Interactive Investment Forum On The Nigerian Creativity Sector With US-based Entertainment Outlets, Media & Investors

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REMARKS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, AT AN INTERACTIVE INVESTMENT FORUM ON THE NIGERIAN CREATIVITY SECTOR WITH US-BASED ENTERTAINMENT OUTLETS, MEDIA & INVESTORS HELD IN WALDORF ASTORIA, LOS ANGELES, HOLLYWOOD, USA, ON TUESDAY, 10TH JULY, 2018.

PROTOCOLS

I thank you all for being present here today. For us, this is an important meeting, and the last meetings had been around trying to not just sell the Nigerian creativity and technology industry, but more importantly to get some sense of where we ought to be going.

So, I’m here with members of our advisory group on technology and creativity which is a national group. It is a group which we instituted specifically to get to understand what the best practices are all across the world and to find a way of getting everyone together to sit together to think through and work through policies together.

We understand how dynamic the environment is, both technology and creative arts. But we think that the way to go will be to work with those who are actually in the industry, those like yourselves who are putting in their money, their resources, time, and energy into this, and trying to do our regulations in such a way that we are competitive practically with anyone else in the world.

So what we have done so far is that we’ve been looking at what the specific issues are, and there are quite a few. There are those who want to know about what we are doing in terms of Intellectual Property protection, investment guarantee, and all of that. But I think that the most important thing really, is that we have a government, a lot of those who work in our agencies, who are determined to work through this, day by day, piece by piece to make sure that we get our environment right, and we get the right type of investment environment.

And we are quite happy to continue to engage with everyone who is here, and as you’ve heard, especially from the financial sector, we are prepared to match your investment in some respect, if you’re making the investment in the country.

Just also very quickly to the question of the treaty that we signed; we are signatories to the major Intellectual Property treaties, both the Paris and Berne conventions. And we are also signatories to practically all the investment treaties; we are meagre members and all of that. I think the most important thing to bear in mind – I can offer this free advice as a lawyer – is that because you are not necessarily doing business with the government, your bilateral agreements are probably more important, the agreement that you draw with whoever you are going to be doing business with is more important, making sure that you have the right arbitration agreements and all of that; one that is adequately provided for. We have a robust enough commercial law adjudicatory system that ensures that these things are resolved properly enough. So, I don’t think that there is much to fear about how protection of intellectual property rights in that way.

But one of the things we’ve been talking about is that there is a great deal of piracy, especially piracy of CDs and things like that. And one of the discussions we’ve been having is around how to use technology to outflank pirates, and we think that technology is probably the way to go. We’ve looked at several options and it appears that that might be the way to do this.

We are also, of course, very interested in many ways in deepening infrastructure, especially broadband, connectivity and all of that, because we think that mobile telephony is going to be one of the big ways, especially for the distribution of film and all of that. And we are convinced that with the kind of population we have, and with the size of our population, we must find ways of getting film and content unto mobile phones, and also working out payment systems around that because we think that that is the way this is going to go.

We are also interested in the technology around all of that, and in the payment systems around that as well. And we think that these might be areas where some might be interested. We know that in the next couple of years, that really is where a lot of development is going to go to, and we are very anxious to get our regulations right, to get all of our laws in place and to ensure that we are able to attract all of you who want to do business with us, especially those of you who are coming from other countries. As for the Nigerians, we are, of course, actively engaged with the local industry, and one of the reasons why we have the advisory council which takes into account many of our local investors, local artiste and the local entertainment crowd generally.

We will just keep working with you as locals to ensure that we are engaged and we are able to give the very best we can in terms of our regulations and in terms of the environment.

Having said that, I think that all there is left to say again is to thank you all very much for the time that you have spent today. And to say that we are still here ready to engage with you, and if you have specific questions to ask, we will be very happy to answer those questions. Several of our agencies and regulators are here also, and they will be very happy to answer your questions and to see if there are possible engagements and all that you think are important to make; we will be happy to do that as well.

Thank you very much.