NFVCB takes road show to Makurdi

The four-day event which took place at the J. S. Tarka Foundation, included a road-walk around the Benue State capital and brought together film producers from the state and experts from across the country. An industry initiative of the Board, the Road Show, is a vehicle through which it consolidates on its pledge to encourage […]

The four-day event which took place at the J. S. Tarka Foundation, included a road-walk around the Benue State capital and brought together film producers from the state and experts from across the country.
An industry initiative of the Board, the Road Show, is a vehicle through which it consolidates on its pledge to encourage and improve on the production on indigenous movies across the country.
According to the Director General, Ms Patricia Bala, “This is an initiative to rescue indigenous languages because for Nigerian indigenous languages to be preserved and saved from total extinction there is an imperative need for the government at all levels to encourage the production of indigenous language films.”
She said participants are expected to be drawn from different parts of North Central State of the country as the Board urges stakeholders at all levels to consider the option of giving Nigeria’s indigenous language films a boost. “This is as a way of preserving such languages and saving them from total extinction as they are presently being threatened by global statistics,” Bala said.
According to the NFVCB indigenous language films are critical to the development of any nation, arguing that out of the 500 languages spoken across the ethnic groups in Nigeria, only 84 of them are still in use.
“The Board is poised to using the event to encourage the production of Nigerian films in indigenous languages, with this particular event being a follow up to the earlier road show held last year in at Edinburgh and Glasgow and Calabar, Cross River State.”
But, the encouragement is not just about the languages. It is also aimed to educate the Nigerian children about their culture. They need to know their culture transmitted in their languages. This initiative by the Board is very important because it is about recognizing that we need to do something about our languages and our culture, not just talk about it.
Yunusa Tanko Abdullahi, Deputy Director, Corporate Affairs also explained that the Roadshow is a media platform which serves as an interface between the Board, practitioners and the regulatory functions which drive the industry. “One of the critical aspects of the movie industry which plagues it, is the ignorance of regulatory functions of the Board. It therefore makes it imperative for us to have workshops, seminars and presentations to bridge this gap.
“Benue for instance has a lot of productions but the practitioners don’t the requirements in terms of what to produce.  The movies are not scripted. Shooting takes place and editing follows online. They’re unaware of their obligation to the Board.” According to Abdullahi, the Roadshow is geared towards remedying this.
For participants it was a welcome development as their productions will be better tailored and executed.