1st Assistant Director | Associate Producer Film & TV Production. I solve problems , I manage time, people & chaos on set.
Lagos, Nigeria
Joined February 2013
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AYO ♠️ retweeted
Every year we gather to have countless conversations about Nollywood and its challenges. One forum to another. Seminars, keynotes, investor sessions. The list goes on.
The more of these you attend, the more you notice a few things. One, a lot of people are winging it. Two, many investors don't understand our business model, because frankly it doesn't make sense to them. Three, some of us aren't sure if we really want change or just want to cash out so we can pay school fees.
We say distribution is our biggest problem. We have been saying it for years. So why haven't we fixed it?
It's one thing to name a problem. It's another thing to understand it and actually have solutions.
If the streaming era and this economy taught us anything, it's that a huge number of Nigerians can't afford to stream. Many can't afford the data. And most importantly, the audience that matters can't always relate to what's on the platform.
Nigeria makes up about 10.5% of Netflix viewers in Africa. South Africa makes up 73%.
But don't be fooled. Nigerians are watching. They're watching on Telegram, where it feels free and the files are small enough to download. The demand is there. What's missing is a price and a format that works for them.
Now look at cinema. Around 350 screens for over 200 million people. That's roughly one screen for every 600,000 Nigerians. Tickets average close to 6k and run up to 10k in Lagos. Last year we recorded 2.8 million admissions. That's about 1% of our population, and since many of those are repeat visits, the real number of people is even smaller.
Then there's the cost of making films. I've said it before: a staggering number of cinema releases don't break even. Only the greats do.
And then there's the hunger for the Western gaze. It's not a bad thing in itself. But we push so hard on "taking our stories global" and "see me, I can speak your language" that we forget to sell our stories to ourselves first. It's the Afrobeats conversation all over again.
A few things are glaring. Access to content is expensive. The alternatives are expensive too. So buying content is a challenge for most people.
We all know this. It's not rocket science.
It's been a terrible year for a lot of people in this industry. I'm not knocking the festivals. But we'll all go, party, network, then go home and drink garri. Then send that DM to our egbon producer saying we haven't worked in seven months. Or we took a loan to make a film, did a big premiere, and made 4 million in seven weeks.
We have to rework the entire model.
Access. Stop building only multiplexes. Invest in smaller units and put more screens in front of more people.
Price. Bring ticket prices down to what ordinary Nigerians can pay.
Content. Back smaller producers and bring down the cost of production.
Localise. Make films for specific regions, in the languages and stories people there live with.
Tiers. Group films by budget and audience, so small films build the cinema-going habit and the big films ride on those screens.
Long term. Give filmmakers incentives to build careers, not just one-off releases.
This is India's playbook. Cheap tickets, local-language films, screens where the culture already lives. It's why India sells hundreds of millions of tickets a year.
These are the conversations we should be having, and investors and stakeholders should be acting on them. If we truly value this industry
AYO ♠️ retweeted
Crayon’s rant in my opinion is a complete mental breakdown. All i see is Grief, pain, anxiety and anger. Is it worth paying attention to, yes. Is it important to accept his messages maybe not but is it necessary to attend to the cause and proffer a solution, absolutely yes.
Don’t care if he is right or wrong. Care about if he is okay first. This is a concern
AYO ♠️ retweeted
Go to any football pitch in the world this evening. A dusty field in Lagos. A beach in Rio. A cage pitch in London. A narrow street in Cairo, Jakarta or Lima, with two stones and/or a stack of blocks for goalposts
Wait for a free kick.
You will probably see a boy step back, plant his feet wide apart, puff out his chest, take a deep breath and stare at the ball like it owes him money.
You know exactly who he is copying.
Cristiano Ronaldo retired from international football today. 23 years with Portugal. 146 goals in 234 games, more than any man in history. And I promise you, that boy on the street doesn't know half of those numbers. He doesn't need to. He knows the stance. He knows the "Siuuu." He knows the man. That's enough.
That is what I want to talk about today. Not what Ronaldo did for Portugal. What he did for the boy watching from thousands of kilometres away.
Think about it. Some of the people reading this were children when Ronaldo made his Portugal debut in 2003. Some weren't even born. For an entire generation, he has always been there. Every summer tournament, every big night, every argument about who is the greatest. Football without Ronaldo is something millions of fans have simply never known.
Every young player knows the story by now. The skinny boy from Madeira, laughed at for his accent in Lisbon. The boy who stayed behind after training. The one who did sit-ups in his room at night. The ice baths, the diet, the gym when everyone else had gone home. Whether every detail of that story is true or not, the lesson landed in every corner of the world: talent alone is not enough. You have to outwork everybody.
And he kept proving it. He was still scoring for his country at 40, still winning a Nations League final at 40. Players are supposed to fade by 33. He made "old" look like a choice.
It went beyond the pitch too. A generation learned from him that a footballer can be a brand. That your body is your business. That how you speak, how you dress and how you carry yourself matters as much as your first touch. He became the first person in the world to reach one billion followers across social media. One billion. That is not a fanbase. That is a planet.
Now, let me be honest with you. Not every boy copying the free kick stance will become a professional. Most won't. But many of them will take something from him that lasts longer than football. Discipline. Self-belief. Showing up every day, even when nobody is watching.
That is a legacy you can't count in goals.
So to every boy standing with his legs apart before a free kick this evening, in Lagos, in Rio, in London or anywhere else, keep doing it. Just remember the part of the story that happened when the cameras were off.
Obrigado, Cristiano.
My name is Ajoje. I am a FIFA Licensed Agent and International Sports Lawyer. I write on the Law and Business of Football, a lot. Repost and Follow if you want to read more posts like this.
