Nigeria: Nollywood - How Too Many Movies Fuel Piracy

Photo: Kerala9 and Tech Digest

Top Yoruba actor, Olaiya Igwe, on Monday said that the prolific nature of movie production in Nigeria was the major cause of piracy in the industry.

Igwe told the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos that piracy in the country's movie industry, popularly known as Nollywood, emanated from a situation where numerous movies were churned out on daily basis.

"In fact, the menace is just a secondary problem; the primary problem is the excess (number of) films in circulation," he said.

He also posited that piracy was aided by the viewers' inclination to buy the most affordable films in the market.

"(When) you produce like 40 movies in a year and you sell it for N200 ... the pirate guy would reproduce it and sell it for 100 naira.

"So, which would the audience go for? It's the one with lesser price that they would buy.

"Whose fault is it? You as the producer, you are the cause because you produced too many movies," he said.

According to Igwe, the number of movies produced in the industry must be limited, to reduce accessibility to movie pirates.

"What we need to do is find how we can minimise the number of works we put into the market, from there, we now device a means of putting a good structure to protect our artistic work," the actor said.