By Pride Team
The 2nd Annual summit of Nigeria’s entertainment industry, Nigerian Entertainment Conference held on 19th April in the Grand Ball Room of Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos, Nigeria with the theme ”Creating Pathways to the Future” with different informative sessions on Music, Media and Business, Information Technology, Social Responsibility and Nollywood
Music: Slaying The Collective Rights Monster
2Face, the speaker for Music session, who admittedly struggled through his speech on “Slaying The Collective Rights Monster” however made some critical points. “Right users should be able to pay right owners for the exploitation of their work” he pointed. Laying more emphasis, he added that the very monster we’re fighting is in our compound and right owners need to arm themselves “we need to be able to protect our wealth and intellectual property” he continuedand urged everyone to go read about their rights.
For the panel session, Olisa Adibua, Edi Lawani, Tony Okoroji, Adebambo Adewopo and IK Osakioduwa who moderated joined him. Towards the end of this session, Tony Okoroji Chairman of COSON board, reemphasized what 2face earlier said “In our intellectual property lies our greatest wealth” and ended with the fact that what the country is wholly dependent on today, oil, will run out and what we’d eventually be left with is our intellectual property, which no man can take from us. Tony Okoroji is the lead in the fight of royalty payments from media houses for musicians
Media Session – Whose content is it anyway?
Lamide Iyanda of EbonyLife TV moderated the session. She started out by asking, “what is the definition of creative content?” It was agreed that ideas aren’t content until they are created. Femi Aderibigbe (Kwame) The CEO of Nigezie says, “Marketable Content is very expensive. A lot of us need to dissolve our companies and form one major company that has marketable contents and build an original GDP, we have to work together as a team or we continue to work for expatriates”
During the session, Dr. Sid made some witty statements and added a few personal experiences that turned into a heated argument/discuss; “I post my picture on social media and within the next 10minutes, I’m everywhere on different blogs” he stated. “People should learn to seek for permission before using other people’s content. I have copyright over whatever I write or post” he firmly added. This almost removed the roof of the grand ballroom as most participants chanted that he is a celebrity and everything he posts or tweets makes the news. So getting content from his posts shouldn’t be considered ‘a crime’.
Social Responsibility Session – Why we should care
Omotola gave a thought-provoking speech that described her as a true celebrity with not just beauty and class but brains and a large heart. She strongly emphasized that every celebrity has a moral obligation to give back to the society who has supported him or her and made them who they are. On celebrities promoting corruption via elections, she said, “Except you want to join a party, which is allowed, celebrities should try and become non-partisan”.
The panel session moderated by Emilia Asim-Ita, was an exciting session as the well-spoken Yemi Adamolekun of EiE raised some intelligent thoughts and also talked a bit about the history of Enough is Enough. Omotola also slipped in a little advice for all celebrities “it is your right to represent the people who have been there for you; you are seen as a light and at the end of the day, you’d have to shine back at them” she thoughtfully concluded.
Nollywood session- Building A Sustainable Industry
Emeka Mba who has served as Director General of the National Film and Video Censors was the speaker for Nollywood session; “we need to use our power as storytellers to strike a balance between the realism of our challenging existence and a vision and desire for a more ideal society”. He also encouraged the practitioners to always present their industry needs to the government at every opportunity they have and not give that responsibility to someone else. Emeka Nkem Mba, is currently the Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission.
Image source: Ynaija