A NOLLYWOOD Library Can Generate N1 Billion Annually for Lagos State

A NOLLYWOOD Library Can Generate N1 Billion Annually for Lagos State

The global popularity of the phenomenon of Nollywood, the first indie film industry in Aftica has attracted millions of fans and followers in over 154 countries in the world through cable TV networks, online streaming and the distribution of Nollywood movies on VHS tapes, CDs and DVDs since the first blockbuster home video "Living in Bondage" of 1992 to date. And many books have been written on Nollywood by mostly foreign scholars and documentaries also produced by foreigners and international news channels.

Lagos is the capital city of Nollywood and the Nigerian entertainment industry where majority of the filmmakers and actors live and work from Surulere where most of the film production studios are to Idumota and Alaba international markets where the distributors of the videos are located. In fact, "Lagoswood" should have been the name like the Kannywood of Kano in northern Nigeria, but the "Nollywood" label coined by the New York Times in 2002 has become the internationally accepted name and global brand.

Some universities in Nigeria and in the United States of America have started projects for collections of Nollywood movies and film studies on the genre. But none of them has established a functional library for Nollywood which is important and significant for both academic scholarship and public appreciation of this unique sociocultural phenomenon in the world.
There are more than 15, 000 Nollywood movies in the collections of the cable TV stations, public TV stations, VOD operators and higher institutions. The biggest internet video streaming platform for Nollywood movies, iROKOtv has over 5,000 movies and the Nollywood Studies Centre of the School of Media and Communication at the Pan Atlantic University in Ibeju-Lekki has over 10, 000 titles.
The books, documentaries and movies are enough for a fully functional Nollywood library.

The Nollywood library can have more than 500 seats for readers, including researchers, scholars and the general public who can read books, view documentaries and movies and can also borrow them for a fee.
There will be a viewing centre or cinema, exhibition hall with the photographs of the icons of Nollywood and posters of bestselling, highest grossing and award winning movies, Walk of Fame around the building with footprints of icons of Nollywood, wireless mobile charging facility, media rooms with WiFi and video editing booths to generate revenues for the library.

The daily gate fees should be N100 for children and N500 for adults. And the box office ticket for the cinema should be N500.
These fees are necessary for the maintenance and recurrent expenditure.

The Nollywood Library can attract an average of 1000 visitors daily from the population of over 22 million people in the most populous and largest megacity in Africa.

~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, Publisher/Editor of the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series.

NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series: The only book series on the Nigerian film industry.