VIDEO CENSORS BOARD INAUGURATES TASK FORCE

By Nseobong Okon-Ekong

The Director General of the National Film and Video Censors Board, NFVCB, Mr. Adedayo Thomas has reconstituted Task Force Against Unwholesome Movies. The move, according to him, is to rekindle dashed hopes and fertilize the soil for creative seeds to thrive and yield bountiful harvests.

In a rare honest assessment of the parastatal, Thomas admitted that the Board has not lived up to expectations in recent years, leading to chaos in the system; a chaotic system that has taken profit away from the right beneficiaries to the profiteers of the laxity in regulatory efforts.

He announced his preparedness to ensure improvement on, respect for, and enforcement of intellectual property rights in the film industry. He said, “That is what we are set to achieve with this gathering. Industry players lose billions of naira to pirated, smuggled and unclassified works by mostly unlicensed agents and distributors, and thereby denying the government its huge accruals. The activities of these individuals or groups impacts negatively on the society, demoralizes stakeholders, sends very wrong signals to potential investors, and darkens the possibilities of making right developmental policies for the sector.”

Veteran film producer, Chief Eddie Ugbomma will lead the task force in the role of Patron/Advisor while the director general assumes chairmanship. He named some cogent issues to be addressed by this taskforce, which include; proliferation of unclassified or unapproved movies; influx of directly translated foreign movies; distribution movies by unlicensed agents and distributors.

The mandate of the taskforce is to stem and eradicate the growing detrimental trends killing growth efforts in the industry. He encouraged the task force to working with sister agencies and security agencies.