Help! Music is Dying, Musicians Beg FG for Funds

The Nigerian Music Industry Coalition has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to give immediate marching orders to the managers of the Entertainment Industry Intervention Fund to take urgent steps to ensure that the fund begins to have impact on the employment situation in the creative industries in Nigeria.

Chief Tony Okoroji, chairman, Copyright Society of Nigeria (Coson), said the growing disappointment with access to funds is fueling conclusions that both the Growth in Employment in States Fund (GEMS) and the Entertainment Industry Intervention Fund announced by President Goodluck Jonathan two years ago, may have been dead on arrival after all.

 “We call on President Jonathan to order the Bank of Industries (BOI), the Nigerian Export & Import Bank (NEXIM), the Federal Ministry of Commerce & Investments and everyone connected with the funds to do what is necessary to make sure that they begin to have impact on the industry and help to create the badly needed employment. Presently, the more we look, the less we see.” Okoroji stated
 
Okoroji lamented that the managers of the fund do not appear to fully understand that the fund is meant to solve specific problems and targeted at people who cannot ordinarily access finance from the traditional financial institutions.

According to him, the requirements, conditions and bottlenecks that have been placed before the fund can be accessed are such that only a very tiny fraction of true practitioners in the creative sector can ever meaningfully dream of having access to the fund.

 “As an industry, we have sought to engage the banks with ideas on how the funds can be disbursed with critical checks put in place to ensure high repayment of the loans by the average practitioner. We understand our industry better than them but I do not get the impression that they are truly interested in listening to us. They are only listening to themselves and unfortunately, they cannot think out of the box. They are stuck in traditional banking. Sadly, the money will end up not with those for whom the money was meant and in a few years, our industry will be blamed for improper use of the ’help’ offered by the government,” Okoroji said.