Ambivalence of informality: Covid-19 and unmasked precarity in Nollywood

Abstract

This article explores the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood) and the local responses of filmmakers to the precariousness engendered by the pandemic. This research adopts the critical media industry studies framework and relies on interviews with 30 Nollywood filmmakers who provided insights on the impact of the pandemic on labour in Nollywood. Theorizing the Covid-19 dynamics as reflective of the ambivalence of informality, this article submits that although informality was central to Nollywood's industrial structure and sustainability, the pandemic triggered unprecedented tensions associated with those informal practices and highlighted existing precarity which had been largely masked by constant availability of jobs. Accordingly, a significant legacy of the pandemic for the industry is the unprecedented gravitation of industry players towards more formalized industrial structures and practices.

Introduction

The Nigerian film industry (Nollywood) was created by private businessmen about three decades ago as a predominantly informal film industry. The industry has developed with minimal level of government interference as many industry players historically privileged informal self-governance in place of government interventions (Bud, 2014). Due to its emergence as a ‘born-informal’ video film industry, production practices, distribution norms, and labour relations have precariously resided within the realm of informal relations and off-the-books transactions. Through its mastery of the informal economies, the industry, which started as a straight-to-video film industry, has developed into a significant creative giant in Africa. This article examines the complications of Nollywood's informal dynamics in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It argues that while informality was central to Nollywood's industrial structure and sustainability, the pandemic triggered unprecedented tensions associated with those informal practices and highlighted existing precarity, which has been largely masked by constant availability of jobs. Accordingly, a significant legacy of the pandemic for the industry is the unprecedented gravitation of industry players towards more formalized industrial structures and practices.

Well-organized infrastructure of informal distribution within Nigeria and transnationally was critical to Nollywood's emergence as one of the dominant cultural forms in Africa (Jedlowski, 2013; Larkin, 2008). In recent years, cinemas and streaming services have emerged to formalize distribution processes in the industry. However, small-scale poorly funded production companies still dominate productions while contractual employment practices are rarely explored. Leveraging the absence of the bureaucratic processes that often characterize formalized labour relations, Nollywood produces more than 50 films weekly and employs more than 1 million people across the production chain, making it the second largest employer of labour in Nigeria after agriculture. The wide transnational appeal of Nollywood films also positions it as one of the largest export sectors in Nigeria (Arewa, 2017).

Much of the ‘success’ of the industry, especially its regional dominance in Africa and the high velocity of productions, has been attributed to the opaque dynamics of its informal production and distribution culture (Lobato, 2010; Miller, 2012). Reflecting the broader informality of the industry, precarious labour is a key characteristic. The film production industry is largely sustained by poor wages, long shooting hours, and relationship-based labour (Miller, 2016a; Simon, 2022a). While Nollywood's industrial conditions demonstrate some productive elements of informality, the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the counterproductive implications which hitherto have been at the margin of industry discourse.

This research adopts the critical media industry studies approach, which subsumes how media industry professionals negotiate external and internal dynamics in their quotidian industrial practices (Havens et al., 2009). Accordingly, I employed semi-structured interviews to understand the impact of the pandemic on labour in Nollywood. Overall, I interviewed 30 Nollywood filmmakers. The filmmakers identified as writers, producers, and directors. However, due to the conditions of labour in Nollywood, many of them undertake other roles, such as costumier, editor, and location manager. Consequently, the distinction between ‘creatives’ and ‘craft workers’ is blurred, as many interview participants belong to both sides. This enriches the interview data as participants were able to answer questions across diverse components of the production chain. Many of the filmmakers target specific distribution systems, such as the traditional video system, cinema, and streaming, and provided diverse accounts of how their Covid experience was shaped by their preferred mode of distribution. Eighteen of the interviews were conducted during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, while 12 additional interviews were conducted between 2021 and 2023, during which lockdowns were eased and normalcy returned to productions in Nollywood. I approached participants through email and social media conversations; telephone calls and interviews were conducted via Zoom, Skype, and telephone calls. Notably, some interview participants opted to be anonymized while others allowed themselves to be identified.

From the data thus collected, this article presents three ways in which the industry’s conditions following the pandemic illuminate the underlying tensions of precarious practices in Nollywood. First, the pandemic exposed the complications of the informal working conditions and wage gap among industry players, which have hitherto been masked by steady availability of jobs. Second, it illuminated the minimal concern for health and safety in the industry, and awakened unprecedented consciousness with regard to safety concerns. Third, it exposed the limitations of informal self-governance that characterize the industry, creating an unusual clamour for formal structures for a sustainable future of the industry. This article characterizes these dynamics as depicting the ‘ambivalence of informality’, in that while informal structures have been pivotal to Nollywood's sustenance, the pandemic leaves a legacy of dissent with those mechanisms as industry professionals now privilege more formal structures.

Informality and precarity in Nollywood

Informal practices in production and distribution have always been a distinguishing element of Nollywood. In a formal economy, economic details are accessible and are tracked by the records of modern state bureaucracies, banks, and corporations. Also, industrial activities are regulated, measured, and governed by state and corporate institutions (Lobato, 2012; McCall, 2012). In contrast, informal economies consist of unrecorded transactions, labour exchange, as well as extra-legal activities that are not captured in, and accounted for by the formal system of financial records and official bureaucratic establishments (McCall, 2012). They include economic and industrial activities that are not regulated, measured, and governed by state and corporate institutions (Lim, 2019; Lobato, 2012). Informal practices are generally subterranean in that they are not visible for official documentations and oversight (Lobato, 2009; Miller, 2020). These activities are sustained by the ‘shadow economy’, a space of unmeasured, untaxed, and unregulated economic activities that are characterized by ‘handshake deals, reciprocity, gift economies, theft, barter and other modes of exchange and redistribution which bypass [official] institutions’ (Lobato, 2012: 40).

Lobato and Thomas (2015) suggest a spectrum approach to theorizing the interdependency between the formal and informal components of media industries. In this sense, formal and informal practices often overlap to maintain labour relations and galvanize economic stability of media industries and organizations. The coexistence of formal and informal practices is evident in all media industries across the world. In many developed economies where informal practices are subtly present, formal activities are often much more conspicuously present and the two usually overlap for industry sustenance. However, in the case of Nollywood, informality was historically endemic. It was an industrial norm in production and distribution (Lobato, 2010; Miller, 2012). In terms of production, contracts were rarely signed, and cash-in-hand payments were the norm. Labour relations were largely based on personal connections. Producers rarely kept production records, thereby making the production capacity of the industry a subject of speculation rather than accessible from reliably verifiable sources (McCall, 2012; Miller, 2020).

The informal economies of Nollywood are connected to the endemic precarity in the industry. In this context, precarity is associated with work and employment conditions that share social and economic risks between businesses and workers through practices such as casualization of work, low pay, and insufficient social protections, among others (Alacovska and Gill, 2019; Kalleberg, 2009). In Nollywood, it manifests through low wages, wageless labour, minimal health and safety mechanisms, and extended working hours (Miller, 2016a; Simon, 2022a). These patterns of precarity are rooted in Nollywood history. The industry itself was informally and precariously created in 1992 when Kenneth Nnebue, an importer of videocassettes shipped some empty cassettes from Taiwan but was unable to sell them. He decided to boost the sales of his empty cassettes by recording local content onto them. This experiment led to the production of Living in Bondage (1992), which is reputed to be the pioneer Nollywood video film (Arewa, 2017; Okome, 2019). Unexpectedly, the movie sold over a million copies through informal distribution using video cassette vendors (Bright, 2015). Spurred by the sales, many private businessmen ventured into movie production and the industry developed over time. The emergence of Nollywood coincided with the extreme economic crisis in Nigeria in the 1990s, which led to massive job losses and a collapse of the formal sector of the economy (Jedlowski, 2017). Unemployed individuals were the majority of the earliest Nollywood actors and crew members, and adopted their creative works as a mode of survival in the face of a harsh economy. Accordingly, the development of Nollywood in the informal sector and the availability of excess labour conditioned the industry as characterized by informality and precarity in all industrial sectors.

Due to Nollywood's peculiar conditions, most production and distribution deals were executed at beer parlours using word of mouth as the deed of agreement (Miller, 2016b). Accordingly, there was no strong attention paid to issues of welfare of the cast and crew, as productions were hurriedly put together and completed within two weeks. Long hours of shooting were common because of the innate desire to complete productions as early as possible. The notion was that the longer cast and crew members stayed on set, the more the cost of production (Miller, 2010; Simon, 2022b). Low wages were also a key component of the precarity in Nollywood. Nollywood runs a star system, which has been pivotal to its success (Lobato, 2010). In terms of wages, the star system engenders huge disparities as only the established actors are paid high fees by Nollywood standards. Some earned up to US$1700 for a film project. In contrast, up-and-coming actors and crew members are paid far lower fees. Some rarely make as much as US$100 from an entire production, while many others don’t get paid at all. For the wageless workers, the visibility they gain from appearing in movies is understood as the social capital that replaces economic capital.

These patterns of precarity and informal practices had generated tensions in the industry as many workers interpreted the labour conditions as exploitative, considering that video distribution was a solid medium of domestic distribution with great revenues around the 2000s (Obiaya, 2012). On many occasions, such tensions were eased through the relational practices that underpinned labour in the industry. It was common for producers, directors, and crew members to see themselves as ‘family’, which evokes a moral burden to support one another. Such relational ties were also central to securing jobs. Due to the relational logics of informal labour, workers maintain jobs through personal relationships to the extent that they are willing to work for free or take low pay as a strategic investment in maintaining the relationships. In most cases, the relationship-based labour is hinged on the hope that the industry would change in the future and labour relations would improve accordingly (Simon, 2022b). Zelizer (2012) observes that such relational activities constitute a form of work with economic implications. Similarly, Lobato and Thomas (2015: 23) assert that such strategic informal practices ‘are often required to keep things running smoothly’ in media industries. This, they describe as ‘productive qualities of informality’ (2015: 24).

Indeed, informality-driven precarity has been productive for Nollywood's development in its distinctive context. In an industry marked by endemic video piracy and unstructured distribution systems, cost-cutting strategies in productions are understood as the route to sustainability. Its model of low-cost filmmaking has also been copied to grow local film industries in African countries such as South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (Krings and Okome, 2013; Obiaya, 2019). Notably, Nollywood has evolved from its straight-to-video production norms as cinemas and streaming have become emergent distribution outlets. However, the development has not eroded informality in production; neither has it significantly upended precarity in labour.

Informality continues to be a key element of Nollywood's production cultures to the extent that it is often understood as one of the pillars holding up the industry. However, as the following analysis suggests, the Covid-19 pandemic was a major disruption of the assumed calm in the industry. Inherent precarity had been masked by the steadiness of jobs, as workers were certain of making a daily income through on-set activities. This uneasy calm aligns with Braun's (2015) conceptualization of ‘isometric stability’ that often characterizes media industries. Isometric stability refers to the illusional calm in a media industry often associated with the absence of disruptive forces. An inherent but often underestimated tension only becomes evident when disruptive elements – internal or external – emerge to destabilize the imaginary stability within the industry. This is an apt way to describe the Covid-19 dynamics in Nollywood. While informality has been described as part of the elements structuring Nollywood's sustainability, the pandemic triggered unprecedented tensions associated with those informal practices, highlighting and challenging existing inequalities and the precarious conditions of labour which had been partly championed or at least tolerated by many industry professionals.

Wage inequality, distribution tensions, and social media video productions

In this section, I explore the intersections between inherent wage inequality in Nollywood and the worsened welfare of workers during the pandemic. I examine how the quest for survival abruptly pushed many filmmakers into temporary career direction in short-form social media comedy video productions. With this, I demonstrate a perspective to career disruptions catalysed by the pandemic among Nollywood creatives. Like other film industries across the globe where Covid-19 impacted the production, distribution, and consumptions of films, Nollywood also had its experiences. In Nigeria, the index case of Covid-19 was announced on 27 February 2020, after which a Presidential Task Force (PTF) for coronavirus management was inaugurated in March. Though the spread was not rapid, the government announced the first phase of restrictions branded the ‘fourteen-day lockdown’ in the same month (Ohia et al., 2020). The lockdown was restricted to three states including Lagos – the hub of Nollywood film production. Thereafter, other phases of restrictions were rolled out to the extent that all the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) were on lockdown. On a national level, the lockdowns unveiled the centrality of informal economies as the mainstay of the country's economy. Nigeria's informal economy accounts for 65% of the country's total GDP and employs more than 90% of the workforce (ILO, 2022). In Lagos, Nigeria's foremost commercial city, over 5 million out of the 7.5 million people labour force make a living in the state's informal economy (The Africa Report, 2020). In many rural areas, daily economic transactions are pivotal to living (Simon, 2013). From the foregoing, it is evident that Nollywood's informal conditions are a microcosm of the broader informality of the Nigerian economy.

The lockdown policy severely impacted revenues generated from informal business activities. Though the lockdown was expedient in the face of global concerns over deadly cases of Covid-19 community transmissions in Africa, it conflicted with the social structures and the way the local economy operates in Nigeria. It complicated the welfare of informal workers whose livelihood is dependent on daily economic interactions. Thus it wasn’t long after the lockdowns that many Nigerians complained of being slowly starved by the ‘hunger virus’ while avoiding Coronavirus (The Guardian, 2020a). In Nollywood, similar issues were dominant. Right from the first lockdown in March 2020, many productions were brought to a halt. The lockdown caught many filmmakers at different phases of the production chain. For some, it was during pre-production and the projects were immediately suspended. For others, it was halfway into productions and shooting was abandoned. As a director noted:

Producers really suffered. Some had paid crew members to be on set for specific days, then Covid came midways into production. Since the producer asked people to go home based on government directive, getting them back again to continue would necessitate a fresh agreement. Only few kind actors and crew members could accept discounted charges for a fresh agreement. Not all producers have recovered from the damages of Covid. A lot of them slipped into depression. (Personal communication)

Some producers were ‘lucky’ to have completed productions before the lockdown, but there were different experiences for such filmmakers, depending on their targeted distribution systems. The lockdown led to the closure of cinemas across Nigeria, meaning direct-to-cinema filmmakers could not distribute films during the lockdown period. For instance, producer Chris Odeh (personal communication) lamented that he invested a lot of funds in making a film with the aim of distributing it across the cinemas in Nigeria and the rest of Africa. However, shortly before the planned cinema release across African countries, multiple lockdowns were declared. Similarly, director Yemi Morafa (personal communication) already had his film The Grudge (2016) showing in cinemas, but exhibition was abruptly suspended due to the pandemic.

It was the same experience for direct-to-video filmmakers who use the traditional marketers for distribution. This is because video distribution often takes place in physical markets such as those in Alaba and Idumota areas of Lagos state. Those markets are usually crowded with tens of video vendors, often scrambling for shares of video copies for distribution (Haynes, 2016; Miller, 2016b). Thus, when the lockdown was declared, those markets were impacted as nobody was allowed to transact business. Many of the video filmmakers and marketers who were financially burdened eventually uploaded their films directly on YouTube and got revenue from YouTube ads. Others also licensed their films to cable services such as Africa Magic and ROKtv. Distribution was less problematic for direct-to-streaming producers who had completed productions prior to the lockdown however. As streaming services could not produce original films, they relied on existing producers for content. The pressure to service their libraries compelled streamers to relax their licensing requirements, especially in terms of picture and sound quality. Thus, many films that would normally fail the in-house screening were licensed. As director Kingsley Onyema explained:

Productions were on hold. Streaming services like iROKOtv started calling producers with existing movies to bring them. Because of film scarcity, filmmakers hiked their licensing fees. I know a man who made over 80 million naira [US$105,000] from iROKOtv because he had a lot of films that didn’t initially make it out there. But during Covid, iROKOtv needed more films and they bought everything in the archive. (Personal communication)

As producers counted their gains and losses (depending on their distribution systems), many actors and crew members such as editors, cameramen, and location managers soon became frustrated with the lockdown. Filmmakers had thought that the pandemic restrictions would be lifted after a few weeks, but the lockdown went on for over three months. It was a ‘period of hunger’ for workers in Nollywood because many require day-to-day work to survive. The Nigerian economic system and the particular conditions in Nollywood do not allow people to stay off-work for too long and feel comfortable. As producer Sunday Oliseh noted:

Most filmmakers live by the day. Many people are not well paid. If they get paid on a job, it is barely enough to get by for some days before getting a new job. So, you can imagine how we felt when we couldn’t work. We were all at home. It was unimaginable that this happened in an industry where people live by their daily earnings. (Personal communication)

The pandemic rekindled the wage gap issue in the industry. Nollywood filmmakers had previously identified the wages imbalance as a challenge in the industry (Obiaya, 2012). Generally, certain actors and crew members are much better paid than others. According to industry sources, these disparities are often associated with the years of experience and track records of workers. While this disparity has been an underlying issue in Nollywood, its complications were masked by the constant job availability, which kept workers engaged most of the time. It was common for actors and crew members to work on multiple productions in a day. Through this, workers would get paid from multiple sources and the composited pay complemented the paltry pay from a single project.

The industry enjoyed relative stability based on these informal arrangements. However, the Covid-19 lockdown blocked productions and revealed the precariousness of low pay and multiple job handlings. Within the first month of the lockdown, many filmmakers reported being ‘infected’ by the ‘hunger virus’ as they could no longer meet their basic needs (Premium Times, 2020; The Guardian, 2020a, 2020b). To the chagrin of up-and-coming actors and crew members, who have always received low pay, some of their ‘well-paid’ counterparts were living fine and donating funds to their social media followers. For many ‘stars’, the national hardship of the pandemic created a perfect time to ‘give back’ to their social media followers (Opera News, 2020; Premium Times, 2020). Thus, it was common to see certain star actors requesting the bank details of their social media followers for random crediting. For poorly paid workers, the pandemic amplified the pay dichotomy. Many of them eventually resorted to begging their star colleagues for financial support. In some cases, the star colleagues would reach out to struggling colleagues with whom they have personal relationships and offer to support them. These dynamics reflect the workings of informal relationships in assuaging the impacts of the pandemic among filmmakers. However, it also illuminates the internal tensions and inequality within the industry. As a director explained:

The pandemic exposed the payment gap in the industry. If you pay some filmmakers on set, half the money is already spent before getting home due to high cost of transportation. I was once a production assistant and my take-home was about ₦10,000 [US$22] {for the entire production}. You could imagine me travelling around Lagos for productions and ending up with such amount. Unfortunately, situations have not changed for many crew members. (Personal communication)

The low pay made it practically impossible to save money, making many workers to rely on their daily earnings. Accordingly, when the pandemic stuck and daily earnings were not forthcoming, it became a case of suffering from the ‘hunger virus’ while attempting to avoid the Coronavirus.

The peak of ‘hunger virus’ was when some filmmakers temporarily changed their career direction to become social media skit comedians as a strategy to survive the severe economic pressure arising from the pandemic. In Nigeria, a social media comedy skit industry is evolving as part of the expanding digital cultures in Africa. Many content creators are leveraging the economic potentials of YouTube and Facebook to create short-form comedy content which is uploaded on these social media platforms. Through a combination of platform-inserted ads and a huge local and transnational audience, such skit production is gradually stimulating the creation of a new cultural sector in Nigeria (Simon, 2022c; Sodeinde and Ojomo, 2021). A report by Dataleum, a global talent accelerator, ranked social media skit production as the third largest entertainment industry in Nigeria with a net worth of over 50 billion naira (US$66 million) as of March 2022 (Business Day, 2022).

During the pandemic, skit comedians held sway in the entertainment space as they did not require many cast and crew. Thus, it was common for skit actors to shoot indoors and release their 3–5-minute videos online. A couple of Nollywood actors moved into skit production during the pandemic and interview sources described this as part of a strategy to mitigate the economic impacts of the pandemic. However, when the lockdowns were relaxed, several such actors continued to prefer skit productions to filmmaking. As a producer observed:

I know filmmakers who were a bit disillusioned because of the entire Covid situations and said that they were going into skit making. Apparently, some skit makers were making more money than Nollywood actors even before Covid. These skit makers were still able to make their skits during the Covid period. A lot [of filmmakers] are choosing skit making over us now. I know a few popular actors saying that they want to go into it because it looks like there's more money there. (Personal communication)

Filmmakers’ migration towards skit productions reflects the uncertainties that pervaded the industry in the face of Covid-inspired economic precarity. In this sense, any available opportunity for better wages was explored. As Berg and Penley (2016) suggest, as much as precarity has become entrenched in cultural industries, workers would always find a way to navigate the precarious terrains for survival. The pandemic unveiled the precariousness of wages, introduced the ‘hunger virus’ to industry discourse and pushed some filmmakers to seek survival in a competing cultural sector.

On-set safety and generic limitations

Health and safety concerns are critical issues in film industries across the world, and scholars have mapped responses to prevention, management, and resolution of occupational hazards among filmmakers across the production chain (Curtin and Sanson, 2016; Mendes et al., 2017; Small, 2013). A common understanding from these works is the sensitivity of creative workers to their safety and that of the entire production team. Prior to the pandemic, health and safety issues rarely surfaced as part of employment discussions and considerations in Nollywood. There had been previous cases of injuries on set, but they were masked by the informal dynamics of the system as there is paucity of policies to entrench safety practices. Accident cases were mostly shared by filmmakers on their social media pages, mainly to attract fans’ sympathy. For instance, in 2016, an actor sustained burns while performing fire stunts during a shoot (Vanguard, 2016). There were also actors who have had near-death experiences due to severe injuries from jumping stunts (36ng, 2016; Information Nigeria, 2013). Such cases often attract media coverage but follow-up news on such developments is rare.

Despite the prevalence of health and safety issues in Nollywood, minor risk assessments associated with ensuring the safety of shooting environment are often practised. The location manager handles the task of checking that shooting locations are safe and devoid of street urchins or ‘area boys’ who often harass filmmakers on set, forcing them to make payments or risk productions being disrupted. There had been cases of serious attacks by area boys when producers failed to provide the desired payment. For instance, in December 2022, a filmmaker was left bloodied after a gruesome attack by some area boys (Nigerian Tribune, 2022). There were also cases of destruction of production equipment, physical assault, and destruction of personal belongings (Punch, 2022). These concerns are pervasive to the extent that settling up with the ‘area boys’ becomes part of the production budget on many occasions. Industry professionals often blame this on the flawed police system and the paucity of policies aimed at protecting filmmakers. As one producer explained:

There is no known regulation for health and safety. Few producers put safety measures in place of their own volition. For instance, if an actor gets injured or falls sick during production, the actor must find a way to take care of themselves. Even if the illness resulted from a specific production, the producer is not obliged to take any responsibility. That's why many actors don’t put in their best in production, because they know they are not protected. (Personal communication)

In the absence of health and safety policies, measures to prevent accidents become the responsibility of everyone on set. Medical personnel are rarely on set due to lack of budgeting. In a very few instances, certain ‘big productions’ may have one or two health experts on set to take care of tens of workers. This suggests that the personnel-to-workers ratio on those productions is below global best practices. These are underlying issues that were largely normalized before the Covid situations. However, the outbreak of Covid-19 unmasked the potential risks of these conditions, and production teams became very conscious about their health. Shortly after the lockdown was eased and shooting commenced, there was an unprecedented prioritization of safety concerns in the industry, though they are mostly aligned with the Covid management protocols. Interview sources noted that many filmmakers never imagined that health and safety issues could be so significant that they would form a core part of the production budget. As a director explained:

People became conscious because Covid-19 created fear. You could contract it through many means including droplets of saliva. It made people to become so much conscious of their environment. Eventually, we realized some of us got infected on set, and the fear was heightened. (Personal communication).

Due to the fear of the virus, the ‘Covid budget’ became prominent and it increased production budgets across the industry (Mbamalu, 2021). On many production sets, hand sanitizers and face masks became conspicuous. On a few sets, compulsory testing became a norm, though the frequency differed among productions. For small productions, which dominate the industry, testing was done once every two days. However, the few big productions had enough resources to do two tests per day. Medical personnel also became actively involved in productions of the big spenders like Netflix. Across most productions, apart from hand sanitizers and nose masks, no other cogent safety measures were in place due to paucity of funds.

In instances where minimal safety protocols were in place, filmmakers turned to spiritual resources for their safety and health concerns. In precarious conditions, where creative workers operate in problematic business environments, they often derive strength and hope using religiosity and spiritual resources. These spiritualizing practices include prayers and constant invocation of God to take control (Alacovska et al., 2021; Namatovu et al., 2018). Nollywood filmmakers who could not access testing kits had to keep working and put their faith in God for protection. As a producer explained:

Some of us [filmmakers] went to their religious leaders for ‘anointing oil’ and ‘prayer water’ which they believe represent a form of spiritual fortifications against Covid. They brought these things to the shooting locations. It is all about working by faith. That was because the fear was out there, but people needed to go out and work to survive. (Personal communication)

Nigeria is known to be among the most religious countries in the world (Pew Research Centre, 2018), and it is normal for people to put their trust in God in conditions outside their control. Though many religious organizations participated in distribution of face masks to the vulnerable during the pandemic, massive congregational prayers to God for a divine solution were also common (Equal Times, 2020). Many Nollywood filmmakers who could not afford the cost of continuous testing and face masks aligned with the spiritual dimensions of protection as a strategy for hoping to thrive within the precarious conditions of the time.

As part of the strategies to protect the safety of filmmakers, popular Nollywood genres such as family, romance, and traditional epic were suspended. Notably, these genres are among those at the core of Nollywood's cultural productions (Haynes, 2016). Due to medical advice on social distancing, actors were reluctant to take part in intimate scenes. In family and romance films, actors playing the role of spouses were not eager to hug their partners or show affection. Thus, some scheduled productions were postponed. Traditional epic films were not produced because they often entail showing large gatherings of people in ancient communities. As producer Titi Jeje (personal communication) noted, epic films often depict the communality in traditional African societies, and such portrayal was impracticable in an era of social distancing. Quite significantly, the use of face masks is inconsistent with the historical past that epic films explore. Thus, many such productions were suspended until the situation changed. Contrary to the scarcity of epic films around the pandemic period, from 2022 and 2023, these films started being produced in large numbers mainly for distribution in the traditional video market and on YouTube. High-budget epic films also started to appear in the cinemas and on premium streaming services. Direct-to-Netflix epic films such as Anikulapo (2022), Eleshin Oba (2022), and Jagunjagun (2023), and direct-to-cinema epic films such as Orisa (2023) and Kesari (2023), have also been released. In the direct-to-video market, many epic films are being churned out weekly, but the numbers remain undocumented due to the market's poor accounting system.

Limits of informal self-governance and the future of labour

One of the key industrial dynamics in Nollywood unveiled by the pandemic is the limits of its inherent mode of informal self-governance. By this, I refer to the individualization of professional decisions, such as wage negotiation and other agreements that do not pass through any form of documentation or legal oversight. In this sense, every worker manages themselves without government policies or industry-level benchmarks to structure labour relations. Nollywood had thrived on its informal practices to the extent that scholars often explore the industry as an apt case study for how informality could be productively navigated when industry conditions do not support formal practices (Lobato, 2009; McCall, 2012). Government support has been generally poor in terms of production incentives and overall enabling environment such as film-friendly policies (Ezepue, 2020).

In a few instances when government attempted to regulate filmmaking and distribution practices in the industry, some filmmakers and traditional marketers opposed the moves, which were often interpreted as extractive. The argument was that the government wasn’t supportive when the industry was developing and only wants to get involved so as to extract taxes and wield undue influence on the industry (Bud, 2014; Business Day, 2020). With less support from external sources, the industry largely thrives on self-funding, while industrial governance revolves around informally organized and weak professional guilds. Through the activities of the guilds, a measure of order is sustained in the industry (McCall, 2012; Miller, 2016b), but this is not sufficient to provide the level of desired structure for workers’ welfare. Guilds lack the bargaining power to represent their members in discussions with policy makers and government parastatals, as is the case with more developed film industries (Fortmueller, 2019; Peltzman, 2012). The Nollywood context shows how informality does not necessarily translate into a lack of order, but it does mean the capacity to galvanize a meaningful intervention into structured labour relations is lacking.

The Covid pressures pushed the industry to a boiling point and exposed the limits of informal self-governance. This was particularly amplified when it became public knowledge that Nollywood filmmakers contracted by Netflix were being paid 25% of their weekly wages as a form of corporate support throughout the pandemic. Producer Kolade Shashi (personal communication) who benefited from this development noted that the lockdown was declared during the pre-production phase of Netflix's Far from Home which was later released in 2022. Netflix's continuous support, despite the suspension of production, was a watershed in the industry as it triggered the conception that similar welfare packages would be possible in the industry if a more structured system was entrenched.

In the years immediately following the pandemic, things have gone back to how they were before Covid. A constant supply of jobs has returned, and on-set safety measures have waned. However, the Covid experience is catalysing unprecedented calls for stronger and more realistic labour policies that are of potential significance to the future of the industry. The idea is that for things to change, relevant structures must be put in place. For instance, the chairman of the Guilds of Directors of the Theatre Arts and Motion Pictures Practitioners Association of Nigeria (TAMPAN), Titi Jeje, observed that – more than ever before – the guild is championing partnership with relevant government agencies and private organizations to strengthen existing structures for members’ welfare and engender supportive labour policies. As he noted:

We are unveiling a welfare foundation to take care of our members. This is just our initiative. You could imagine how much better we would do if government was involved. They haven’t been so much involved because they are yet to see the values in the industry. We see the government as potential helpers and we are open to their support. (Personal communication)

Filmmakers noted the need for industry collaborations with the Nigerian state and corporate bodies, while acknowledging that the industry has thrived up to this point based on its informal structures. As producer Kolade explained:

We need them to move forward. Most financial institutions and insurance companies are not interested in insuring film productions. There is under-appreciation and under-valuation of Intellectual Property of Nollywood. So, there are no proper insurance policies and packages for film production companies. This is caused by structural failure on our part, but we are getting better now. Cinema films now provide statistics for proper understanding of how viable the industry has become. We need them to come around and let's discuss how to create a working relationship. (Personal communication)

This position is often held by filmmakers who target the cinema and streaming and are more attuned to the formal distribution norms in those spaces. Straight-to-video filmmakers are still within the control of video marketers who largely abhor formal industrial practices. Those in the traditional video market lack interest in the documentation and legal frameworks required for labour formalization (Ernest-Samuel and Uduma, 2019). This suggests that the internal fragmentations in Nollywood will play a key role in shaping the ongoing drive for labour formalization. Filmmakers oriented towards a formalized labour system have started to liaise with government agencies. Producer Sunday Oliseh (personal communication) observed that since Covid, multiple meetings and summits have been held on how to secure government support towards creating relevant regulatory bodies, but none of the recommendations have been implemented. As he noted:

We are engaging state governments for better regulatory bodies. There are meetings, but we are awaiting implementations. We are canvassing for regulations that will ensure that production contracts are clearly documented, and everyone's welfare will be considered.

As much as labour relations have not changed since Covid, as steady jobs have returned with the end of the lockdowns, the overall experience of the lockdown has raised consciousness regarding formalized industrial relations to an unprecedented degree. This is creating a significant drive for sustained collaboration among the industry, government agencies, and corporate organizations. In an industry with an historically predominant aversion towards corporate involvement and formalized practices, the recent development marks a turning away from industrial preferences for informality and an increased acceptance of formal structures. This has the potential to transform labour relations and entrench consciousness of concerns for workers’ welfare, health and safety, and legally binding contractual employment relations as the industry continues to evolve.

Conclusion

It is indisputable that informality was pivotal to Nollywood's creation and development. Its mastery of informal practices disconnected it from global capital, corporate relationships, and state interventions. Accordingly, the industry thrived on self-governance and informal labour relations. This ‘side’ of informality reveals its productivity in Nollywood's distinctive context in particular. Indeed, the case of Nollywood, especially its development in the informal sector, illuminates informal practices as a way of living and strategy for industrial survival in the face of endemic precarity. Nevertheless, the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated implications for labour and livelihood underscore the limits of informality under unexpectedly difficult conditions. It shows the ambivalence of informality, in that while Nollywood developed under informal conditions, it has also been limited by the same conditions. As such, a significant legacy of the pandemic in Nollywood is the unprecedented industrial gravitation towards more formalized labour relations, corporate involvement, and government interventions.

This article has also particularly explored the propensity of informality to engender isometric stability in the face of pervasive precarity. Over the years, the industry enjoyed an illusional calm as the constant supply of jobs masked wage disparity, poor pay, as well as the lack of consciousness around health and safety. It also concealed the limits of informal self-governance in the industry. The precarious conditions created underlying industrial tensions among filmmakers who expected improved labour conditions. Nevertheless, those internal tensions were largely dampened down by the informal relationships and kinship mentality that shaped labour relations. Thus, despite inherent tensions, there was an illusion of calm. However, with the pandemic, the isometric stability was destabilized as the disruptions to jobs unveiled the long-standing structural inadequacies that had become normalized in Nollywood's labour practices. The conditions in Nollywood represent a highlight of existing precariousness and inequalities in global media industries. For Nollywood filmmakers, the pandemic was more than a temporary setback in production and distribution, it also brought about life-changing consequences. For instance, some of those who changed to social media skit comedy productions are more attached to their new career path and are less likely to consider filmmaking as their primary creative career in the near future. The ease of skit production, and the associated economic returns, disincentivize any drive towards a Nollywood comeback.

Accordingly, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a disruptive force in Nollywood, as it has been in other industrial contexts, but a more grounded investigation reveals the extent to which the industry's foundational logics and deep-rooted norms shaped the experience of filmmakers and their responses to the pandemic. The ongoing industrial gravitation towards more formalized industrial structures in Nollywood underscores the fluidity of industry norms and culture. Under certain circumstances, practices that were championed or tolerated by industry professionals may lose their relevance when a presumably better alternative appears. Overall, the future of Nollywood in the context of its formalization drive requires scrutiny. It remains to be seen how the ongoing mantra of formalization will disrupt or transform the endemic informal practices that are so firmly rooted in the industry.