The leader of Crown Troop Africa, Segun Adefila has urged Nigerian creatives to bother less about international validation but remain true and focused on originality in their craft.
Adefila made this known during a panel discussion at the ninth edition of NEC Live which was held at the Landmark event centre, Lagos.
During a discussion moderated by Mozez Praiz, Adefila said rather than content creators concentrating on how to make their content acceptable to the global world, they need to believe in the exportation value of the content.
“How did they package the martial art from Asia, ‘Kung Fu,’ and sold it to the world? They first believed in it and they thought that it was good enough for export and they kept at it like the Indian films we grew up watching. Sometimes we don’t understand what they are saying but we just watch,” Adefila began.
Continuing, he said, “I come from a nation of over 206 million people so I don’t think we should be bothered about how the global world is going to judge us. Instead, we should be the judge. We are the storm because we have the number and if we look within we have so many organic things that we can sell to the world.
“For me personally we have been running our stuff based on our conviction of the kind of stories we have, we can find some dances anywhere in the world, you can go to Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and so many places but you cannot find Atilogwu dance in any of those places except you come to Nigeria,” he stressed further.
Adefila also submitted that what many content creators in Nigeria need is more collaboration with individuals, organisations, and fora to sell the indigenous craft to the world. He cited the Nigerian music industry as an example saying many musicians have been getting international awards nominations but many didn’t win until recently when collaboration opened up the industry and everyone is talking about Afrobeats.