By OLA BALOGUN

THE recent announcement by the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, that his government has decided to begin work very soon on a film studio project known as the African Film City to be located in Epe at a whopping cost of $100 million sounds eerily similar to an identical announcement that was made by Mr. Donald Duke during his tenure as Governor of Cross River State. Duke had launched the ill-fated Tinapa film studio, which was supposed to form part of a giant complex of shopping malls, hotels and entertainment centres in the neighbourhood of Calabar at an overall total cost of $450 million!

Then as now, a shadowy Hollywood-based film company was announced as the overseas partner of the grandiose film studio project, but nothing was ever heard again of the alleged Hollywood partner once the funds for the project had been disbursed.

The sad epitaph to this ill-conceived film studio project (which was built without consulting any film makers) is that only a single feature film was ever made in what eventually became a phantom film studio that has lain abandoned in ruins ever since… In retrospect, the bogus Tinapa film studio can best be described as emulating a long series of monumental scams that have been carried out over the past four decades under the pretext of establishing a film industry in Nigeria.

This series of scams can be traced back to the bogus launch of a non-existent film laboratory that was inaugurated in Port Harcourt with great fanfare by General Olusegun Obasanjo just before he left office as military Head of State in 1979. This supposed film laboratory, which had allegedly been constructed at a cost of several million dollars, vanished without trace directly after it was inaugurated without ever processing even one single foot of film!

Following this failed project, Mr. Brendan Shehu, the then Managing Director of the Nigerian Film Corporation, succeeded in convincing the Federal Government that the best way to establish a film industry in Nigeria was to establish a film laboratory in Jos, Plateau State.

This film laboratory was accordingly built and equipped at a cost of several million dollars; but not surprisingly, it ceased to function almost directly after it was commissioned, having only processed a single film by Brendan Shehu himself entitled Kulba na bama to justify the tremendous expenditure.

Closer to us in time, the Lagos State Government under the leadership of Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode suddenly announced in May 2017 that it had commissioned a total of four stage and movie theatres located in Igando, Oregun in Lagos itself, as well as in Epe and Badagry following a decision that the governor had made in private after watching a stage play at the Muson Centre in Lagos.  

These four theatres, which were built at an undisclosed cost believed to run into billions of naira, were directly commissioned by the Lagos State Government from a company named Terra Kukture Studio without the benefit of any prior public bidding or tenders board process, in flagrant contravention of all existing governmental procedures.

Following a hasty building process undertaken by the company, the Oregun theatre was commissioned with great fanfare by President Muhammadu Buhari on April 24, 2019, while the one at Igando was commissioned by Mr. Akinwunmi Ambrode himself on May 15, 2019, followed by that of Epe a few days later(the theatre located at Badagry was never formally commissioned).

The upshot of this scandalous affair has been that out of the four supposed theatres, only one is currently known to be functioning as a venue for the screening of mostly non-Nigerian films, while a second is said to have been sublet to a church entity for religious services… The theatre located at Oregun has never functioned at all!

In each of these ill-fated ventures, the same pattern can be observed whereby individuals in government, under cover of wishing to benefit the Nigerian film industry, have colluded with unscrupulous partners to launch projects at gigantic sums of money, with no benefit whatsoever accruing to the people of Nigeria…

Will the proposed $100 million Lagos State funded Epe film studio eventually turn out to be another one in the long list of ill-conceived projects executed in Nigeria under the pretext of providing support for film production?

It is not too late to call a halt to this calamitous adventure, which is being undertaken without any prior public consultations or tenders board process.

Buyers beware!

Ironically, the much neglected truth is that sprawling buildings and expensive equipment do not constitute what is required to set up a film industry, as can be observed from the examples of the British Film Institute, the Swedish Film Institute, la Cinématheque française, the Australian Film Corporation and other similar entities that have been set up in various countries all over the world for the purpose of providing support for home- based film industries.

Rather than film laboratories and empty buildings, what is in fact required is a transparent process whereby film budgets are made available in a non-commercial context to fund the production of high quality films.

In the case of Nigeria, however, time and time again the preferred approach that has been adopted by those in government has been to partner with unscrupulous entities to dilapidate public funds for private benefit under the cover of supposed support for the emergence of a Nigerian film industry!

* Dr. Balogun, a pioneer Nigerian film maker who directed a long list of feature films over the past five decades, wrote from Lagos