Veteran Nigerian actress, Idowu Philips (popularly called Iya Rainbow) has attributed the dwindling sales of home videos to the advent of social media and the internet.

The actress said this at an event in Ibadan organised to kick off the launch of a series of events to celebrate her 77th birthday in October.

“The advent of the internet has really affected the sale of our home videos and CDs and this is one of the reasons why many actors, actresses, and producers are in serious debts after producing home videos,” she noted.

“You will see a situation where someone spent N2m for a film and N600,000 in returns because the film has been uploaded on the internet before the film even goes on sale.

“We need to save our film industry from going into extinction because of the adverse effects of the internet and the social media,” she said.

The actress, who once worked as a certified nurse in general hospitals in Nigeria for several years, also noted that Nollywood might go extinct if the government fails to support the practitioners with financial aid.

“I want the government to support us, to give us money that we can be making use of as loans. It is the marketers that are lending us money and they don’t get their monies back again; that is why we don’t get support any longer.”

The actress also lamented the absence of mentors in the Nigerian film industry.

“The lack of role models is another issue we are facing. In the past, we had masters who trained a lot of budding actors and this no longer happens. Today, anyone with money and inadequate training can just produce a film and this is one of many things killing the industry.

Guests at the event included her colleagues; Peju Ogunmola, Saheed Balogun, Segun Ogungbe (Ibi Giga) and Rasak Olayiwola (Ojopagogo).

Others are Bose Aregbesola, Toyin Adegbola (Ashewo To ree Mecca) and many others.

The event organsers, Olusegun Davies and Juliana Afonrinwo, also explained that they decided to celebrate the famous actress because of her contributions to the Nigerian entertainment industry.

They said that her 77th birthday would be elaborately celebrated within a week in Dubai.

Iya Rainbow ventured into full-time acting in 1967 and has featured in over 200 films in the last 50 years.