By Paul Ukpabio
Few days ago, Otunba Olusegun Runsewe the Director General of the National Council for Arts and Culture, was in Lagos to attend an official event, and see necessary stake holders, as he prepares for his agency’s big event that is National Arts Festival (NAFEST), which will be coming up in Benin City, later this month. Runsewe in this interview with Paul Ukpabio, took time off to share his views on some of the current issues in our body polity with regards to arts and culture.
Nigeria recently celebrated her independence. As a Nigerian and as the DG of National Council for Arts and Culture, what is your message for the country?
I’ll like to congratulate Mr. President on the recently celebrated independence of the country and wish us the best in the future for this country, and say that as a country we’ve come too far to continue being sentimental, so let’s do away with sentiments, it’s causing more harm than good, and projecting other cultures to be better than ours. Let’s embrace who we are, and where we are now.
You’ve been Executive director, National Orientation Agency, DG NTDC, Presently DG National Council for Arts and Culture. How are the three positions inter-related? Why have your appointments been in these directions?
It’s destiny. In fact there’s a crucial one you omitted, I’m the first serving General Manager of New Nigerian Newspapers. It is one of the positions in my life that I tenaciously held. You see there’s a difference between God given power and someone possessing super powers. And then grace supersedes all, honestly, it’s just the grace of God. Orientation is a platform for touching every nook and cranny of Nigeria. Destiny took me to tourism that is National Tourism Development Corporation. There, everything was just working out and I don’t know how. In fact, it got to a point where everyone was saying that this man didn’t read tourism to Ph.D. level, but how is it doing it? The truth is, I didn’t do tourism in school certificate, but when you have the grace of God, everything falls in line. You can’t separate culture and tourism. The fundamentals of Tourism lies on marketing and promotion, I did that for years. Now I’m in culture where you develop the brand’s identity. It is just God.
What makes you passionate about culture, arts and tourism?
Honestly, I am passionate about anything I do in life. Once I put my mind in something, I want to make it the best. Everything I do, I put in my best. While in school some of my classmates were better than me but today I employ them. God does not give his grace based on class positions. Some people may be brilliant but might not have the opportunity. Initially I wondered what I was going to do in Culture, but later I realized it was huge. If you don’t want a job done properly, don’t call me.
You seem to worry much about dress sense and the issue of culture as seen in your issue with cross dresser Bobrisky?
You’ve touched a very sensitive part of me, last week I accused pastors, and it’s becoming a norm for pastors to wear suits. Two pastors approached me and said, Otunba you are making sense. People even keep a collection of suits. Some bankers out there own as many of 70 suits, with tie and belts to match, owning suits these days is fast becoming a disease. If we don’t change and start promoting our own, we’ll end up badly. Do you know how much money Nigerians are paying for materials so that they can wear foreign clothes and hair? Brazilian hair, Dubai gold? There is no way our economy can be better if dollars is not coming in to the locals. I’ll use Kenya as an example; over there they take tourism very seriously, even next to God. Somebody came to me and accused me of attacking Bobrisky, so I told him let’s pray. Then I started my prayer, “May Almighty God allow your son to be like Bobrisky!” He immediately started screaming “No, no, no! God forbid.” Then I asked him “whose child would you want to be like that?” He had no reply. I told him, this is how yahoo yahoo came, boko haram. And we did nothing about it initially. Bobrisky is a health hazard. In fact a doctor called me, that I’m one of the courageous Nigerians they’ve ever seen, and a woman called my attention to the fact that, it is the same toilet that Bobrisky uses at an airport that other women will use. People don’t know that women are more prone to catching sexual diseases from toilet than from sexual intercourse. Magu is fighting economic corruption and Im fighting culture corruption.
How do you plan on curbing other boys that have started walking down the part of Bobrisky?
We cannot have control of social media, but we can withdraw our support, when they have no one cheering them on, they become weakened. They don’t leave the comfort of their homes and that’s what we should try to achieve, no one cares if you’re gay as long as you don’t post it on social media and as long as it is not celebrated. We are Nigerian this does not belong to our culture.
Nafest is just at the corner what should we expect?
It started in 1972, after the civil war, our fore fathers sat and thought about how to bring us together through culture, and that’s how they gave birth to Nafest and it has been a rallying point. By the Grace of God, we started a new concept in Rivers State and now we are going to Benin City. Any state we go to, we celebrate those who make that state. We need to awaken the consciousness of people. If we don’t want children to be talking about Bobrisky, then we need to let them know the good that Nigerians are doing. The first gold medal Nigeria got in boxing was from Edo State the then Bendel State. This year we are lucky Nafest falls on the 4th year anniversary of the Oba of Benin, it’s going to be a huge event. So we are going to bring government, the people and traditional institutions back to relevance. Nafest is the new window to develop the cultural content of every state.
Many years after Calabar festival, how do you feel about it and do you feel it has gingered other states?
Most of our carnivals don’t have content. Calabar festival that tried to have some level of content, the costumes are wrong. The foreigners that come want to see our local content not all these Brazilian and Trinidad and Tobago stuff. They want to see iro and buba and so on. Even the fanti festival in Lagos here is good. So to me they need to look into their costumes.
What do you keep old model Mercedes Benz as personal car?
It’s because I love antics. When others are buying latest model cars I buy old ones because they give me good memories.
If you are not what you are today, what else would you have loved to me?
Definitely I would have loved to be a pastor because I love and enjoy a good relationship with God.
When the issue of xenophobia came up in South Africa came up, what came to your mind?
I saw xenophobia coming when we went to the world cup in 2010. I saw it and I warned but people didn’t listen to me. Most of the people that caused the problem are not Nigerians, because our passport was porous, they got it. So, whatever name they gave to us, we have to accept it. So to me, this last xenophobic attack has reawakened our consciousness to the fact that we have to put ourselves together and in order so that we can have a good image at home and abroad.
Your advice to Nigerians that are still out there in South Africa?
They should think about coming home, because the stigma is already there, they should take pride in themselves. They should know and believe that life isn’t over and therefore should come home. For one, I don’t travel out for long. When I am outside Nigeria for just about four days, I start missing home and feeling uncomfortable that is why I cannot live abroad.
Leave a Reply