Federal Government on Wednesday said it has set up a committee to advise it on the best way to mitigate the effect of the Coronavirus pandemic on the creative industry.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, who disclosed this during a meeting with the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) in Abuja, also stated that he had approved the request by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to grant a two-month licence fee waiver for terrestrial broadcast stations in Nigeria.
The minister said the committee, made up of industry stakeholders, would assess the impact of the pandemic on the industry in general and advise government on how to mitigate job and revenue losses in the sector as well as to create succour for the industry small businesses, among other things.
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According to him, the decision to set up the committee resulted from the need for a collective and government-supported approach in dealing with the immediate, short and long term palliatives and initiatives for the industry, to mitigate the effect of the pandemic on the sector, stressing that the committee was given four weeks from Wednesday May 6, 2020 to submit its report.
Mohammed stated the creative industry was a very critical sector of the nation’s economy and a major plank of the economic diversification policy of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, stressing that the industry had created the highest number of jobs after agriculture, especially for the youth.
