With a desire to build the future of Nigeria using artistic and cultural products, a number of culture workers, artists, scholars and journalists gathered recently in Abuja for a four-day conference.

Organised by Lagos-based Development Initiatives and Resource Centre (DARC) at the Abuja International Conference Centre, the dialogue cum workshop on culture renewed the hope that if well tapped and utilised, resources in the arts and culture sector are capable of propelling the country to the promised land. Participants also agreed that thse products can also transform the country from a pariah nation into an economic giant.

Key speakers and other contributors explored new ways of tapping numerous tangible and intangible cultural products, even as they favoured a review of Nigeria’s cultural policy to meet current realities.

They equally urged systematic and collective approach to cultural revival, noting among others that every sector of the economy should embrace culture for developent. Expectedly, participants registered their advocacy through various lectures, workshops, exhibitions and performances.

During the interactive session in which four wisemen - Prof Ekpo Eyo, Elder Steve Rhodes, Dr Bruce Onobrakpeya and US-based James Early - made their interventions, it was resolved that only a holistic approach can revive culture, and that people should not only be concerned about living but more by those things that make life worth living.

While Onobrakpeya urged a change of attitude by Nigerians to embrace what they have, he also called on government to create enabling environment for the arts to thrive. He listed such vital areas as subventions for cultural exchange programmes, infrastuctural development(galleries, museums and parks), extolling and rewarding outstanding artists, revitalisation of art schoools and courses as well as an appeal to religious organisations to embrace the arts.

In his own contribution, Rhodes observed that as a colony of Britain, Nigeria had a sad history of a people who were diverted from the vestiges of their culture and tradition. As such, our forebears were cohersed and subjugated to Europeans’lifestyles, ways of living, value systems and beliefs.

In the process, Nigerian languages which remain the hub of our cultural wheel were replaced whereas no country succeeds in cultural and technological growth based on foreign language. Again the country’s many cultural resources remained untapped, as our people looked the way of the West, while ignoring values which could have made us stable, forward looking and well focused.

Nevertheless, Rhodes acknowledged the fact that the West concentrated on the tangible resources such as museums and monuments, but reasoned that intangible resources such as language, value systems and musical elements are now out of sight. The elder artiste thus urged a return to the latter, even while citing the example of a flute (made of bamboo) which he once discovered in Sokoto but which is no longer in existence. He recalled how he toured Nigeria with the late Chief Hubert Ogunde during the formative years of the National Troupe of Nigeria and how they both discovered the flute which had a peculiar hunting and penetrating tone.

Rhodes noted that cultural ceremonies have equally disappeared hence his advocacy for a National Calendar of Festivals across the country. He also called for a National Endowment for the Arts, a committe to stimulate cultural support, a return to musical elements of the past, adding ‘we do not have to swallow every piece of foreign garbage that comes through the airwaves’.

For Early, cultural education is most vital for economic and political development. The culture scholar from the Smithsonian Institute in America noted that ample opportunity should be given to young people and culture workers in the streets to create works of arts and appreciate their beauty as well. According to him, tapping into culture and the arts is a process of nation building, since individual and collective visions would help create democractic expressions and national identities. Also these is a lot Africans in Diaspora could do to boost cultural tourism and development.

In the same vein, Prof Ekpo observed that the first condition of living is stability which in turn is facilitated by culture. He also hinted that Nigerians should strive to facilitate arts and culture for economic living rather than stick to lack of direction, ignorance and wrongful thinking about African tradition, values and ways of life. Ekpo who explained financial difficulties he encountered in producing Arts and Culture in Nigeria, a periodic magazine on Nigerian arts also wants government to fund cultural projects to aid development and economic growth.

The former Executive Director of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) also urged creation and preservation of museums as well as promotion of educational tourism. His words ‘What we have here are very important, and we must pay attention to our museums because they reflect our history and ethos aside defining who are..we are a people who have a glorious past...it is sad that 30 years after establishing Abuja FCT, the city has no museum. It is hightime the city had its museum as the one in Lagos has been taken over by commercial entreprises. Educational tourism has to do with seeking knowledge of other people and other places, we need wider knowledge to be able to make comparisms and overcome the bane of development of other people in the world’.

Aside an innovative exhibition of artworks such as paintings, sculptures, Adire (Batik), assessories and handicrafted gift items, the conference also recorded a rare mixture of material and performative arts. Some of these include the production of Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground as well as Sophocles’ Antigone by the Otteh Patrick Jude-led Jos Repertory Theatre.

Also thrilling was the Cross River State Cultural Troupe led by Edisan Isan Esong which presented well choreographed dances on royalty, marriage, farming , among other cultural events.
The dancesteps were marked by heavy percussive drumming, elaborate costumes and folk music. The performance night was presided over by Oba Gbenga Sonuga who gave the history of Nigeria’s culture since FESTAC 77, and concluded that cultural revival in Nigeria should be an on-going exercise by all and sundry.

Prominent among personalities at the conference were Prince Adetokunbo Kayode; Minister of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation, Chief Mrs Oprah Benson; Iya Oge of Lagos, Dr Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo, former MD, Daily Times, Mr Frank Aig-Imoukhuede, former Federal Director of Culture, Professor Tunde Babawale; Director of CBAAC, Chief Mrs Nike Okundaye, Margie J. Reese;Programme Officer, Ford Foundation, Ngozi Ezi-Ashi;Executive Director, DARC, Tope Babayemi (MC), Mr Jahman Anikulapo; Editor, Guardian on Sunday, Mrs C.J Abara, Adaora Eze, George Ufot, Mr M.M Maidugu; Executive Director, NCAC, among many others.