$200m Entertainment Fund: Filmhouse claim to fund access false – ANCOP
Following Weekend Grooves revelation last week that Film House owned Mr. Kene Mkparu had accessed part of the much talked about $200million government intervention funds for the entertainment industry, the Association of Nollywood Core Producers (ANCOP) has faulted the claim, describing it as untrue, mischievous and very misleading.
Speaking through its president, Comrade Alex Eyengho, body insisted that the proposed intervention fund has not been released to any individual or group, pointing that the fund is yet to be released to the two banks penciled down as operators of the fund: the Bank of Industry (BoI) and Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM), “not to talk of anybody accessing.”
Kene Mkapru
“How can you access a non existent fund? It is either Mr. Mkparu is ignorant or he is simply distorting the facts for reasons best known to him.
From current information available to us, one kobo of the fund has been released to the banks for administration. This is the true position as at today,” Eyengho stated.
Before now, the dominant thinking was that nobody had been able to access the fund due to certain conditions, practitioners believed, would be hard to meet. But at a recent interactive forum with the officials of the World Bank, Mkparu made bold to disclose to his colleagues who have been struggling to access the same that his outfit has accessed the fund deposited with the Bank of the Industry.
This startling revelation, however reverberated last weekend, when some key players in the industry met with the representatives of Export-Import Bank of India(EXIM) and Nigerian Export-Import Bank in Lagos.
Mr. Alex Eyengho
One of the key players in the industry who spoke to Weekend Groove, expressed his disappointment this way; “None of us have been able to access the fund. We don’t know how Mkparu succeeded in accessing it, because the requirements are very tough. Most of us have applied , yet we have not accessed the fund.”
Meanwhile, at the forum also, the industry operators raised the issues of how they could access the fund, which according to them, is still shrouded in mystery.
However, speaking privately to Weekend Groove, the president of Association of Movie Producers(AMP) Mr Paul Obazele, disclosed that more stakeholders in the industry will access the fund before the end of this month.
According to him, the idea behind the forum was how funds can be released to some stakeholders who are embarking on the project of building cinemas across the country.
Mkparu from our findings succeeded in accessing the fund because his outfit, FilmHouse is currently financing its project of building nine cinema houses in major cities across Nigeria with the loan secured from the fund.
He recently resigned from his present job as the Managing Director of Genesis Deluxe Cinema, Lekki, Lagos, to set up FilmHouse which is a dynamic film exhibition company with the aim of developing and operating cinema entertainment values across the country.
