By Marie-Therese Nanlong

Plateau State government has been urged to take deliberate steps to correct the negative impression about Jos, its capital city, especially in the cyber space so that the many potentials of the State and its people could be fully realized.

Award winning film/television Director/Producer, Dimbo Atiya gave the charge in Jos at an event, “Conversation with Dimbo Atiya” organized by the Jos Business School in partnership with Tomruk iHub.

Addressing the young people who want to make a living out of films, he called on them to be hardworking, develop themselves, gain experiences, support one other to grow and have integrity as those are some of the attributes to success.

Atiya decried that despite the huge creative talents and clement weather, Jos has a negative narrative which has badly affected the realization of its potentials as film makers and other business people are skeptical about doing businesses in the city.

His words, “I have been creative and Jos is known for most of the creative talents that we have around here. Jos Business School felt it was important that they bring back someone who has made it from Jos to have a conversation with young people and those who are interested in trying to improve the narrative on how we can improve the creative space in Plateau State.

“There are so many potentials here, only if we can harness them but if you google the word Jos, the first thing that comes out is crises, blood. The government must be deliberate in changing that narrative. They need to begin to put out information, encourage people that can put out the information that will saturate the internet for people to believe that things have restored themselves and the environment is conducive for anybody to come and do business.”

He added, “There are many film makers that would want to come to Jos for their work but the first thing they will ask is, is it safe? It is easy for filmmakers to come here and shoot at a better cost because there are film schools here, there is a TV college here.

“There are young people who are ready to work for what they can get to survive in school. If I was paying a production assistant N100,000 and I come to Jos and ask a student to intern and learn about what we are doing at a lesser amount, that would help the student to even stay in school and still earn an income.

“Imagine if you gave about 10 productions come to Jos in a year, that is a benefit for everyone, the ripple effect would be that people will hire hotels for crew and cast, people will eat, if you have people who can rent equipment, it all boils down to boosting the economy through money that come in. In Jos, you can shoot for a whole day without sweat because the weather is perfect, let’s create a better narrative for Plateau State.”

Earlier, the Chief Executive, Jos Business School, Ezekiel Gomos noted that, “The film industry is one of the potential most important segments in the Nigerian economy. We have the potential like the World Bank said not only to entertain but to earn income and drive economic development through film.

“Today, the industry is contributing about 3% of the GDP, tomorrow, it can be more, especially in terms of export. If an industry can earn $600million annually, then what else do you need? You need to develop that industry.

“Plateau state has the potential, we need to clean our image in the cyber space, the image is negative but we can change it to positive so that when people google Plateau state, they see something good not something about crises and problems. We will work with the government to ensure that we tidy up the cyber space.”

It would be recalled that Atiya has highly rated productions like Sons of the Caliphate, Halita, The Rishantes, Nawa Nawa, Drawing Strength, Still Falling, among others to his credit.