The Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria’s National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), Shaibu Husseini, has said that investors in the business of film exhibition will get waivers for two years. These waivers do not cover taxes. They cover licensing fees and premises fees.
To qualify, the targeted investors need to be new to the field and they would need to establish at least five community cinemas.
The waivers are part of a drive for growth in the filmmaking sector. Other initiatives to be embarked upon by Husseini and his team include a scriptwriting lab and a production lab. Some of these were revealed in an interview the NFVCB’s executive director had with Lagos Television as covered by The Nation. Days later, he spoke with Film Efiko.
New regulations
Clarifying some of the remarks he had earlier made, Husseini said that usually investors in cinemas would pay an exhibition license fee, which takes number of screens into account, and is usually about 25m naira at the start and then a 5m annual renewal fee. Both fees will be waived under the new guidelines.
“It’s to encourage investment in community cinemas,” he said, “which falls under regional licensing as stipulated in our old act.”
According to the executive director, the current act doesn’t make provision for community cinemas; only regional and national licenses are catered to. A new act is expected to be passed in the first quarter of 2025. This new act will include stipulations for community cinemas. “The broader objective is to use the platform of community cinemas to provide access to local content at a reduced cost and, of course, boost revenue for filmmakers.”
“With community cinemas,” he added, “some of the extra cost spent on transportation and buying expensive drinks and snacks at malls and multiplexes would be drastically reduced.”
Husseini also told Film Efiko that the Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, the body supervising the NFVCB, is working on making importation of cinema, mobile, and community cinema equipment tax-free.
