By Bero Damilola
Stakeholders in Nigeria’s creative industry have called for stronger investment, infrastructure, intellectual property protection, skills development and effective policies to transform the country’s creative potential into a sustainable economic sector.
They made the call at the QEDNG Creative Powerhouse Summit 2.0, held in Lagos on Tuesday, with the theme, “Creativity, Culture & Nigeria’s Next Chapter.”
Publisher of QEDNG, Olumide Iyanda, said Nigeria had witnessed talented individuals emerge only for some of them to lose the opportunity to thrive because the institutional and structural support required was unavailable.
He urged stakeholders to move beyond repeatedly describing the creative industry as having “potential,” insisting that the sector must become part of the country’s broader economic conversation.
He also stressed the importance of creating opportunities for young people, noting that the summit was particularly meant to provide a platform for the next generation of creatives.
Representing the Chairman Sir Demola Aladekomo(Executive Chairman, SmartcityResorts PLC) Gabriel ukachukwu said Nigeria’s music, films, fashion and other cultural products already travel beyond the country and are willingly consumed by audiences across the world.
He said the challenge was no longer whether Nigeria had something to offer, but whether the country was organized enough to capture the value generated by its creativity.
He identified infrastructure, capital, intellectual property protection, skills, distribution, technology, business models and strong institutions as essential to building a creative economy.
He called for a mindset shift in how creatives are perceived, arguing that they should be recognized as entrepreneurs, employers, exporters and owners of intellectual property.
He said Nigeria must move from talent to enterprise, find ways to finance creativity, protect and monetize intellectual property, take Nigerian creativity to the world and prepare the next generation to think globally.
He added that the creative economy required collaboration among government, businesses, investors, technology companies, financial institutions, educational institutions and creatives.
Delivering the keynote address, Ife Adebayo( National coordinator investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises iDICE) said Nigeria possessed enormous creative talent but continued to face three major gaps: skills, capital and structure.
He said deficiencies existed in areas such as cinematography, animation, product management and other technical skills, while inadequate financing meant that good creative ideas often failed to reach production.
“A great script in this country does not die because it is bad.
It dies because it is broke,” he said.
Adebayo highlighted the Federal Government’s Investment in Digital and Creative Enterprises (iDICE) Programme, which he said was designed to address some of these challenges through skills development, enterprise support and financing.
He disclosed that efforts were also underway to develop an intellectual property securitization framework, which could help make creative IP easier to value and potentially use as collateral.
He said the programme was also working with universities and polytechnics to develop sustainable enterprise-support systems, while its funding structure was designed to attract additional private and international investment into Nigeria’s digital and creative sectors.
Adebayo also emphasized the power of storytelling in shaping national identity and economic value, using the 1986 American film Top Gun as an example of how a creative production could influence perceptions of a country and even contribute to military recruitment.
He argued that Nigeria could similarly use film, music, fashion, comedy, animation and other creative forms to tell its own stories to the world.
He called for stronger investment in the sector, urging financiers to stop treating creative projects like ordinary personal loans and instead recognize them as investment opportunities.
He also addressed artificial intelligence, saying AI should not be viewed as the end of Nigerian creativity but as a tool capable of amplifying the abilities of Nigerian storytellers.
He warned, however, that without adequate training, Nigeria could become a consumer of technology built around its own creative talent.
He therefore called for a partnership between creatives and technology, insisting that the storyteller, skills and values must remain Nigerian.
He further urged corporate Nigeria to move beyond sponsoring creative events and commission and co-invest in the sector, while calling on governments to protect creators’ intellectual property and respond at the speed of the creative industry.
During the first panel session, “Building Tomorrow’s Creative Economy Today,” moderated by Steve Ayorinde, panelists including Steve Babaeko, Yibo Koko, Dr Olamide Okulaja and Anwuli Ojogwu examined the structural challenges facing the industry.
Babaeko compared Nigeria’s creative resources with its historic cocoa industry, arguing that the country had often exported raw resources while other countries captured the greater value through processing and value addition.
Koko described creativity as a sustainable economic toolkit, rather than merely “feel-good” entertainment, and called for stronger government support, collaboration and monetization structures, including deliberate efforts by states outside Lagos to market their creative assets.
Okulaja highlighted Lagos State’s Industrial Policy 2025–2030, which includes the creative sector alongside manufacturing and information technology, with measures such as tax reliefs, private-sector support, a one-stop-shop system and an implementation task force.
In the second panel, “What Creatives Need from Nigeria,” moderated by Anike-Ade Funke Treasure, panelists including Joke Silva, Efe Omorogbe, Oluwabukunmi Adeaga-ilori popularly known as Kiekie and Fisayo Fosudo discussed the practical support required by creatives, with Silva particularly advocating grants to develop creative ideas rather than relying solely on loans before projects begin generating revenue.
The summit concluded with a call for collective responsibility and greater Nigerian ownership of the creative economy.
The representative of Aladekomo said “Nigeria’s next chapter should not be merely written by Nigerians.
It should be imagined by Nigerians, created by Nigerians, owned by Nigerians, and consumed by the world,” adding that if achieved, creativity would not simply tell the story of Nigeria’s next chapter but help write it.
Adebayo similarly said the next chapter of Nigeria would not be written by government or the private sector alone but would be co-written by the creator, financier, policymaker and entrepreneur, urging all stakeholders to recognize that the country’s story was too valuable to leave untold and its creative potential too powerful to leave unfunded.
He concluded: “South Korea sold the world a song. America sold the world a pilot. It is Nigeria’s turn to sell the world a story.”
