Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, has said plans are underway to create two million jobs in Nigeria’s creative industry by 2027.

She said also that the ministry would roll out a framework for financing the development of the sector.

The Minister stated this during an interactive session with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group on Wednesday in Abuja.

According to her, the ministry will work with the NESG in fund generation and capacity building, through which the ministry can contribute 100 billion to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product by 2030.

“With the right funding mechanism, I think we can do so much to help Nigeria out of the doldrums by creating at least two million jobs from the creative sector value chain by 2027.

“The Federal Ministry is the happy place of Nigeria, because is the sector that Nigerians want to hear about; the art, the films, the music, is an expression of who we are. This is something that we really want to tap into, especially now that the whole world is interested in the Nigerian content.

“With this, we can reposition Nigeria, so we came up with this brilliant initiative, ‘Destination 2030’ poised to change the narrative of Nigeria. The government will work towards producing a conducive environment that encourages growth and private investment to ensure that Nigeria’s cultural influence transcends borders as a brand, and unites Nigerians across initiatives. We need to prove to the administration that the ecosystem can really bring value all the way down to the grassroots.

“So, funding for our programmes is very key and I would love to share a number of these initiatives and programmes with you to see where we can pull the funds from,” Ms Musawa said.

Earlier in his speech, NESG facilitator on Tourism, Hospitality, Entertainment, the Creative Economy and Sports, Dr Ikenna Nwosu, said the group would provide technical assistance to the ministry to enable it to attract funds.

Mr Nwosu expressed the group readiness to collaborate with the ministry to update the national policy on the creative industry and also train the ministry’s staff on efficient data collection.

“We discovered that the ministry does not have a National Policy on Creative Economy and an updated National Policy on Culture, as the one they have had since 1988.

“We do not have a National Policy to incentivise the sector by the government just as was done in other sectors, like the gas and telecommunication, to build initiatives and train operators in the sector. The NESG has decided that we must give the honourable minister the full complement of our human, technical, and development partner expertise to succeed.

“There is no limit to what she asks us to do, as we are at hand to do it on a 24-hour basis and this is a commitment that we have made. We have demonstrated it and will continue to demonstrate it,” he said.

(NAN)