Femi Falodun, Chief Executive Officer of ID Africa, a marketing, media and technology company, said this at the BIG NECLive8 announcement event held at Radisson Hotel, Ikeja to herald the 8th edition.
Falodun said that NECLive was the largest gathering of entertainment and creative practitioners in Nigeria, adding that the NECLive8 would hold at Landmark Centre, Lagos, from April 22. to April 24.
“The NET annual event which started in 2013 will be coming up with new programmes to improve on our normal activities, such as a full day conference and concert to cap the day.
“We will create an enabling environment for our friends and partners who have platforms that can impact in the future of Nigeria entertainment industry to showcase their work on April 23 and 24.
“Our vision this year goes beyond the ordinary, help to galvanise growth of Nigeria’s entertainment industry by highlighting challenges, where our partners and friends will come in with their products solutions,” he said.
According to him, in line with ‘Building the Future’ NECLive8 theme, the event will be used to highlight what the future of Nigeria entertainment will look like as well as the kind of future desired.
“We are trying to build the future of entertainment industry in the country and to put ideas together to help us hit our objective this year which centres on the theme,” he said.
The ID Africa CEO noted that Nigerian movies were gaining place like metrics, close to being nominated for Oscars Award, Burna Boy’s Grammy normination adding ” we have seen Davido, Wizkid music selling around the world,”.
Falodun described the fame as a sign of success and great potential the Nigerian entertainment holds, saying it is essential to bring the industry to a level that could rival other entertainment industry across the world.
Also, Henry Elechukwu, coordinator NET, said that registration for the conference would kick off early in February, adding that stakeholders were already aware that the events hold every April.
Elechukwu said the announcement behind the NECLive8 was to make people aware that the 2020 edition would be come big and in a different dimension from what it used to be.
Cross section of ID Africa members
Elechukwu (left) Ateni Adekunle (middle) and Falodun (right)
“There will be crop of new and young speakers conversant with ideas, people that have what it takes to take us to the future we are talking about.
“There is going to be exciting moments right from the registration and we are expecting a tremendous turnout from across the country and beyond, like we had from Ghana, Cote d’ Voire,” he added.
He added that NET is an entertainment publishing platform established 10 years ago, while NECLive was the largest entertainment and creative sector practitioners in Nigeria which had been holding an annual conference since 2013.
