By Haruna Salami
The Senator representing Imo west, Rochas Okorocha has advocated the diversification of the nation’s economy from oil to creative technology.
He made this known while speaking in his bill before the Senate for the establishment of University of Creative Technology, Orlu, Imo state.
According to the former governor Imo state, technology is the way to go and one of the gifts of this nation now is the entertainment industry.
“Nigeria is a world leader when it comes to entertainment – call it the movie stars, the musicians, we have done so much. We are the only country challenging America. Nigeria is popular today because of her stars: musicians, actors and actresses.
He said Lai Mohammed told him a story that he was going to a country and when he said he is Minister of Information, they said wait, moved him aside, but when they saw Kanu Nwankwo coming, the whole road was cleared. “That tells you how important this industry is, but no attention has been given to the entertainment industry in this country.
University of Creative Technology is tailored towards our economy because most of our universities in Nigeria are for you to go to and read, have certificate and do nothing. But what can you create in the movie, film, music industry, robotics, animation? These are some of the things for people to be gainfully employed and not look for white collar job anymore. This is be your own boss university, if it finally comes to be.
Okoricha said South east is known for creativity, adding that “they started most of these movies. They are very good at it, you encourage them and export it. This will give us dollars. Last year, movie alone brought about 25 billion dollars through remittance. So, we need to diversify our economy to things like this.
