Photograph — joblanda.com

iROKOtv which began operations in 2010 and has enjoyed robust partnerships as well as the welcoming embrace of the Nigerian populace, became an oasis in the desert as the platform through which several Nollywood watchers could get access to movies to downloads and live stream. However, in spite of this success, iROKOtv is one amongst several e-businesses in Nigeria that are restructuring in order to combat financial losses.

The company under the direction of CEO, Jason Njoku, is cutting down operational costs. Although the Nigerian based workers may be the only ones feeling the brunt of the cost cuts as 130 people were fired in this month of October from the company. The content provider has hired foreign based graphic designers (reportedly more expensive than the telesales workers earlier fired in Lagos) to reopen an already shutdown London office.

As a result of cutting down operational costs, iROKOtv has fired its VP of Distribution, Lead of Partnerships, Lead of offline, Lead of YouTube, its CTO and its Engineering Lead plus the Telesales and content operations teams. Insiders point to the lay-offs as a plan to cut its burn rate, in which case, other e-commerce businesses like Jumia have done so in the past.

In the same vein, an earlier post on Ventures Africa indicated that Jumia has been in the public eye, fingered for early collapse, while Kaymu had earlier experienced a mismanagement problem, as it silently fired several workers in and outside Nigeria. Critics point to Njoku’s exploitation of Nigeria’s weak labor laws, overpaying his London team, while denying his Nigerian workers their value.

According to a report from Techmoran.com, Njoku has been accused by unnamed sources of indecisiveness as he continues to make executive decisions that are not beneficial to his employees as well as the Nollywood market which he seeks to explore and make profit from. Due to the CEO’s seeming lack of patience and management skills as well as the ability to effectively respond to arising issues in his company, the e-business is going through a topsy-turvy of sorts as it continuously flourishes mostly on experimentation.

Another twist to this though is the fact that on October 10, media reported American Ghanaian actress, Leila Adua Djansi accused Jason Njoku of cheating the Nollywood industry as a result of the Netflix deal he made whereby the latter streams several Nollywood movies, meanwhile no royalties are paid to those who made the film.

“The way the iROKOtv deal works, they pay you an okay flat fee for a number of years. $5 to $15,000, no royalties. Therefore, if for the next 5 years they earn $100,000 on your film, they get to keep all that. All other African distributors use this model. Sadly, if you make a film on $500,000, you still get paid same amount the person who made it for $20,000 gets paid”, she said.

It seems iROKOtv may need to realign itself with the very industry it seeks to promote.

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