ABUJA ENTERPRISE AGENCY COLLABORATES WITH ABUJA FILM VILLAGE TO TRAIN 300 YOUTHS IN FCT’S MOVIE INDUSTRY.
By: Emmanuel Tortiv
No fewer than 300 youths across the six Area Councils of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) will soon have cause to smile as Abuja Enterprise Agency (AEA) and Abuja Film Village (AFVIL) have taken steps to introduce industry-specific training programmes in the film sector.
This initiative formed part of discussions during a courtesy visit by a team of officials from AFVIL, to the Management of AEA on Wednesday, 12th November, at the Agency’s Entrepreneurial Complex in Jahi, Abuja.
Speaking while receiving the AFVIL Team in his Office, the Ag. Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of AEA, Dr. Chudi Ugwuada-Ezirigwe, expressed enthusiasm about the collaboration, describing it as timely and impactful.
He said it resonated with the existing template at the Agency, which deals with the Creative Sector.
“We have a programme called the Abuja Creative Enterprise Group, which we started in 2011. It focuses on practitioners in the creative industry — music, film production, ICT -The youths are already there and eager to learn. The question is simply about mobilizing resources to make it happen.”
While expressing the Agency’s delight in working with AFVIL, he emphasized the need to bring out the entrepreneurship components of the trainings that will guarantee self-reliance of the benefiting youths. 666666666
Dr. Ugwuada-Ezirigwe reaffirmed that the Agency remains committed to both general and sector-specific capacity-building programmes. He directed the relevant departments of AEA to work closely with AFVIL to actualize the initiative.
He commended the Minister of the FCT, Chief (Barr.) Nyesom Wike, for his visionary leadership in promoting development across the Territory, and also lauded the MD/CEO of Abuja Investment Company Limited (AICL), Ambassador (Dr.) Maureen Tamuno, for her innovative coordination of agencies under her supervision, including AFVIL.
Earlier in his remarks, one of the officials, from the Abuja Film Village, Mr. Deinbofa Ere, explained that the proposed training was borne out of the need to reduce the industry’s heavy reliance on film production crews from other parts of the country, a situation he described as “absolutely unnecessary.”
Also speaking, .another representative of AFVIL, Mr. Sidhi Akwah, lamented the shortage of skilled technical professionals in Abuja, which has made local film production in the FCT both difficult and expensive.
“The current challenge is that these craftspeople and technical talents are very few nationwide,” he said, “and this scarcity significantly drives up production costs.”
Illustrating the gap, Mr. Akwah noted: “You want to shoot a scene where someone breaks a bottle on another person’s head. What we currently see is someone using a real bottle and hoping no one gets injured. But in world-class productions, you create a prop that looks real but is perfectly safe.”
He added that each of these technical skills represents a potential lifelong career, and that AFVIL’s proposed training aims to build an “assembly line” of globally employable, film professionals.
He said AEA-AFVIL collaboration will deliver a world-class training for over 300 targeted youths across the FCT.
