The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the execution of a memorandum of understanding between the Federal Ministry of Information and the Central Bank of Nigeria worth N21 billion for the renovation of the National Theatre Iganmu, Lagos.
Minister of Information and Culture, Mr Lai Mohammed, disclosed this Wednesday while briefing State House correspondents at the end of the weekly FEC meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buahri.
He said execution of the project would help address unemployment in the country, as it would generate up to a million jobs in the next three years, and boost investment in the creative industry.
“I sought and obtained an approve to execute a memorandum of understanding between the Federal Ministry of Information, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Bankers Committee worth N21 billion for the renovation of the National Theatre Iganmu, Lagos.
“This is a landmark approval because it has paved the way for investment in the creative industry as part of the resolve of this government to create at least 1, 000, 000 jobs in the next three years from the creative industry.
“The CBN through the Bankers Committee is willing to invest N21, 894, 000, 000 to renovate the National Theatre, refurbish it and run it profitably,” he said.
The minister said the MoU has a life span of 21 years before it will be reverted to government, stressing that no job would be lost as a result of the execution of the project and its subsequent management by the private sector players.
“The important thing is that not job would be lost after the theatre is renovated and a special purpose vehicle would be created to run it, it can’t be business as usual but its going to be a turning point in the creative industry in the sense that we are going to have a brand-new National Theatre, with an event centre and it is going to help in creating more jobs,” he said.
The minister said the council also approved N9.43 billion for the completion of the digital switchover, which Nigeria had previously missed the deadline set for implementation.
“As you know, the ITU had two cut off dates, one in 2017 another in 2020, where nations were supposed to completed their movement from analogue to digital. Regrettably, we were not able to make it.
“But with the approval of this memo today, we would be striving to switch from analogue to digital. We will now agree on a date for a launch in the biggest cities like Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt.
“And we will start the switch off in the already switched-on states. The effect of the more today is that, digital switch over is now real and the economic effect of it will be the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in content production, channel distribution, Nollywood and Electronic appliance productions to service about 20 million Nigerian homes.
At the end of the switch over, we would have created the biggest free to air TV platform in Africa,” he said.
The minister said a ministerial task force to execute the council’s resolution would be announced soon.
