The Federal Government says the Nigerian film industry loses about 70 per cent of its yearly revenue to piracy, warning that the menace threatens jobs, investments and earnings in the creative sector.
The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF), Lateef Fagbemi, who spoke recently at the National Seminar on Copyright, Cybersecurity and Nigeria’s Creative and Digital Economy in Abuja, lamented that piracy had grown beyond conventional copyright infringement.
According to him, illegal streaming platforms, pirate websites and rogue digital services had made piracy a sophisticated and borderless enterprise.
Fagbemi bemoaned that copyrighted works could be reproduced, modified and distributed globally within seconds, while the perpetrators and illicit proceeds could be concealed across jurisdictions.
He said that the proposed Abuja Copyright Action Plan would provide a coordinated framework for tackling online piracy with specific actions and implementations timelines, among other things.
According to UNESCO data and its landmark mapping report, ‘The African Film Industry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth’, the Nollywood film industry loses between 50 per cent and over 75 per cent of its potential revenue to piracy.
It also said that while the Nigerian film industry produces over 2,500 films annually and generates cultural value, severe infrastructure gap and counterfeit syndicates significantly drains its profits.
It estimates that Nigeria alone lost N3billion in revenue from creative works in a single year due to digital piracy, according to 2019 data.
It is also estimated that up to 80 per cent of individual film distributions fail to generate legitimate returns due to unauthorised copying and illegal streaming.
It has also been reported that the Nigerian film industry loses more than ₦15 billion annually to piracy while the book industry and the broader creative industry lose thrice more than that.
