Fidelis Duker’s passionate appeal

Although, in its sixth year, the annual Abuja international film festival, is still crawling and passionately begging for sponsorships/endorsements from both the public and private sectors.
In fact, to many, especially Duker’s colleagues and keen followers of the festival, they are yet to fathom how Duker, his wife, Temitope and the rest of his organizing team, usually manage to stage the festival yearly, since inception, without any good funding from the government or some private concerns.
According to Duker, who has kept trudging on despite the daunting task of getting corporate sponsorships, it has not been easy.
“As we prepare to enjoy the best of cinematic experience in Abuja, I will say that the festival has had its hiccups and challenges in the last six years and this also contributed to our shifting the festival from our previous date to the current one.
The festival has over the years, lacked major institutional and corporate sponsorships, which is necessitating our direction for the organization of future editions.”
Continuing, Duker, a former national president of the Directors Guild of Nigeria (DGN), regretted the fact that government had consistently supported foreign events at the detriment of the indigenous ones.
Adding that the trend must be reversed now, if we truly want to grow the Nigerian motion picture industry to an enviable height.