The 5th PAO NDCRC : What’s the Utility of Nollywood Panels and Conversations?

The theatre-esque hall at Muson Centre, Onikan hosted Nollywood veterans, professionals and cultural practitioners from 18th to 19th November, 2025, for a two-day conference. Themed From Volume to Value: The Future of the Nigerian Motion Picture Industry in the Digital Age, the conference had industry leaders, creatives, policymakers, guild and professional bodies engaged in warm and heated conversations about the future of the Nigerian motion picture industry. The 5th Peace Anyiam-Osigwe Nigeria Digital Content Regulation Conference (NDCRC) organized by the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) under the leadership of Dr. Shaibu Husseini, Executive Director /CEO NFVCB, was important to  “chart the course for the future of Nigeria’s motion picture industry—focusing on sustainable growth, value creation, and global competitiveness.” 

The Peace Anyiam-Osigwe NDCRC, according to Dr. Husseini’s welcome address, was established in 2021 to serve as a unifying platform for professional exchanges and conversations amongst Nigerian industry professionals, guild leaders and operators (distributors and exhibitors). The death of Nigerian visionary filmmaker and culture organizer, Anyiam-Osigwe and her significance to the Nigerian and African film industry (through the African Movie Academy Awards) made it important to rename the conference to honour her legacy. “This conference was designed to foster collaboration, knowledge exchange, and responsible innovation, especially in a fast-evolving digital landscape,” Dr. Husseini remarked. A year and eight months after resuming office, the opening remark detailed Dr. Husseini and NFVCB’s commitment to establishing regulatory foundations for the Nigerian industry while enabling creativity, innovation, and global competitiveness. Additionally, the speech addressed the core of the conference theme. The conference is an opportunity to reflect on industry strides and challenges and collectively shape “a future where Nollywood no longer measures success in sheer numbers, but in value: value for audiences, value for investors, value for creators, and value for Nigeria.”

Globally, Nollywood is synonymous with volume. The industry has a status as the second-largest film industry in the world by the sheer number of films produced annually, second only to Bollywood. A segment in Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal’s Nollywood Babylon, a 2008 feature documentary is dedicated to this Nollywood’s identity. The industry, from Old to New Nollywood,  is optimized for speedy production. While this is gradually changing, attention is often focused on typical emergency-incline deadlines, not craft. Thus, this conference is supposed to be a clarion call to Nollywood filmmakers and practitioners to pause and reflect on the need to prioritize value over volume. Nollywood’s cultural and commercial future is dependent on this deep reflection and as the conference’s panels and keynotes revealed, there’s a need to individually and collectively reflect. Although Nollywood has built a profitable and globally recognisable industry despite the ordinary and shoddy production value of its production, it’s time for serious introspection.

The speeches and panels at the conference sit at the heart of this need for reflection. The panels and keynote speeches presented by Bolanle Austen-Peters (Founder and Artistic Director of BAP Productions and Terra Kulture), Dr. Ali Nuhu (MD, Nigerian Film Corporation, NFC), Sandra Oyewole (Partner/Head Intellectual Property& Technology practice, Olajide Oyewole LLP), Naz Onuzo (CEO, Inkblot Studios), Ojoma Ochai (Managing Director, Co-Creation Hub, CcHub), Mahmoud Ali Balogun (Chairman of the Audio Visual Rights Society of Nigeria), Mildred Okwo, Greg Odutayo and Adetunji Ojetola (National President, Association of Movie Content Owners and Producers (AMCOD) all referenced the primacy of structure, legacy and value. They presented the questions : what does legacy and value look like in the Nigerian context? How should a Nigerian filmmaker measure value? And, more importantly, how do the Nigerian professional bodies and guilds attract younger Nigerian creatives and build a nationally recognized structure?

At the conference, the words ‘value’ and ‘legacy’ echoed repeatedly. In the speeches of Austen-Peters’, Okwo, Ali-Balogun, Dr. Nuhu and others’, these terms surfaced again and again. The Nigerian film industry was and is still built on producing films and series at a fast pace. But, these industry professionals stated that value and quality are symbiotic. And, to fairly compete globally, Nollywood filmmakers should make qualitative, not quantitative, productions. South African productions can compete globally due to the virtuoso craftsmanship of its crew members and filmmakers. For Nollywood to get there, Nigerian filmmakers must produce better films and series. Funding and other economic bottlenecks have compelled Nigerian filmmakers to embrace hurried productions, and to solve this, filmmakers need to collaborate more. This can take varying shapes from co-production deals amongst two or more production companies, resources and equipment sharing to other means. As Austen-Peters stated, Nollywood needs to move away from being a “factory of films to a foundry of cinematic excellence.”

Nigerian guilds and professional bodies set the structure of the film industry. While there are existing professional bodies and guilds in Nollywood, their effectiveness is largely unfelt. This became another point of conversation. The need to create a unifying guild for institutional and systemic growth was pronounced, as well as the need to familiarize the current generation of Nollywood filmmakers with these bodies. Scanning through the conference room, the percentage of younger filmmakers present sat comfortably at 1%. 

The conference featured 13 panels and fireside chats with discussion ranging from gender equitable storytelling, AI in Nigerian cinema, YouTube and digital distribution, distribution and the diaspora market, Intellectual Property management, alternative funding models for Nigerian filmmakers, growing audiences, Nollywood epic films to guilds and professional bodies in the Nigerian film industry. The curation of these panels and the questions they motivated suggested the NFVCB’s grasp of industry issues and challenges. But, as one of the conference participants subtly asked: what’s the utility of these conversations and panels outside the conference hall? What actionable plans and structures are being put in place to resolve some of these identified issues? Is it going to be the usual endless talking? What’s the utility of these conversations for the Nigerian film ecosystem, government, older and younger filmmakers, press and the average Nigerian audiences? 

These questions become important especially when one thinks back to the recently-concluded African International Film Festival (AFRIFF) where spirited multiple industry-focused conversations were held. The exit of Netflix and Prime Video prompted multiple virtual and physical conversations, ditto the “rise” of YouTube as the projected “alternative” distribution platform. Nollywood has many of these vibrant and intelligent conversations but there seems to be no actionable items and follow through. As another of the conference participants commented, the hall is filled with the same voices echoing similar ideas about the need for structure, organization and intentionality in craft and technique. These conversations seem to land on deaf ears and it, to a degree, explains Nollywood current situation. 

But, this is a fragment of the truth. Nollywood conversations have birthed industry solutions to identified challenges. The Netflix and Prime Video exit has ushered in the launch of multiple local streaming platforms including Kava, Circuits TV, EbonyLife ON Plus, FilmHub’s community cinema and Moses Babatope’s Nile Group streaming platform. The responses to these  platforms include concerns and critiques about their creators not contextualizing Nigerian economic realities. But, despite the validity of these arguments, the existence of these platforms prove actions are being taken.

Accelerate Filmmakers Project. MultiChoice Talent Factory, EbonyLife Creative Academy and other  training and capacity building spaces are direct responses to conversations about the lack of film schools and training grounds for Nigerians interested in filmmaking. So, while many of the conversations might appear redundant and repetitive, they are evidence that change is underway. And, although some of these developments are hard to collectively track because of the fragmented way they unfold, one can presume they are happening.