Before deciding to contest the presidency of the Association of Movie Producers (AMP) Nigeria, Lilian Amah-Aluko knew exactly what she wanted to do. In this interview with Assistant Life Editor, TERH AGBEDEH, before the election, she is very clear about her plans for the association and for Nollywood
What are the things you think hampered your contribution as AMP vice president?
I will be very careful while answering that. The constitution of AMP, as it presently is, gives all powers to the president. The only power or the only unit that the vice president controls is disciplinary. The vice president is constitutionally the head of the disciplinary panel of the association; all other powers are reposed in the president. So, as vice president, you can only do what your principal directs you to do.
Did you actually have any member disciplined during your term as vice president and what constitutes indiscipline in the AMP?
What I could have done then, again, was limited to what I was allowed to do. You are right in saying that it is lack of structures that left the industry the way it is. You cannot discipline somebody who is not beholden to you. AMP, as it is presently, is a toothless bulldog. There are very powerful producers in this industry who don’t send AMP; they don’t pay dues, they don’t even consider themselves as members of AMP. That shouldn’t be if AMP is the way it should be. You don’t blame these people; their attitude is, why am I spending money paying dues to you? You don’t do anything for me. So they go about doing their business and they are doing it very well. And I applaud them. But I know that no matter how powerful an individual producer is, if the industry in which you operate is not structured, there is a limit to what you can achieve, which is why our big producers, as good as some of them are (we have really talented people in this industry), have not achieved their potential because the industry which should back, push and support them is not doing its rightful task.
Listening to you, the impression is that AMP’s constitution is faulty; if you eventually become the president, will you fix it?
Before I left, the process of reviewing the constitution had been started, a constitution review committee had been set up. And I know they had done a good job. But that constitution has not got to the house for ratification. That is one of the things my administration, if my colleagues give me the mandate, will tackle. We need to have a constitution that addresses the challenges we have as an industry.
How do you plan to reconcile producers who have even gone on to start a separate association like Association of Nollywood Core Producers (ANCOP)?
I did say that part of the things we want to do is to bring together the fractured arms of our association. It is not something that is going to be easy to achieve because the damage was not done in one day. But I know that we intend to reach out to the elders in the industry to call the younger ones together. I believe we are all brothers and sisters. I know where the ANCOP problem started from. The head of ANCOP was the secretary general of AMP and for whatever reasons, when he was aggrieved with the industry, he set up ANCOP. I don’t want to go into what led to what and all of that, but I know that when the elders reach out to them, we will be able to come together as one family.
Are you vying with a team or going it alone?
That is an interesting question. When I started out, I wanted to vie with a team, but a few things have happened and I have decided to concentrate on my campaign and at the end of the day, let my colleagues also drive their campaigns. At the end of the day, whoever the electorate decides on, we will come together and work together. But I already have my vision, so when we are elected, if we are elected, I will share my vision with the members of the exco and also invite them to bring their vision because each person running for office must have an idea of what they want to do in the office they are running. So, we will then try to put our visions together and come up with a master plan for how we will run the administration.
There is a growing trend in Nollywood; actors turn producers without enlisting with AMP. How do you hope to change this?
When AMP takes its rightful place and sets the structures in place, producers will come asking. I remember when I was vice president, Robert Peters (he was an actor, today he is a big time director in America) came to Nigeria to do a job and came to my office. He said he would like to join the AMP because he produces in America. He said he wanted to join our association here, so that he could also do jobs here. I then sent him to the secretary general so that he could enlist. So I know that when AMP is doing what it is supposed to do, nobody will beg people to come; people will enlist because they will immediately belong to the association. Nobody begs any lawyer to join the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA); it’s mandatory. No medical doctor practises in this country without being a member of the NMA (Nigerian Medical Association), it’s mandatory. So when we start doing what we are supposed to do, it will become mandatory for everybody who intends to produce in this country to be a member of AMP.
You sound as if you are aggrieved with the current head of the association?
You are totally wrong. President Zik Zulu (Okafor) was my president; I was his vice president in his first tenure and that was my last tenure. Our constitution gives me two terms. I am not aggrieved at all. I believe that the president before him, Paul Obazele, took the association a long way and Zik picked the mantle from where Paul stopped and has taken us further. Paul first gave us a base; the first office of AMP. Zik came in and gave us an even better office. So each of the past two presidents took the association a step forward. I am vying because I believe I can pick up the mantle from Zik. I worked with him for two years, so I know his style, I know the dreams he had for the industry and I believe I can pick it up from where he stopped and take it to where he aspired.
Do you have his backing?
As my president, I informed him that I was contesting and I believe that as a father of the industry, as the father of AMP, he will support everybody who aspires to the office, for it is a democratic president. Democracy welcomes everybody. So Zik can only be neutral as a father and tell all of us ‘I give you my blessing go to the electorate’.
Is there a project by the outgoing administration that you believe you want to consolidate on to build your own government or you will be bringing in new ideas?
Certainly, not only bringing in new ideas; I will go as far back as Paul Obazele’s tenure. In Paul’s tenure, there was something we used to call AMP Week, which then metamorphosed into the AMP/Eko International Film Festival. I think it was a very good initiative because it brought together producers and it gave the younger ones a platform to interact with older practitioners. So that is an initiative that we want to continue. Zulu’s administration organised and arranged, with the aid of the grant given to us by the federal government, to train producers in America. I was a beneficiary of that grant. That is something we want to continue; we want to ensure that we have training, part of my dream is that at least twice a year, we will train producers. It doesn’t have to be abroad if we can’t afford it; we have branches of this guild at least in 13 states in Nigeria. We intend to engage them; it should not be only about Lagos because the producers based outside Lagos, when I speak to a lot of them, they say, ‘nobody remembers us. Everything seems to be concentrated in Lagos’. We plans to have biannual, or even quarterly if we can afford it, training sessions where we bring members from all the arms of our guild to Lagos or we may take it to other parts of the country at different times and train them. We need to train and re-train ourselves. The business is fast changing, fast moving; so we need to keep in form, we need to be updating ourselves otherwise we will be outdated.
Do you still belong to the Actors’ Guild of Nigeria (AGN)?
I do.
Supposing you become the president of AMP, what are the chances that there won’t be conflict of interest in some areas?
There is no conflict of interest; I am not on the exco of AGN; I am just a member. I am an actor even before I became a producer. So there is not conflict of interest. Where there will be conflict of interest is if I am on the exco. I will not contest elections in AGN; I have no intention of doing that now or in the future. I think I want to end up as a producer. Acting is something I enjoy doing, so I do that once in a while because producing takes a lot of time. But I do more of production.
What effect do you think your gender will have on your chances to become AMP president?
As far as the constitution of AMP is concerned, I think all that matters is that I am a producer. I believe that the men in the industry are forward-looking enough to forget gender when it comes to our business; they just see you as a producer. Are you a good producer or not? Whether you are a woman or not, if you are a good producer, I believe they will want to associate with you; they will listen to you. At the same time, I also want to say that I believe that being a woman has given me an edge. Women are mothers; they know how to nurture. So where a man will be hard and say it must be done this way, a woman will know how to call her children together. So, in that line, I think being a woman will be an advantage.
It appears the body language of the present government at the centre is not to support Nollywood the way the one before did. How would you negotiate that?
I beg to disagree. President (Muhammadu) Buhari has made very strong statements about piracy and I know that the APC (All Progressives Congress) government realises the power of Nollywood, what entertainment can be used for in terms of tourism and employment. The Lagos State governor (Akinwunmi Ambode) has been harping on it. I know that with the help of the governor and others like Babatunde Fashola who was Lagos governor before now – he was a big support to Nollywood; he worked with us, he assisted us a lot – even if the president is not looking in our direction (I know he is because of the pronouncements he has made), through people like Governor Ambode and Fashola, we will reach him.
What we want from government is not hand-outs. We want them to create an enabling environment; that is all we want, put structures in place. The government of former President Goodluck Jonathan really tried for the industry. It gave us a N3 billion grant. It first gave us N200 million, which we found difficult to access, But the N3 billion that the Ministry of Finance has been handling, people have been accessing it. People are building cinemas; they have given money for marketing, distribution, production, capacity building/training. So, money has been given, what we now need is the enabling environment. Once the structures are in place, the private sector will come in because it wants to make money. And we were told in Hollywood where I went for training that we are the emerging industry. This is where they are looking. This is the next big place, mainly because of our population. So we will be able to make the money we want once the right structures are there. It won’t be government giving us money; the private sector will invest massively as long as they know they would get their money back.
What are the structures that you would like to see on the ground?
One, we need a strong law against pirates. For now, if a pirate is caught, it is a slap on the wrist. What is N25,000 fine? If he has made millions, he will give you 10 times that fine and take a walk. They have arrested several pirates and they would tell us, take me in and before you know it, they walk away. So, we want a law, a proper anti-piracy law. When that is in place, it will make a major difference because then if a pirate is caught and dealt with, people will think twice. In the United States, for instance, the biggest crime you can commit is tax evasion. Major stars, very wealthy people, have gone to prison for tax evasion. So, they don’t play with it. You are stealing from the government and it will go after you. Once that anti-piracy law is in place, I think every other thing will start falling in place. We saw what AY’s movie did. That is serious money. It beat out even the Hollywood films that competed at that time. If 10, 20 producers can take their films to the cinema and make that kind of money, the private sector will be begging you to take money and do film because they will see the returns. The reason people are afraid of investing in Nollywood is piracy? So when we talk about structures, we want that in place. Once we have that law, every other thing will start falling in place.