By
Anote Ajeluorou
GENUINELY worried by the apparent lack of interest and even plain
ignorance to cultural matters and the place of culture in the life of a nation amongst Nigerian politicians and elites, a
foremost culture producer and traditional ruler has proposed that those in the
business of culture production and promotion should begin courting those in
power to realise the huge potentials in the sector. This is especially so since
the Cultural Policy document has remained unimplemented over two decades after
it was formulated in 1986.
This is the submission of the Fadesewa of Simawa, an autonomous community near Sagamu, in Ogun State, Oba
Gbenga Sonuga, whose thoughts on the subject matter have been documented in a
new book he just published entitled, Introduction to Cultural Activism in
Nigeria.
The book examines the journey
of culture producers in their efforts to lobby for the implementation of the
policy since it was formulated and the many setbacks they have had in
convincing those in power to endorse it as a workable, actionable document that
has the potential to lift the much maligned, marginalised sector.
Sonuga unveiled his book at the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF 2012) that ended a few weeks ago, a
forum that had several culture producers and promoters in attendance held on the first floor of the Kongi Harvest's Arts Gallery inside
Freedom Park, Lagos, on the third and last day of the three-day festival.
Sonuga retired from active culture
production as the director of the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture about two
decades ago.
Writing the book, he said, was an emotional journey for
him, as his passion for the sector where he worked all his adult life has been
abiding one. But it has been a wounded passion as the sector has not attracted
deserved recognition from government.
Sonuga,
who is reputed the most influential director of the Lagos Arts Council to date, argued that the
Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation has merely existed not
for the needs of culture practitioners but for the interest of civil servants
in the ministry, who wrangle and hijack whatever should have been due to
industry players.
It’s this sense of persistent failure on the part of government officials,
especially top culture directors in the ministry and the consistent appointment
of ministers that have no knowledge of cultural matters that give Sonuga
headache, enough to jolt him into action even after retiring many
years back. So, he lamented, “After 50 years of Nigeria’s existence, I never
thought I would write about Nigeria’s cultural policy”, a policy that ought to
have been long established for culture to bloom.
He continued, “It’s terrible to drive a car without a manual. Cultural Policy
should have been in existence before independence. British colonial policy was
to kill our culture; we needed to have reacted to that colonial policy of
demoting our culture but it never happened because our politicians never learnt
there was an art to the building of human beings. We need to expose culture to
our young people. Many people don’t know about cultural activism. We’re saying
there are many ways you can be active in culture”.
Sonuga, who trained at Demas Nwoko’s New Art Studio in Ibadan after bagging a
degree in Theatre Arts at Ibadan, urged those in government to accept and adopt
culture as everything in the life of a nation and treat it with deserving
attention, including culture practitioners. He reiterated that culture is the
totality of a people’ existence and that art is the mode of transmitting
culture, adding, “We need a definition of culture, which has to be precise –
culture is contemporary -- what was before, what is now
and what will be in future. At Nwoko’s studios, I learnt everything from
aesthetics to the administration of culture”.
On the Culture Policy that has not been implemented since 1986, Sonuga stated,
“Civil servants killed it after its launch. The policy is full of good
intentions. The civil servants do not understand the policy and the ministers
not being culture people have compounded the problem of its implementation. All
the agencies of culture in the ministry engage in in-fighting over which gets
the lion’s share of budgets that do not get to culture producers. Now, we don’t
have a workable culture document. But we cannot give up because it’s affecting
our lives”.
Sonuga said the ordering of the ministry’s name is anachronistic and amounted
to putting the cart before the horse, saying, “You can’t have a Ministry of
Tourism and Culture and expect it to work. It’s like putting the train wagons
before the engine”.
He acknowledged the dichotomy between artists and politicians and regretted how
far apart their approaches *re, a situation he said is at
the root of culture producers’ woes, noting, “Artists don’t like to be
politicians and politicians definitely don’t want to be artists. My thinking is
that let’s look for senators, legislators and politicians of all shades and
seduce them to our side to understand what we do.
“We need a National Endowment for the Arts as enshrined in the Cultural Policy,
but the policy has to be put into effect first. The British National Lottery
funds the arts and sports from funds accruing to it. We can do the same here.
So, let’s make friends in politics. Let’s try the strategy of wooing
politicians to support the Endowment Fund for the Arts. The sooner we channeled
our creative energies towards cultural activism the better. We must do
something about the Cultural Policy. Our salvation lies in being radical and
creative. Let’s cultivate friends in politics to see that our creative people
get help”.
LAUDABLe as
this strategy seems, however, Sonuga may just being over optimistic. Dr.
Wale Okediran, himself a politician, writer and as then president, Association
of Nigerian Authors (ANA), had, in his only term at the House of
Representatives, brought a bill to the floor of the house seeking legislative
support for the arts, but it was shouted down by his colleagues, who didn’t see
its importance. In relating his bitter experience with his colleagues, Okediran
had said the federal legislators saw the bill as making monetary allowances for
mere dancers and singers and promptly overturned it.
IN his
intervention at the presentation, Chike Ofili, a
poet, argued that
although Sonuga’s idea may be a good one, there is need to first educate the
nation’s politicians on what culture meant both to technocrats in government,
politicians and corporate Nigeria as first step towards wooing them over to the
noble objectives of supporting culture.
He noted, “Shouldn’t we first be talking about culture understanding and
application to those in government and the corporate world rather than through
activism? From experience, government and corporate Nigeria don’t understand
what we are doing as culture producers and why they should support us”.
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