When it surfaced that the Ghanaian Movie Industry had slammed a whopping $1000 levy on Nigerian Actors seeking to work in Ghana so as to protect the interest of local Actors, various Nigerian writers, bloggers and commentators resulted to dirty little politics by failing to see any reason why Ghana could enforce any sort of levy targeting Nigerian Actors(invaders).
Some even went to the extent to articulate that, Ghanaians are very ungrateful and after years of help, support and nurturing by the Nigerian Movie industry, how dare Ghanaians throw such a levy out.
The worse of these dirty politics was the disrespect that poured out of the lips of the many Nigerian online commentators and bloggers who said among other things that, the Ghanaian movie industry has nothing to offer Nigerians, has never helped the Nigerian industry and as such a levy slammed on Nigerians will be a detriment to the “parasiting” Ghanaians themselves. (That really did hurt…)
Anyway, in a recent interview published by Nigeriafilms.Com, the president of Nigeria Actors Guild (Segun Arinze) emphatically stated that “Lately, a lot of Nigerians have been flooding Ghana to produce their movies and over there, you are given value for money”. This was his answer to the question, why are Ghanaians imposing a levy on Nigerians.
Is it not dismal that the president of the Nigerian Actors Guild in his wisdom and experience has such a respect for the Ghanaian “levy” decision and recognises a sense in its imposition since the Ghanaian movie market and industry infrastructures are being abused by Nigerians, yet, the “too known and loud mouth” Nigerian online commentators do not see any sense and respect the Ghanaian movie industry for such a protective decision.
What question do you think will follow next after Segun Arinze has been candid in his answer to the interviewer? As the interviewer was a Nigerian with the regular “delusional supreme” mind which most Nigerians posse (thinking everything good comes from Nigeria and Nigerians are super human beings), he threw out the question “So you can’t get value for your money in Nigeria?”
Segun Arinze answered, “My brother, forget patriotism now, there are no infrastructures on ground in Nigeria to give you any financial value for now. Is it electricity? The ministry is not doing much in terms of making locations available. For instance, you can’t just use major tourist centres to shoot movies in Nigeria.” Geez!, why can’t some people see any good in others, apart from themselves?
At this stage, the interviewer seemed not to be impressed at all and disrespected as a Nigerian, so he comes back with another pathetic question….Do you have such opportunities in Ghana?
Segun Arinze replied “There is a standard in Ghana. Movie is big in the country, even in Nigeria, but we don’t have enough support from government. We have shouted ourselves hoarse on the problem of piracy, yet we’ve not seen anything from our government. To even think they are only to formulate policies that will improve the industry, and also put in place enforcement agencies, are the reasons they are heads of parastatals….”
At this juncture, I know the interviewer was getting depressed and his super delusional ego filled with the notion of “Nigerian supremacy “was beginning to die off so he throws in another fascinating question.. Still on protection, are you trying to justify our neighbour’s $1,000 levy?
The answer was the truth that the interviewer didn’t want to hear, Segun Arinze answered by saying “If we had the infrastructures, do you think Nigerians would be taking their movies to Ghana? It costs millions to produce a movie here, even with stress, but much less over there and the quality of job is twice what you get here. Following the ban report, the information minister in Ghana called me last week to say it was not true that they had banned Nigerians from using Ghana as locations in their movies.
That call tells me that the country is benefitting from our roles in their nation’s development and that their leaders are close to the people. How can a minister know what we face when he doesn’t get close to us? Until a lot of wrongs are made right, the brain-drain will continue.”
Though I liked Segun Arinze‘s frankness and the level of opened mindedness he exhibited, there was one part of his answers I was not feeling. He said a minister of government from Ghana called him last week to say it “was not true that they had banned Nigerians from using Ghana as locations in their movies”. Geez! Which minister was this?
Maybe minister of Nigerian affairs…I am not aware of any absolute ban on Nigerians working in Ghana either. We are all aware of the levy and as he reasoned, it is long due. We cannot sit down for “multitude of foreigners” to abuse our markets, resources and infrastructure.
Now, we all know which industry is riding on whose back…. They are milking our markets, resources and infrastructures.
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