Lai asks global business leaders to invest in Nigeria’s ‘new oil’

Lai Mohammed, minister of information, has asked global business leaders to invest in Nigeria’s “new oil”.

Speaking on Thursday at the Nigeria international partnership forum in France, the minister described the nation’s entertainment sector as the country’s new oil with 24 million television households and the largest in Africa.

Lai also described Nigeria as Africa’s music and entertainment capital, saying the country also have the continent’s largest TV market with high growth potential.

He stated that with the ongoing Digital Switch Over (DSO), there is potential for investment in the manufacturing of set-top boxes, content provision and requisite technology.

“Moving from analogue to digital television broadcasting means we will have more channels and more contents,” Lai said.

“The Nigeria TV market has about 100 million subscribers in the rural areas and also about 98 million in the urban settlement, while the annual TV subscription revenue is about 80 million US dollars.

“The advert spent as of 2020 is about 490 million USD and as digital transformation is ongoing we are looking at 1.47 billion advert revenue.”

The minister added that Nigeria has Africa’s largest internet and social media economy with 107 million active internet users and 33 million active social media users.

He said Nigeria is projected to be the fastest growing media and entertainment market in the next five years with 12.1 compound annual growth rate.

“This is what exactly we want to change with DSO because, only about two or three companies in Nigeria today are involved in subscription while we have hundreds of TV stations, producers writers and directors,” Lai said.

“We want to revise it to ensure that about 70 per cent of our revenue will come from content producers Directors and content owners while subscription will take about 30 per cent.

The minister further described Nollywood and Nigeria’s music industry as the pride of the continent.