Strategic cultural agenda in the season of change (III)
In case we forget, we have established instruments to build this transformation, through culture upon. We can embark upon the conscious implementation of the provisions of our existing National Cultural Policy of 1988 and its subsequent amendment in 2001 through the budgetary empowerment of the existing culture parastatals.We should strengthen the Nigeria Copyright Commission as […]
In case we forget, we have established instruments to build this transformation, through culture upon. We can embark upon the conscious implementation of the provisions of our existing National Cultural Policy of 1988 and its subsequent amendment in 2001 through the budgetary empowerment of the existing culture parastatals.
We should strengthen the Nigeria Copyright Commission as a regulatory body which can detect and punish any anti-intellectual property activities, theft of intellectual property in any form and to censure and regulate all artistic and creative products for distribution and consumption.
We have spoken of the urgent need to provide social infrastructure and set aside an appreciable percentage of the GDP to cultural and creative industries as stipulated in both the Cultural Policy of Nigeria (CPN) and the Nigerian Constitution. This is how the Policy and the Tourism Grand Plan can become the veritable instrument for socio-cultural and socio-economic transformation of Nigeria.
Through this operational strategy, we should mobilise and motivate the citizenry, disseminate and propagate ideas which promote national pride, solidarity and national consciousness. We can also evolve from our plurality a national culture whose indicators manifest in African and world affairs. It behoves us to promote a cultural educational system which motivates and stimulates creativity that draws significantly on our indigenous tradition and values such as respect for humanity and human dignity, respect for legitimate authority, dignity of labour and respect for positive Nigeria’s moral society.
This, in essence, impels the establishment of codes of behaviour which are compatible with our tradition of humanism and disciplined moral society; sustaining disciplined environmental and societal conditions which enhance quality of life, produce responsible citizenship and an ordered society.
If we enhance and manage our national resources well and transform our indigenous technology, design-resources and skills, we can transform our economy considerably. We must, in addition, and importantly, provide opportunities and enablement for the engagement of women in all spheres of cultural production, distribution and exchange, empower the youth and the physically challenged for cultural entrepreneurship and skill acquisition.
Similarly, we must enhance national self-reliance and self-sufficiency as reflexive in our cultural heritage and national aspirations and the process of industrialisation, national development and knowledge economy.
Our cultural parastatals, we must reiterate, in a restructured or merged form, should be strengthened to recreate the cultural industries to fast-track the growth of rural economies through the boundless body of crafts and ancillary industries such as ivory, bronze, leather works, textiles, brass, glass casting, basketry, produced in different parts of the country – as a way of addressing poverty and unemployment through cultural enterprises.
Alongside these enterprises and in a secure social polity, we need to sensitise investors to the need to invest in the arts and crafts sector so as to encourage enterprise development and export oriented production.
Let me restate for the avoidance of doubt, the need for the nation to deploy its indigenous languages as an important vehicle of cultural expression, national development and cohesion to strengthen national security in the area of cultural communication. In stating this, I emphasise the necessity of fully and faithfully implementing the long- standing policy embedded in the 1979 Constitution of entrenching three Nigerian languages, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba as languages to be deployed for National Assembly business; including the insertion, of many more Nigerian languages inserted in the school curriculum with a mandate that students in primary and secondary schools should study at least one other language beside their mother tongue in their WAEC and NECO.
We should up the educational effort to develop technical and scientific registers of a handful of Nigerian languages in some subjects such as mathematics and science where terminologies are being developed in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, Edo, Fulfulde, Efik, Tiv, Ijaw, Kanuri etc; will strengthen our national security by ensuring the survival of our native languages and building them into the languages of own developed modern technology.
As we seek to counter, terminate and destroy ideology of non-state actors and terrorists like Boko Haram, we need to improve our communication strategies through crafting and carving the indigenous languages most proximal to the zones of insurgency and militancy by deploying news casting, feature broadcasts and interviews to be done on the radio and television to provide counter-terrorist and insurgency narratives and propaganda.
Language carries values and basis of a people’s identity, their sense of particularity as members of the human race. Language as vehicle of culture, is ‘the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history. Thus, our indigenous languages need to be codified for the preservation, documentation and expression of scientific and technological innovation, invention and economic transformation.
I have proposed many times the need to build, learning from Emeritus Professor Ayo Bamgbose, a technology culture expressed in indigenous Nigerian language/languages to be facilitated by establishing indigenous languages technology centres where indigenous language laboratories help codify findings and outcomes of our technological and scientific research.
We can then seek collaboration with international cultural organisations for the promotion of cultural diplomacy and cultural industrial growth. These are just titbits that require studied elaboration in this season of change.
Concluded