Paper short abstract:

2007 saw the State's 1st attempt to control Nollywood marketing, prompting a struggle between the parastatal Censors Board and a variety of marketers' guilds. Their interactions included conflicts over regulation, contestations over institutional legitimacy and struggles for social self-realization.

Paper long abstract:

The 2007 Distribution Framework was the first meaningful attempt by the Nigerian State to regulate Nollywood marketing. It aimed to create a centralized film distribution structure, but its implementation was traumatic, with the parastatal Censors Board and marketers' guilds struggling to shape the process. The paper examines the interactions between conflicts over the enforcement of regulation, contestations over institutional legitimacy and individual marketers' struggles for social self-realization and honour.

The initiative is analyzed across four scenes. In Scene 1, Impasse, the Board struggled with communication, surveillance and enforcement and faced legal suits and physical threats. The Board and guilds contested each other's legitimacy along three axes: core industry creation and development narratives, legal rights, and commentaries on extraction.

Scene 2 saw a Realignment of strategic groups, as many Edo and Hausa marketers licensed, utilizing the Board's arguments in their own strategies. In Scene 3, Coercion/Shaming, the Board's refusal to certify new films began to squeeze the marketers, accelerating uptake. The Board then publicly shamed the recalcitrant marketers by publishing a list of licensees, which included anti-Framework campaigners. This stimulated the collapse of opposition to licensing with the accession of the Igbo guild.

In Scene 4, Transformation, the remaining marketers licensed. However, the Board was unable to remould them into the desired structure. Emboldened, marketers found opportunities to appropriate the Board's conflict and contestation strategies through their own uses of the licenses. A typology of these relationships between institutional strategies and marketer applications is offered, including: coincidence, correspondence, redeployment, and recycling.