Dr. Chidia Maduekwe, the Managing Director of the Jos-based Nigeria Film Corporation, says Nigerian movies are among the best   internationally in terms of contents, settings and acceptability.

Maduekwe told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that many movie-producers and marketers were smiling to their banks because of impressive turnover from the sales of their videos based on quality and public acceptability.

“There is no doubt that today Nigerian movie-producers are improving in the qualities of their home videos.

“Take for example the “Wedding Party’’ or “1976’; these are blog busters that are raking-in hundreds of millions of naira for their producers, because they have better production qualities,.

“They are promoting the corporate image of Nigeria positively before the international community, ’’he said.

The expert, however, admonished the movie-producers that this did not mean that they had done exceptionally well.

“The room is there to enhance on quality. We produce over 2,500 movies every year; quite prolific, and we can only up the ante by 15 per cent in terms of quality, most of those in the industry will be billionaires”.

Maduekwe said that the Nigeria Film Corporation was ready to assist artists, movie-producers and marketers to improve on their knowledge by organising training and seminars for them on regular bases.

“The Nigeria Film Corporation has a subsidiary, the Nigeria Film Institute, which is the foremost film institute in Africa for training of film prodcers.

“Most of those people who are making waves in some of these blog buster-movies shot in Nigeria were trained at, and by the institute.

“That will tell you the quality of capacity-building the film corporation has brought into the movie industry over the year.

“Despite that, there are still rooms for growth and development for stakeholders in the industry by availing themselves of the regular training usually organised by the institute,’’ he said.

Maduekwe said that the Kano State Government had bought into the institute’s training programme tagged the “Kano template’’.

He said that under the arrangement, the Kano State Government signed an agreement with the institute to train 450 of its citizens in its various courses on a quarterly basis.

He said that the institute was planning to replicate this concept across the country under the name: ‘Nigeria Film Institute Mobile Training Platform’.

Maduekwe said that the institute would collaborate with the existing theatre art and film departments in various universities across the country to achieve the vision.

He said that the institute would engage the services of professors in film studies from universities across the six geo- political zones of the country to enhance the capacity of people in each zone.

“We will be organizing short courses for stakeholders in the movie-and film industry from time to time.’’

The expert also disclosed that the institute in partnership with the British Council   had started organising training for stakeholders in the film industry to further enhance capacity building.