Introduction
Dr. Shaibu Husseini is the Director-General of the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB), the agency responsible for regulating, classifying, and promoting responsible film and video content across Nigeria.
A respected journalist, scholar, and cultural advocate, Dr. Husseini has long championed creative excellence, ethical storytelling, and the professionalization of Nigeria’s film and media industries.
As the NFVCB’s helmsman, he brings decades of experience in film criticism, policy engagement, and cultural documentation to the fore ensuring that regulation evolves hand in hand with artistic freedom.
Under his leadership, the Board has shifted focus from mere censorship to constructive classification and capacity building, creating a more enabling environment for Nigerian filmmakers and animators.
In this discussion on “The Federal Government Policy on Nationalization of Cartoon Content,” Dr. Husseini highlights how the NFVCB’s regulatory framework is adapting to support this policy, balancing creative liberty with cultural integrity.
He also explores how training, infrastructure, and funding can drive quality in Nigerian animation while positioning the sector as a catalyst for national identity, education, and economic growth.
How will the NFVCB’s regulatory framework adapt to support this new policy?
Oh! well, you know the board exists generally to classify movies, to regulate the exhibition of the movies. So, the policy is here to encourage the production of films, animation films. I don’t see any difference between animation and any other genre of film.
They’re the same, it’s just the mode of making them that is different, and so we will apply the same rules that we apply to classifying films.
You know, it’s not necessarily sensory, which was what I was trying to say to someone who made mention of the issue of censorship.
Nobody just sets out to censor a film, there must be a reason why you are calling for censorship of the film.
Even now, what is more popular is classification than censorship of film.You know that most people who consume animation are young people.
So, you don’t set out as a filmmaker, to put elements on the rest that the young people cannot consume, especially in our environment, and then going forward, since some of these contents are not are not going to be consumed only in the country but also consumed globally.
There are ways to do that, like sometimes our musicians when they produce a sound, they have something they call club mix, and they have the one they call the general mix.
If you want to put those kinds of elements that you think that the authorities will frown at, you can have that for a different audience but for a local audience, we just follow the same criteria that we use to classify audience and basically give them the ratings that they deserve.
What are the measures to ensure quality and compliance in the nationalization of animation content?
I think the first thing about quality, is that we need to recognize the fact that we need facilities to be able to make very good animations. We need studios, we need academies to prevent the filmmakers from training by themselves.
I’m sure if I ask animators now, they’ll tell me they learned some of those things on their own.
There was basically no school that they went through and the rest, so we need to take care of the infrastructure for the studios to produce quality animations, and then we also need to take care of training. You know, build capacity in that area too.
The other thing that we need to do is to provide funding. There must be a pool of fund, and I’m very happy that even the national orientation agency says, look, one thing we will do is to copy the example that the federal government is using in the area of agriculture.
You produce, we take, and we put on a channel. You know, and the rest. So, we need funding, we need distribution platforms.
I’m also happy that the national broadcasters are ready to set up a channel where we can show that, but it’s not just about setting up the channel to show that, it’s also about making sure that something comes back to the filmmakers who makes those films, and maybe those channels will be avenues for Advertisements and the rest so that there can be some kind of revenue sharing for the filmmakers.
Once you make a film and you know that you are going to get some form of money from it, you are ready to make the next film.
Because what motivates you to make the next film is the acceptance of your film and the revenue that comes from it.
So, the funding has to be in place, training facilities have to be in place, and then we need to get the right studios to use. If you want to really make some good animations, you know that there are people who have to go to Morocco, South Africa, and even as far as UK and the rest of them.
I know a guy, Stanley, He makes animations here, but is animations got shot up when he relocated to the UK because they have the facilities there and the rest, so we need to create those facilities and we’re on our way to doing that.
Because like I mentioned on the panel, there is a creative economic development for COVID, and part of it goes into concentrating on animation, especially now the government has that policy of nationalizing animations.
How can censorship evolve to encourage creatives without shifting the artiste freedom?
Okay, well, this debate has been on, for a lot of people when they hear censorship, they feel that, oh, you want to restrict creativity on the path of a filmmaker, but that’s not what the censored one is set up to do. We’re set up also to balance the critical elements on the film.
And then to balance, I don’t want to call it censorship, I want to call it classification. Because since I got in there a year ago, I try to get the word censorship out of my head because in the area of creativity, there’s no censorship.
Really, you know, we can only come in to advise on the work that we find that, oh, maybe this work is getting out of hand, and because of the environment where we are, it could instigate the public, you know, or it could incite abuse of a religious sentiment or a cultural sentiment so to speak, but as far as I know, the censors, under this administration has always tried to balance the work of classification and creative freedom of the filmmakers, there is no time and I don’t think there will be anytime within this period that I will serve as DG and I’m sure continually that we’ll have a problem where somebody will say that we ask the person to do certain things.
Because it went against something we can classify the film. We can just say okay, we can give it this rating so that it will not be exposed to people who are not supposed to have access to the film.
In what way do you think the board will collaborate with animators to promote Nigerian storytelling?
Okay, I think basically in the job of collaboration with animators, we race with the Nigerian film corporation because the Nigerian film cooperation is a government agency for film development and film promotion.
We are basically a classification board and basically a board that handles, that regulates the distribution and the exhibition. But in our little way, we can encourage story development because story is the foundation, the idea to make animation is a foundation to bring a film to life. So, we can encourage, for instance.
If you have somebody with a good idea, you know, we can give some kind of support for story development. But when it comes to producing the animation itself, then they may seek for that partnership with the Nigerian film cooperation.
How do you think the educational institution can align with the board’s standards for animation training?
Okay, I think what they can do is to first of all, agree to adopting animation as a teaching aid in the schools. Once they agree to do that, the next thing that they will do, is to begin to build capacity within them so that we can have a situation where our kids in nursery and primary school will begin to learn some small techniques from them.
So, as we’re doing that, we’re ensuring that we do not only stop at nursery and primary school. We also take it off to secondary school and then the tertiary institutions. It will surprise you to know that even till now, most of our technical institutions, who are offering mass-com or creative art. You know, just concentrate on performance.
I expected that by now, we should have built enough capacity so that an animator can be a major that you can take in a department of mass communication, or a department of creative Arts and you should graduate as an animator from a Mass com department or from the creative art department, so we need to begin to bring capacity in that area. You know, we are even struggling with the return of history.
Back to school, you know, because we now have to build enough capacity in that area, because it’s not everybody that can teach history, it’s not everybody.
So, we need to begin to build that capacity in that area. So, I think the educational institutions can help by ensuring that we institute, we make it a, I don’t want us to be talking about more policies now, but they can make it a part of learning process there.
I know some nursery and primary schools that teach their pupils coding and the rest, if we can do that for tech, you know, if you are teaching them how to code, how to do stuff, you can also get somebody who can teach them how to develop animation.
If a child of 7 and I know so many kids who are 7, who are trying their hands-on 3D animations and the rest, if a child of 7 begins to work on something, then, you know what, he would be able work on when he is 14.