One would have thought
that with the court declaring Emeka Ike as the president of the Actors
Guild of Nigeria, peace would reign in the association once again. But
that is becoming farfetched as the crisis keeps brewing every day.
A
faceless group has come out to claim that Emeka Ike is not the president
of AGN, announcing Steve Eboh who is the chairman of AGN National
Caretaker Committee as head of the committee that would set up an
electoral body very soon.
Reacting
to the development, Ike said he had heard about the current development
and blamed it on those who he claimed took the N3bn Federal Government
intervention fund for the association.
He
said, “I got the same message from my source. My Lagos chapter conducts
meeting every last Thursday. You can go to Hail Sailisi Hotel in Aguda
and see the crowd for today’s meeting. I don’t ask you to make my
meetings go viral. It’s on the ground. I am sure you have got a good
friend among them seeing the way you get their one minute information,
like the state house reporters.
“The case in court stipulates resolution of crises. I’m sure you read it
in the judgement you have with you. You should know this is just
another way of rumbling the quiet fluid which I’ve told you several
times are from the usurpers of our N3bn grant. How can they say they
trained 247 artistes with about N799m in Harvard and Ibinabo
Fiberisima’s faction got seven slots while Emeka Ike’s faction got no
slot? Which ID cards were used?
“We
agreed at the first stakeholders’ forum to spend the N3bn wisely and a
committee was set up right there at the main bowl of the National
Theatre.
There, I
was unanimously voted into the committee to represent AGN and all
factions were present. After a few meetings, the committee chairman
started having cold feet and that dragged the process to a halt, then
again, resurrected by a few actors in another caucus. That was where
project ACT was finally adopted by them against the background that they
refused it at the National Theatre, calling it a fraud.
We
suggested that it will be better to have the industry use the money
within the associations because it is called an intervention fund.
“But they’ve settled themselves and shared our common patrimony. Now the
associations must know no peace as they sponsor more groups and crises.
They want to keep my group away from the N3bn so no questions are
asked. That’s what they are doing.”
He
called on the government to wade into the matter without bias so that
the crisis within the body can be squashed. Meanwhile, the Federal
Government, in a bid to reposition the entertainment industry, has
inaugurated a committee to review and restructure the N3bn project
Nollywood grant. The fund was set up to solve the main challenges
impeding the growth of the Nigerian movie industry.
The
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, while inaugurating the committee
on Friday in Abuja during a meeting convened to brainstorm on how to
address the challenges of the sector, said time had come for investors
in the sector to start getting returns on their investments.
She
said the desire to reposition and restructure the fund was borne out of
the need to stimulate investments in the entertainment industry, owing
to its job creation potentials.
She
said, “This grant programme was conceived to support the industry and
it’s a reflection of the importance of the entertainment industry on the
Nigerian economy.
“What
we’ve come here to do is to look at the outstanding parts of the
programme as yet unimplemented, to review them to ensure that they are
still appropriate where the industry is today and where our objectives
lie for the industry.
“We
will be inaugurating a committee to review the programme, restructure it
if necessary and to come up with an implementation plan with measurable
and demonstrable deliverables and outcomes so that we ensure that we
get maximum value for the industry and for the Nigerian people.”
PUNCH.