How come many people still prefer watching Mexican soaps to our local soaps?

As a TV producer, I will tell you that the biggest destroyer of good TV programmes in Nigeria is the advent of Mexican soaps.

If Nigerian government has the interest of the indigenous TV industry in mind, it would never have allowed it to happen. They are oblivious of the damage these soaps are doing every day. Look at the Mexican soaps, they are big project films shot on celluloid with millions of dollars and shown in more than 100 countries. And the producers have made their money. They now send it to African countries at next to nothing.

Super Story, even as it looks, is produced with almost one million naira per episode. Even then, you can’t compare it to a soap that was done at about 100 million naira per episode. To allow us grow, government should check the influx. If they are allowed to come in, they should not be shown on prime time belts, because that is where advertisers put their adverts. If you watch our TV stations 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., you see these Mexican soaps. And Nigerians are addicted to them, so there is no way a Nigerian programme scheduled for 10 p.m will compete with them.

The stations give all the time to Mexican soaps because they see them as money-spinners and there is no room for new Nigerian talents to operate.