By Lai Mohammed
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here today to inaugurate the Ministerial Committee on the Review of the Motion Picture Council of Nigeria (MOPICON) draft document. This event was earlier slated for Friday, April 8th 2016, but we were forced to postpone it because of the emergency Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja on April 7th on the 2016 budget. Let me therefore use this opportunity to apologise for the postponement.
Today’s inauguration is a fulfilment of the promise I made at the 3rd edition of the Kannywood Awards in Abuja on March 12th 2016 to set up a Ministerial Committee to review the MOPICON document with a view to fast-tracking its passage into law.
I have heard all the arguments for and against MOPICON. Some have argued that government has no business in helping Nollywood to set up a self-regulatory structure. I want to state here that in line with our overall responsibility for the nation’s information, culture and tourism policies, our role in helping to set up MOPICON is simply to enable Nollywood to play meaningful role in national development.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed {C} at the MOPICON committee inauguration, which held today at the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos.One of the ways we think we can tackle frontally the many challenges militating against professional and career fulfillment in the movie industry is to have a central body we can always refer to in decisions aimed at improving and modernizing the motion picture industry. Also, government’s interest in the setting up of MOPICON is driven by the fact that we at the supervising ministry need to work with a formidable representative group that is empanelled to lobby for the growth, development and welfare of the industry and its practitioners as well as make …Read More
Source:: The NET
