The Nation Newspaper

Tag: CULTURE

  • Ex-JAMB Registrar seeks reading culture among youths

    The immediate past Registrar of Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, has given reasons why youths should have flair for reading, irrespective of their discipline.

    Ojerinde, who presented a paper: “Promoting reading culture among Nigerian youths”,  to officially declared open this year’s Nigeria International Book Fair conference, recalled his encounter with a lady, who refused to oblige him a material in her possession on a tour to a foreign land 46 years ago. He also described the ‘bring back the book’ initiative of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, as remarkable. His experience and the initiative, he said, propelled his gospel of reading.

    He said: “At the end of the (bring back the book) campaign, questionnaires were distributed. One striking questions to me on that day was: ‘What will you do to promote reading culture in your establishment?’ My response was categorical ‘I will introduce a reading material in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) questions.”

    Ojerinde, a professor of Test and Measurement, said he presented the idea to JAMB management, which was approved. In 2013-2014, Ojerinde said reading materials were introduced for all JAMB candidates in the English Language.

    The initiative, Ojerinde continued, had enormous challenges ranging from candidates’ unwillingness to identify with books, publishers/authors disagreement and piracy,  but he stuck to his guns.

    He recalled that the 2015 examination got positive responses from candidates, who eventually developed interest in reading, having gone through JAMB’s prescribed material.

    The Senate Committee Chairman on Local and Foreign Debts, Shehu Sani, corroborated Ojerinde.

    He said: “Our young people nowadays no longer read books, but enjoy posting messages on social media. Our public office holders too do not read. Many books in the house of politicians today exist as part of furniture because they do not read them. The declining reading culture affects the level of the intellectual and political discourse in Nigeria today. You hardly see politicians quoting great figures or writers. The only book they know are cheque book and facebook; and that is unfortunate.

    “Reading is indispensable for national development. When people do not read, they have nothing to offer and that is the issue we are having in the country today.”

    The Secretary of NIBF, Abiodun Omotubi, said the foundation would continue to support reading culture in the country.

  • Film industry: SON advises stakeholders on quality culture

    Film industry: SON advises stakeholders on quality culture

    The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has urged film producers to adhere to standards to drive the industry.

    ItsDirector-General,Osita Aboloma, made the call at a stakeholders’ meeting with the legends of Nollywood industry, in Lagos, during the week.

    The theme of the meeting was: “Empowering the Nigerian film Industry-issues and prospects.”

    Aboloma, who was represented by the Head, Customer Feedback and Collaboration Unit, SON, Mrs. Mosunmola Samuel, said adherence to quality products and services would ensure inclusive growth.

    Noting that everything in the world is about standards, Abaloma maintained that the agency would continue to work tirelessly in educating Nigerians to be abreast of global trends.

    He noted that the agency was throwing its weight behind the  film industry to ensure that whatever instruments used conformed to the Nigerian Industrial Standard (NIS).

    “We are poised to use every opportunity to educate Nigerians on quality issues,’’ he said, adding that consumer protection could only be achieved through standards hence, the film industry needed to combat faking and counterfeiting through standards.

    “We are here to throw our support to the film industry to support their legends. We are also here to educate them and the physically challenged that are legends. They have contributed one way or the other to the success story of Nigeria.

    “We want to assure them that when they buy made-in-Nigeria certified products, they are buying safety. We want to also educate them on how to identify certified and quality products. If you look at the film industry today, all the products they use are brought into the country and we have a SONCAP scheme that ensures that these products conform to standards,” Abaloma said.

    He added that the SON moved to educate them to look beyond the aesthetic beauty and watch out for the specifications.

    “We are here to support them that through quality the film industry will remain sustainable,” he declared, assuring that SON will continue to use every medium to educate and sensitize the Nigerian consumers.

    In every forum, we discuss standards the safety aspect is taken care of using standards. We talk about every day to day activity. Everything in the world is about standards and we will continue to educate them about the importance of standards”.

    The convener, Mr. Paul Obazele, commended the agency for its fight against fake and substandard goods in the country.

    “SON has helped the film industry by ensuring that only instruments that meet global best standards are used in film production.

    “We are highly grateful for the support and encouragement of the SON. The agency has continued to fight relentlessly to safeguard every sector of the economy against the influx of fake and substandard goods in the country. This is the way to protect the local industries from unfair competition,” Obazele said.

  • Filmmakers urged to portray culture in positive light

    The need for the Nollywood filmmakers to portray the country’s culture in a positive light has been mooted. Making the call at the last edition of Yoruba Lakotun, a cultural programme, Israel Bolaji, a Lagos-Based Public Relations professional stated that this is important so as not to scare people off the culture.

    He said, “the didactic lessons of the culture should be portrayed more to the outside world than the inimical acts. The world is desirous of seeing noble contents from the Yorubas and we must produce great contents that will attract patronage by those in the Diaspora.”

    Also speaking at the event which held at Ethnic Heritage Centre, Ikoyi, Lagos, writer, Sunday Folorunso Adeniyi called on Yorubas to stop committing syntactic errors in the Yoruba language, especially with proverbs and other clichés.

    Adeniyi, who is the author of Esin Obinrin, Owu Iyagbon and other books, stated that, “Yoruba sayings have been bastardized by many people and this alteration affect the meaning of either the proverb or the cliché. In fact, many times, the meaning is lost because of the inappropriate word used. These sayings have become engrained in our daily lives that people do not know the actual saying anymore.”

    He explained that “some of these proverbs that have historical background while others are phonological. The infiltration of foreign languages into Yoruba culture is also one of the factors responsible for these syntactic errors. Yoruba writers are charged to be versed in the culture and language in order to correct these syntactic errors for posterity.”

    Another Special Guest at the edition, Otunba Lekan Ajirotutu, a Yoruba broadcaster and lecturer, said that there are a lot of people who do not understand Yoruba language and culture.

    Yoruba Lakotun is a quarterly live audience participatory programme where different creative arts are done and an interview session with a Yoruba writer. The show is hosted by Olutayo Irantiola.

  • School takes culture beyond Nigeria

    School takes culture beyond Nigeria

    Ever heard of ‘African Culture Day’ in Nigerian schools before? This was what was on display at the T-Square Private School, cultural fiesta .

    Aside pupils displaying costumes of various ethnic groups as well as their song rendition, performers’ exhibition of South African and Ghanaian costumes was another cultural menu that provoked guests  to endless applause.

    So excited and nostalgic was Mr Attah Amankwa, a Ghanaian national resident in Nigeria, that he leapt up  and joined in the chorus by performers dishing out songs in Ghana. Call it a musical homecoming, if you like.

    The expansion of the festival beyond Nigeria was to consolidate on the gains of the maiden edition last year, said T-Square Head of School, Mrs Adebusuyi Ifedapo Abiodun.

    “We had our maiden Cultural Day last year and it was very successful,” she said of the school located in Ahmmadiyya.

    “Based on that , we have decided to consolidate by having ‘African Culture Day’ as the theme of this occasion.

    “We need to let these children know a little bit about what happens beyond their immediate environment. We need to let them know the history of Ghana and South Africa. They have heard of apartheid and xenophobia before, but we need to teach them the real meaning. This is the rationale behind our concept this year.”

    Adebusuyi, who described culture as a way of life of a particular people, added that participants need to imbibe their cultural heritage to insulate them from Western contamination.

    “You will agree with me that our culture is being endangered and if nothing is done to rescue the situation, some of these cultural assets our forefathers left behind might go into extinction.”

    Both Mr Amankwa and a parent Mrs Angela Ezeh agreed with Adebusuyi.

    “I am here to welcome my Ghanaian contingent, Amankwa, who is from the Assanti tribe, said referring to the young performers.

    For Eze, a legal practioner, Africans are one regardless of the geographical ceilings put in place by the West.

    “We should not allow this borderlines that separate one country from the other by the West to be a hindrance. Africa is one, and we should promote that togetherness despite language variation,” she said.

  • Culture of rewarding violence must stop

    Culture of rewarding violence must stop

    The Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr. Nsima Ekere, a former chairman of the board of Ibom Power Company of the Akwa-Ibom State government and the state Emergency Management Agency, in this interview with Shola O’Neil, S’South Regional Editor, talks about the pain of running a trust-deficient intervention agency, the N570million vehicle ‘scandal’, among others Excerpts:

    On outsiders’ perception about Niger Delta youth
    When you come here and you see people talking the way you are talking, it tells me there is hope. Virtually the entire world knows Niger Delta youths for confrontation and for making unreasonable demands. When I came in here and met a very different environment it gives me a lot of hope. What people know us for is aggression, street harassments, kidnappings, violence, blowing up pipelines. That’s what being a youth in the Niger delta is looked at and that’s how people see us.
    Presently, Dangote is building the biggest refinery in the world and when I was in secondary school they taught us that one of the things you consider when building an industry is nearness to source of raw materials. That is a multibillion dollars investment and they are building pipelines for piping crude to the refinery; spending billions of dollars on a pipeline taking it to Lagos.
    Why is that so? It is because nobody wants to put that kind of investment in the Niger Delta because of the impression they have of our youths. Just imagine the economic impact; multiplier effect of that investment in the economy of the Niger Delta. Thousands of jobs will be created directly and indirectly. Spending that huge amount of money in the Niger Delta will change our society, our lives and communities. And that is just one out of several.
    There is this advocacy that SHELL (SPDC) should not relocate out of Rivers State because they were about doing that. Virtually all oil companies are doing that: Agip operates from Abuja; MD of Shell is in Lagos, MD of Chevron is in Lagos and virtually everybody is out of the town. I came into Port Harcourt in 1990 and served (NYSC) here. I was here for 17 years. The MD of Chevron was here in Trans Amadi, AGIP too. This is the effect that the perception that we have given to the world about the Niger Delta is having on us.
    I had a meeting with a group at a hotel sometime last month and there were ex-agitators. Immediately I began to explain to them why they should change their behaviour and behave well so that it would be good for us, they said, ‘no we can’t beg them (oil companies) to come; if they want to go let them go’. They do not get it! It is a mind thing; if the mind is right, the attitude will be right and the outcome would be marvelous. There is the saying that your attitude determines your altitude in life. For you to have the right attitude, you must have the right mindset, education – formal and informal. If we do this, we will see that all these things that we are complaining about will begin to fall into place.
    Niger Delta youths’ view of the NDDC and attitude to work
    Let me digress also and talk about a few things I have been seeing in NDDC. Some youths come to NDDC with this sense of entitlement – it is my blood; ‘it is our thing; we fought in the creeks and we made this happen and they used to do this for us’. I asked a simple question: NDDC started about 16 years ago and everybody has been complaining about the effect of the commission on the society, if you want me to come and do what the others have being doing, that means at the end of the day when we leave, nothing would have changed. There would still be no development on the ground for anybody to see. So, if we want development and results, then we must begin to do things differently.
    You are going to start hearing stories that this new MD, they don’t like him. They are very good at sending text messages that tomorrow they are coming on with a protest to NDDC. What I hear happened before now is that the former management would call them quickly and give them money and they would go. Once one group hears that you did that to one group today, the next day another group comes and before you know it NDDC money is going.
    From the first day we stopped it. When we get that text message that we are coming tomorrow, sometimes the security agencies tell us, ‘we hear there would be a bloody, massive protest tomorrow’. I will say, ‘let them come’. I am willing to go and address them when they come. I am not going to give them any money. When nobody gave them anything they stopped.
    Then there are these groups of young boys who stood around the gate of NDDC harassing people up and down. From the first day I came, I noticed that they would line on the street and be hailing you, calling you ‘Master’, and ‘Good man’ etc. In the first week, one of my aides thought he was being nice and going to please me, gave them money. I called him and warned him never to do that again. My thinking initially was that if two weeks they see nothing dropping they will stop, but they didn’t. I heard that they had given them jobs, send them to training, they finished the training and came back to still stand at the gate. I believe in sustainable development. If you are empowering somebody, do it in a sustainable way because if you are giving money and you stop, tomorrow they are back.
    That is on one side. I am also having a lot of cyberbullying. I have people that go online and they would post all kinds of things: ‘Nsima Ekere is this and that’. I just ignore them. Then there is this particular guy, he would post and say, ‘he is very corrupt and he did this and all kinds of this’. The last one and I got a text message from him: ‘Check my blog, I have just posted something. Don’t you think it’s time we talk?’ I responded: ‘Go ahead and do your job’. Blackmail should not be a source of livelihood.
    Plan for internet connectivity and hub in the Niger Delta
    One of the things we want to do is to have the IT connectivity in the Niger Delta. We have had several meetings and there will be more meetings. The marine cables that brought internet from the US and other parts of the world to Africa, brought the same capacity/bandwidth to Lagos for Nigeria (175million people), as in Sao Tome, with less than 70,000 people. So they have the same capacity as Nigeria and there is a lot of wasted capacity there. So the meeting we have had in the last two weeks is working with Galaxy Backbone, a federal government owned company, to go to Sao Tome, get marine cable and pipe that excess capacity directly to the Niger Delta.
    We have set up a technical committee working on this and they will present their report to look at it. We want to make this happen. We have two years in the life of this board and management. We don’t have that much time. I want to be able to achieve this in two years. That is one of the things we want to do.
    We must begin to work on the mindset of our young people and let them understand that criminality is not the right way to go. As far as I am concerned, most of this so-called agitation is not agitation; it is criminality. We must begin to differentiate between agitation and criminality.
    How youths can make the best of every situation
    I will like to share with you the story of my life. My mother was a teacher, so I started primary school relatively early. In our days to graduate at 21 was a big. At 21 I was already out of university and doing my youth service. I was deployed to one of the federal services. Then I was involved in an accident that changed my life.
    I had a very good friend, God bless his soul. He had this beautiful Peugeot 504 car and in those days that was a good car. One day, he was travelling, so he left his car with me for the weekend. On Saturday evening I went to a party with friends. I had a flat, which again was a big deal when I was young. After the party, there were some girls who didn’t want to sleep; they wanted to go back to their houses. I said let me go and drop them. I am happy this happened because it changed my life. I went and dropped them and this was around 4, 5am. The street to my house was being renovated and there was this heap of chippings that the contractor kept for the work. I dozed off and drove straight into the heap of chippings and the car was damaged.
    Later I took the car to fix and the estimate was N700 and I didn’t have the money. My salary was about N180 naira, but I knew that I wanted to fix the car. I said ‘I must raise the money to fix this car’. So apart from my regular salary coming at the end of the month, because I am a real estate person, I said I must begin to do other things to ensure that I raised the money. And guess what, in less than two months, I raised all the money I needed to fix the car and more, just by working. I now said to myself, ‘so this is possible that if you do not just sit in your office and wait for the salary at the end of the month, if you take initiative and decide to run around, things can actually happen!’ That was it.
    I finally just managed to hold myself for one or two more years and I resigned. By this time, I had raised up to N4,000 and that was when I came to Port Harcourt. I had a car, Peugeot 505, and N4,000. I rented an office for N1,500 (per annum), bought two tables and a secretary’s table and I started my private practice. In less than six months I started generating money and the rest is history.
    My challenge to young people is that they should look for innovative ways of living their lives and the options and opportunities are so much out there. You would not imagine what you can do with your life with a little bit of innovation and drive.
    On failures of past NDDC programmes
    Most of the things that the NDDC has come up with over the years are things they want to use to appease those that are causing trouble. For me, it is encouraging other people. I hate to see that we are rewarding truancy more than good citizens. The scheme they had was to just take some of these boys and say they clean street, control traffic and they call them NDDC volunteers and pay them money at the end of the month. If you keep doing that for 50 years, you can’t see the qualities that we have and values we add to the society.
    On the problem with NDDC scholarship programme
    Unfortunately, we discovered that the NDDC hasn’t paid our scholars who are abroad. There is this funny policy (of the programme) where you first go to the school, register and then send an invoice from the school. The invoice is what is then used to process the scholarship and sent to you. The question I asked when I met with the team is that ‘I used to think you must pay some fees before you are registered in the school’. They said, ‘yes’. I said, ‘why do you put the cart before the horse?’
    Anyway, that is what the policy is. When they send the invoice, we now give their account details for processing and payment of tuition fees to the school. But because the scholarship is worth $30,000, if your school fee is $20,000 or whatever it is, we pay the balance to the scholar for upkeep. The scholar is also to send his/her overseas bank details to be able to access this fund. As at (the time) only 32 of 200 scholars that won the scholarship last year have complied with that. So, 168 have either not yet sent in invoice or account details to be able to get that money. I directed that the 32 who met the policy guidelines should be paid. The appeal for those who have not yet met the requirements is to try and hasten it so that theirs can be paid.
    But going forward, I am going to change that policy, because if you grant somebody scholarship you want them to benefit from it; you don’t want to put roadblocks to prevent them from benefiting. The challenge has been – from what we hear – that a lot of people know that for you to get the scholarship, you come with a letter of offer of admission in some selected courses.
    On the N560 million vehicle controversy
    Since the present management came on board we have not bought one vehicle. I am driving my personal car and my two executive directors are driving theirs. Any time my chairman comes into town he uses his car. The supervising minister for the NDDC, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, has visited a couple of times on official visit to Port Harcourt and we don’t even have cars to send to the airport to bring him. We were just in the process of buying the vehicles. These days before you do anything you have to go the BPP. We wrote to them and they gave us certificate of no objection to buy the vehicles and we have that. The process is that once you get that, you take it to Federal Executive Council; they will deliberate on it and if they approved, they will give approval before you can buy. That process is ongoing and it is not completed.
    Why there are suspicions about NDDC expenditures
    I will be the first to admit it that the narrative of the NDDC over the years has been horrible and we are trying to change all of that. All we need is understanding from stakeholders and everybody. It hurts you when you know that you are trying to do the right thing and people just bad mouth you and say all kinds of things – it hurts. I am a human being and sometimes I am like, ‘maybe it is really not worth it trying to change anything; we should just continue…’
    This is not how to support public officers with good intention to function. When we got into NDDC, we said for the first three months (there should be) a freeze on all contracts. I didn’t award one single contract, not because I couldn’t, but we didn’t do it. We have now advertised over 370 projects that we want to award. That is because if we don’t do it now the budget year is virtually ending. It is supposed to be March ending but now we have extension to May. If we do not do it most of what should have been done in this year in the budget would be lost; it would not be done.
    Issues of NDDC corruption in the past
    The problem is we don’t usually take stock and set the right governing structures in place. The reason NDDC was as corrupt, as it was, was because there was no international best practice in the ways things were done then. That is why we came up with the 4Rs to reform and restructure NDDC because we believe that everything must be done properly and we must all commit ourselves to the proper way of doing things.

  • ‘Culture of rewarding violence must stop’

    ‘Culture of rewarding violence must stop’

    The Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Mr. Nsima Ekere, a former chairman of the board of Ibom Power Company of the Akwa-Ibom State government and the state Emergency Management Agency, in this interview with SHOLA O’NEIL, S’South Regional Editor, talks about the pain of running a trust-deficient intervention agency, the N570million vehicle ‘scandal’, among others EXCERPTS:

    On outsiders’ perception about Niger Delta youth

    When you come here and you see people talking the way you are talking, it tells me there is hope. Virtually the entire world knows Niger Delta youths for confrontation and for making unreasonable demands. When I came in here and met a very different environment it gives me a lot of hope. What people know us for is aggression, street harassments, kidnappings, violence, blowing up pipelines. That’s what being a youth in the Niger delta is looked at and that’s how people see us.

    Presently, Dangote is building the biggest refinery in the world and when I was in secondary school they taught us that one of the things you consider when building an industry is nearness to source of raw materials. That is a multibillion dollars investment and they are building pipelines for piping crude to the refinery; spending billions of dollars on a pipeline taking it to Lagos.

    Why is that so? It is because nobody wants to put that kind of investment in the Niger Delta because of the impression they have of our youths. Just imagine the economic impact; multiplier effect of that investment in the economy of the Niger Delta. Thousands of jobs will be created directly and indirectly. Spending that huge amount of money in the Niger Delta will change our society, our lives and communities. And that is just one out of several.

    There is this advocacy that SHELL (SPDC) should not relocate out of Rivers State because they were about doing that. Virtually all oil companies are doing that: Agip operates from Abuja; MD of Shell is in Lagos, MD of Chevron is in Lagos and virtually everybody is out of the town. I came into Port Harcourt in 1990 and served (NYSC) here. I was here for 17 years. The MD of Chevron was here in Trans Amadi, AGIP too. This is the effect that the perception that we have given to the world about the Niger Delta is having on us.

    I had a meeting with a group at a hotel sometime last month and there were ex-agitators. Immediately I began to explain to them why they should change their behaviour and behave well so that it would be good for us, they said, ‘no we can’t beg them (oil companies) to come; if they want to go let them go’. They do not get it! It is a mind thing; if the mind is right, the attitude will be right and the outcome would be marvelous. There is the saying that your attitude determines your altitude in life. For you to have the right attitude, you must have the right mindset, education – formal and informal. If we do this, we will see that all these things that we are complaining about will begin to fall into place.

    Niger Delta youths’ view of the NDDC and attitude to work

    Let me digress also and talk about a few things I have been seeing in NDDC. Some youths come to NDDC with this sense of entitlement – it is my blood; ‘it is our thing; we fought in the creeks and we made this happen and they used to do this for us’. I asked a simple question: NDDC started about 16 years ago and everybody has been complaining about the effect of the commission on the society, if you want me to come and do what the others have being doing, that means at the end of the day when we leave, nothing would have changed. There would still be no development on the ground for anybody to see. So, if we want development and results, then we must begin to do things differently.

    You are going to start hearing stories that this new MD, they don’t like him. They are very good at sending text messages that tomorrow they are coming on with a protest to NDDC. What I hear happened before now is that the former management would call them quickly and give them money and they would go. Once one group hears that you did that to one group today, the next day another group comes and before you know it NDDC money is going.

    From the first day we stopped it. When we get that text message that we are coming tomorrow, sometimes the security agencies tell us, ‘we hear there would be a bloody, massive protest tomorrow’.  I will say, ‘let them come’. I am willing to go and address them when they come. I am not going to give them any money. When nobody gave them anything they stopped.

    Then there are these groups of young boys who stood around the gate of NDDC harassing people up and down. From the first day I came, I noticed that they would line on the street and be hailing you, calling you ‘Master’, and ‘Good man’ etc.  In the first week, one of my aides thought he was being nice and going to please me, gave them money. I called him and warned him never to do that again. My thinking initially was that if two weeks they see nothing dropping they will stop, but they didn’t. I heard that they had given them jobs, send them to training, they finished the training and came back to still stand at the gate. I believe in sustainable development. If you are empowering somebody, do it in a sustainable way because if you are giving money and you stop, tomorrow they are back.

    That is on one side.  I am also having a lot of cyberbullying. I have people that go online and they would post all kinds of things: ‘Nsima Ekere is this and that’. I just ignore them. Then there is this particular guy, he would post and say, ‘he is very corrupt and he did this and all kinds of this’. The last one and I got a text message from him: ‘Check my blog, I have just posted something. Don’t you think it’s time we talk?’ I responded: ‘Go ahead and do your job’. Blackmail should not be a source of livelihood.

    Plan for internet connectivity and hub in the Niger Delta

    One of the things we want to do is to have the IT connectivity in the Niger Delta. We have had several meetings and there will be more meetings. The marine cables that brought internet from the US and other parts of the world to Africa, brought the same capacity/bandwidth to Lagos for Nigeria (175million people), as in Sao Tome, with less than 70,000 people.  So they have the same capacity as Nigeria and there is a lot of wasted capacity there. So the meeting we have had in the last two weeks is working with Galaxy Backbone, a federal government owned company, to go to Sao Tome, get marine cable and pipe that excess capacity directly to the Niger Delta.

    We have set up a technical committee working on this and they will present their report to look at it. We want to make this happen. We have two years in the life of this board and management. We don’t have that much time. I want to be able to achieve this in two years. That is one of the things we want to do.

    We must begin to work on the mindset of our young people and let them understand that criminality is not the right way to go. As far as I am concerned, most of this so-called agitation is not agitation; it is criminality. We must begin to differentiate between agitation and criminality.

    How youths can make the best of every situation

    I will like to share with you the story of my life. My mother was a teacher, so I started primary school relatively early. In our days to graduate at 21 was a big. At 21 I was already out of university and doing my youth service. I was deployed to one of the federal services. Then I was involved in an accident that changed my life.

    I had a very good friend, God bless his soul. He had this beautiful Peugeot 504 car and in those days that was a good car. One day, he was travelling, so he left his car with me for the weekend. On Saturday evening I went to a party with friends. I had a flat, which again was a big deal when I was young.  After the party, there were some girls who didn’t want to sleep; they wanted to go back to their houses. I said let me go and drop them. I am happy this happened because it changed my life. I went and dropped them and this was around 4, 5am. The street to my house was being renovated and there was this heap of chippings that the contractor kept for the work. I dozed off and drove straight into the heap of chippings and the car was damaged.

    Later I took the car to fix and the estimate was N700 and I didn’t have the money. My salary was about N180 naira, but I knew that I wanted to fix the car.  I said ‘I must raise the money to fix this car’. So apart from my regular salary coming at the end of the month, because I am a real estate person, I said I must begin to do other things to ensure that I raised the money. And guess what, in less than two months, I raised all the money I needed to fix the car and more, just by working. I now said to myself, ‘so this is possible that if you do not just sit in your office and wait for the salary at the end of the month, if you take initiative and decide to run around, things can actually happen!’ That was it.

    I finally just managed to hold myself for one or two more years and I resigned. By this time, I had raised up to N4,000 and that was when I came to Port Harcourt. I had a car, Peugeot 505, and N4,000. I rented an office for N1,500 (per annum), bought two tables and a secretary’s table and I started my private practice. In less than six months I started generating money and the rest is history.

    My challenge to young people is that they should look for innovative ways of living their lives and the options and opportunities are so much out there. You would not imagine what you can do with your life with a little bit of innovation and drive.

    On failures of past NDDC programmes

    Most of the things that the NDDC has come up with over the years are things they want to use to appease those that are causing trouble. For me, it is encouraging other people. I hate to see that we are rewarding truancy more than good citizens. The scheme they had was to just take some of these boys and say they clean street, control traffic and they call them NDDC volunteers and pay them money at the end of the month. If you keep doing that for 50 years, you can’t see the qualities that we have and values we add to the society.

    On the problem with NDDC scholarship programme

    Unfortunately, we discovered that the NDDC hasn’t paid our scholars who are abroad. There is this funny policy (of the programme) where you first go to the school, register and then send an invoice from the school.  The invoice is what is then used to process the scholarship and sent to you. The question I asked when I met with the team is that ‘I used to think you must pay some fees before you are registered in the school’. They said, ‘yes’. I said, ‘why do you put the cart before the horse?’

    Anyway, that is what the policy is. When they send the invoice, we now give their account details for processing and payment of tuition fees to the school. But because the scholarship is worth $30,000, if your school fee is $20,000 or whatever it is, we pay the balance to the scholar for upkeep. The scholar is also to send his/her overseas bank details to be able to access this fund. As at (the time) only 32 of 200 scholars that won the scholarship last year have complied with that. So, 168 have either not yet sent in invoice or account details to be able to get that money. I directed that the 32 who met the policy guidelines should be paid. The appeal for those who have not yet met the requirements is to try and hasten it so that theirs can be paid.

    But going forward, I am going to change that policy, because if you grant somebody scholarship you want them to benefit from it; you don’t want to put roadblocks to prevent them from benefiting. The challenge has been – from what we hear – that a lot of people know that for you to get the scholarship, you come with a letter of offer of admission in some selected courses.

    On the N560 million vehicle controversy

    Since the present management came on board we have not bought one vehicle. I am driving my personal car and my two executive directors are driving theirs. Any time my chairman comes into town he uses his car. The supervising minister for the NDDC, the Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, has visited a couple of times on official visit to Port Harcourt and we don’t even have cars to send to the airport to bring him. We were just in the process of buying the vehicles. These days before you do anything you have to go the BPP. We wrote to them and they gave us certificate of no objection to buy the vehicles and we have that. The process is that once you get that, you take it to Federal Executive Council; they will deliberate on it and if they approved, they will give approval before you can buy.  That process is ongoing and it is not completed.

    Why there are suspicions about NDDC expenditures

    I will be the first to admit it that the narrative of the NDDC over the years has been horrible and we are trying to change all of that. All we need is understanding from stakeholders and everybody. It hurts you when you know that you are trying to do the right thing and people just bad mouth you and say all kinds of things – it hurts. I am a human being and sometimes I am like, ‘maybe it is really not worth it trying to change anything; we should just continue…’

    This is not how to support public officers with good intention to function. When we got into NDDC, we said for the first three months (there should be) a freeze on all contracts. I didn’t award one single contract, not because I couldn’t, but we didn’t do it. We have now advertised over 370 projects that we want to award. That is because if we don’t do it now the budget year is virtually ending. It is supposed to be March ending but now we have extension to May. If we do not do it most of what should have been done in this year in the budget would be lost; it would not be done.

    Issues of NDDC corruption in the past

    The problem is we don’t usually take stock and set the right governing structures in place. The reason NDDC was as corrupt, as it was, was because there was no international best practice in the ways things were done then. That is why we came up with the 4Rs to reform and restructure NDDC because we believe that everything must be done properly and we must all commit ourselves to the proper way of doing things.

  • Promoting business, culture in Southwest

    In Nigeria, culture plays a dominant role in the lives of the people. It serves as a symbol of unity and help in shaping the way people perceive things. This is evident among the people of the South West where cultural norm and values are held sacred.

    As part of their culture, indigenous music has a lot of influence on their socio-economic lifestyle. It is perceived as a medium of communication where the instruments are used to send messages for correcting the ills plaguing the society or as a means of relating what the deities have concurred on issues of vital importance.

    The importance attached to their culture is evident in the way they greet, an attitude which has become part of their daily life. While greetings are exchanged, it is important for the people to smile and when asked about the wellbeing of someone, time is given to respond as this is considered to be polite.

    The Yorubas greet their elders with a lot of respect. The boys prostrate to greet their elders, while their female counterparts greet by kneeling on one or two knees depending on the tribe.

    Also, other aspects of the people’s culture are seen in the way they dance, in art works, dressing and philosophy. Proverbs and adages form an important part of their everyday language and are used extensively in all forms of communication, but music plays a dominant role in uniting the Yorubas without barriers.

    This has brought to fore the efforts made by Goldberg, also known as ‘Your Excellency,’ a product from the stables of Nigerian Breweries Plc, in promoting the rich cultural heritage of the people of the South West through music, like the Fuji t’o Bam musical concerts.

    It is a talent hunt initiative aimed at discovering promising Fuji artistes and empowering them to contribute to the growth of the entertainment culture of the people of the South West.

    It would be recalled that the brand in 2012 launched the Fuji t’o Bam initiative and has since then produced young Fuji musicians with bright future.

    Fuji music which has grown in leaps and bounds is a fusion of certain musical influences like ‘Sakara, Apala, Juju and to an extent, highlife. Indeed, the growth of Fuji music has been astronomical, particularly, since the mid-80s when the ace Fuji music artiste, Wasiu Ayinde Barrister waxed his ground-breaking ‘TALA-84’, apart from establishing his musical hegemony and imprint in the minds of the South west elite.

    To every Yoruba in the South West, Fuji music needs no introduction. It is so engrained in the socio-cultural life of the people such that it easily appeals to their feelings and admiration. This was one of the factors that led to the success of previous Fuji t’o Bam concerts organised by Goldberg in the South West.

    The indigenous musical platform, which concluded its fourth edition in 2016, had led to the discovery of Fuji talents. Apart from Tope Ajani, who after months of thrills, drills, excitement and emotions, emerged the Wura1 for the 2016 contest; Fuji t’o Bam has also brought to the limelight young Fuji musicians like Akeem Okiki from Osogbo in Osun State after winning the 2015 title; Twinzobia Twins from Ibadan, Oyo State in 2014; and Antenna, winner of the first edition in 2013.

    This year, Goldberg would bring the best of Fuji and Juju music under an umbrella body called “Ariya Repete”, which would commence audition and selection in major cities in the South West in April.

    It would be an unparalleled experience where young Fuji and Juju artistes would compete in their various capacities to win fabulous prizes and recording deals.

    Meanwhile, the inclusion of Juju music, christened ‘Juju to Gbayi’ into Goldberg’s musical concerts came from feedback from lovers of Juju music who felt marginalised and even tried to pass off as Fuji musicians so as to get a chance to contest.

    They felt the urge to partake in similar musical competition where Juju artistes can also be nurtured for future development.

    To achieve the desired results in this initiative, Nigerian Breweries Plc recently organised the Ariya Repete roundtable, like it did for Fuji t’o Bam to deliberate on how to make Ariya Repete a household emblem in Yorubaland.

    The special guest of honour was the Ooni of Ife, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Babatunde Enitan Ogunwusi, (Ojaja II), who was represented by Oba Adebiyi Asoya, the Asoya of Ile Asoya Kingdom.

    In the course of this, notable speakers such as Prof. Tunde Babawale, former Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC) and of the Department of Political Science, University of Lagos, gave the keynote address on the topic: Our Music as a Socio-Cultural Lubricant: Juju and Fuji Music Genres of Southwest Nigeria as Case Studies.

    He traced the origin of Juju music to the old Saro (Olowogbowo) quarter of Lagos where the music genre emerged from ‘asiko’ music associated with “area boys” in the quarter and added that it also incorporated Brazilian Samba elements and the guitar style of Kru sailors from Liberia.

    According to Babawale, the music of the culture of the people of the South West, which is Juju and Fuji, has positively impacted every area of life of the Yorubas, including the reduction of socio-economic tension and the prevalence of religious tolerance.

    Babawale posited that it was a man named Tunde King who later transformed ‘Asiko’music into Juju.  Tunde King and his contemporaries such as Akanbi Wright, J. O. Araba, Daniel Ojoge Aleshinloye and others introduced dundundrums, electric guitars and later acoustic guitars in the process of creating Juju music.

    He said until the 1960s, Juju music rendered in Oyo dialect was mainly performed in Lagos.  By the early 60, its performance had spread to other parts of Yorubaland incorporating other Yoruba dialects like Ijesa and Ekiti.

  • Youths, sexual morality and pop music culture

    Today, what is generally recognised as the world’s dominant civilisation is Western liberalism, of which the pop music culture is a derivative. The pop music culture arose as another category of cultural differentiation known as sub-culture. This third level of culture usually develops among sub groups within society who adopt norms, values and beliefs, about conducts and behaviours, which differ from (and often run counter to) society’s mainstream cultural values.

    It is a sociological fact that cultures die, evolve, and undergo creative transformation. But what is important is whether the cultural survival of a given society and the well-being of its members can be assured even while it accommodates and adjusts to new cultural influences. The pop music culture and its impact on the sexual morality of our youths is a good material for examining this point.

    In Nigeria, both before and after independence, the moral norms and values that governed sexuality have been broadly conservative, in a manner that placed a modicum of social restrictions, and individual restraint, on the expression of sexuality. But with continuous interaction with and accommodation of the cultural influences from the West, the liberalising culture of sexuality and overt sexualisation began to creep in on us. Through the pop culture it gained a cultural foothold in our society, and with the aid of modern media, the vivid sexualisation of Western pop culture soon became a stronghold of sexual cultural reorientation among our youths – with unhealthy consequences for the society’s moral health.

    The reasoning here is that culture is an important aspect of the infrastructure of domination which the more powerful societies employ to keep weaker ones in perpetual subjugation. Thus, the firm hold of the pop culture on our youths is not as harmless as it appears. It affects certain core organising pillars of society such as human sexuality, gender and power.

    One of the major ways by which human society sustains itself culturally is by transmitting its cultural norms and values to succeeding generations through various means of socialisation. In other words, young people are a core consideration in the cultural sustenance and survival of any society. Consequently, the kind and quality of values they imbibe are of vital importance.

    It is beyond dispute that youths are the foremost stronghold of the pop music culture – and it comes with its own package of norms and values by which its adherents deal with such important issues as sex, human sexuality, gender and power. If our frame of reference here is that society must preserve and protect those norms and values that conduce to its survival and the well-being of its members, then, it ordinarily, for instance, would frown at promoting the free expression of the sex drive among under-age youths who are not equipped to handle the consequences.

    However, this is one of the values disseminated by the pop music culture through its sexually suggestive lyrics and explicitly sexual musical videos. With the aid of traditional and new media, pop music has become the ruling culture of our time, and it is reworking and redefining the values and orientation of our youths in ways that are deleterious to society’s moral wellness.

    Youths today spend much more time interacting with the pop music culture, through the media, than they do with the major traditional agencies of socialisation – parents, schools, or religious institutions. Being a creative art form, the pop music culture has developed ways of communicating its luridly sexual messages through slangs that may sound sexually innocuous to uninitiated adults, but quite effective at passing its messages across to its target youth-audience.

    By promoting the notion of unrestrained expression of sexuality and other vanities such as materialism, indolence, short-cut to success, etc., it misleads the impressionable young minds into accepting the false idea that the cultivation of such values carry no consequences, or that they generate desirable outcomes.

    Bolstered by its musical video component, the pop music culture promotes the sexual objectification of the human body, especially that of the females who are the easier targets. By displaying women and girls in their various stages of nudity, it exerts a powerful audio-visual effect on the malleable minds of its young viewing audience towards sexualisation, and the focus on the female body only in terms of its sexual utility.

    It also inflicts long-lasting damage on the female participants in the videos as well as the female audience. By constantly projecting explicit sexual footages that glorify female sexual objectification, it promotes the false idea that the larger society accepts and endorses what is being projected, and also pressures the girls into a redefinition of their self-image and the acceptance of their role as mere tools of sexual gratification for their male counterparts.

    The sexualising orientation of the pop music culture also projects the view of women as physical and mental weaklings who are submissive and subservient to male sexual domination and exploitation, while simultaneously strengthening the macho culture of the male as the all-powerful and all-dominant partner in social relationships and social role-set.

    It similarly promotes a particular idea and ideal of female physical beauty (being sexy). This ‘sexy craze’ works to make the females redefine their sexual self-image (of whom they are and whom they should be) and encourages the choice of skimpy, tight-fitting, body-revealing sexyclothes/clothing by our young girls, which further entrenches their sexualisation.

    The damaging consequences of the values promoted by the pop music culture on the youth, particularly the females, can manifest in unimaginable ways. A woman who has been led to accept her sexual objectification is just as easily amenable to sexual promiscuity and prostitution, among other sexually abnormal behaviours. Youths with such values towards their sexuality are also susceptible to other social problems such as teenage pregnancies, single parenthood, high incidence of female school dropouts, female marginalisation and disempowerment, sexual harassment, and sexploitation, among others.

    One key lesson derivable from the corrosive effect of pop music culture on society’s moral health is the need to be awake to the implication of having our mainstream values and norms determined by groups or individuals – within or outside our society – who are not necessarily keen on the corporate responsibility of ensuring the cultural sustenance of society and the moral well-being of its members.

    As a society, we need to reconceptualise ourselves as a socio-political and cultural entity with a view to determining our fate culturally – by creatively and selectively controlling our own cultural reproduction in a way that guarantees our collective survival and moral well-being.

     

    • Dr Ojoawo is a lecturer in the Department of English and Literary Studies, Kings University, Odeomu, Osun State
  • Lagos preserves culture

    Lagos preserves culture

    The Lagos State government has started its Echoes from Tinubu Square project aimed at preserving culture.

    Pupils were entertained with folklores and cultural display.

    The Special Adviser to the Governor on Central Business Districts, Agboola Dabiri, told the gathering at the event inside Madam Tinubu Square Fountain, Lagos Island, that Governor Akinwunmi Ambode was desirous of using public education to touch and redirect the minds of young children towards becoming agents of positive change.

    He enjoined the pupils to be good listeners as information gathered on the prowess of heroes and heroines of yesteryears would enhance their studies.

    The special adviser said: “Maintenance of historical monuments should equally be the concern of Lagosians whenever they visit on leisure and recreation, saying that the renovation of the Tinubu Square Fountain is a pointer to the judicious use of tax payers money by government in the state.”

    In the story telling session witnessed by members of Lagos State Traditional Whitecap Chiefs, captains of industries and notable Lagosians, Mr Shina Thorpe, took the pupils from St Mary Girls Catholic, Olowogbowo Methodist and Holy Cross Primary Schools through informative and educative rendition of Madam Tinubu’s prowess and meaningful contributions that blazed the trail to the modern day Lagos State, which is now 50 years old.

     

  • Call for Yoruba music, culture renaissance at Golberg forum

    IT was a sort of renaissance for the art and entertainment industry, as stakeholders converged on Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, last Wednesday to discuss the place of music, entertainment and culture in the social and business life of a people.

    Tagged ‘Ariya Repete’, it was the first-of-its-kind Roundtable Conference on Yoruba music – Fuji and Juju – and sponsored by Goldberg lager beer, a product of Nigerian Breweries Plc.

    In his keynote address, Professor Tunde Babawale, former Director General of the Center for Black and African Arts and Civilisation, CBAAC, explained that the rich cultural heritage of the Yoruba provided the foundation on which the music genres of Juju and Fuji were built.

    He noted that the attachment of the Yoruba people of South West Nigeria to music and celebration has earned them the appellation of “Owambe”, a reference to their love for ceremonies and celebrations.

    Babawale traced the origin of Juju music to the old Saro (Olowogbowo) quarter of Lagos where the genre emerged from ‘asiko’ music associated with “area boys” in the quarter and added that the genre also incorporated Brazilian Samba elements and the guitar style of Kru sailors from Liberia.

    According to the professor, Juju and Fuji have positively impacted every area of life of the Yorubas, including the reduction of socio-economic tension and the prevalence of religious tolerance.

    A prominent Fuji musician, King Wasiu Ayinde Marshall, otherwise called K1the Ultimate, thanked the organisers and speakers at the event for what he described as an educative initiative meant to preserve the Yoruba music genres.

    Also speaking at the event, Afrojuju creator, Sir Shina Peters, commended Goldberg for providing such a platform to discuss indigenous music and called on other corporate organisations to emulate the effort.

    Ambrose Somide, a radio broadcaster with Faaji FM and a panelist at the event enjoined young musicians of Yoruba extraction to endeavor to sustain the genres for the promotion of the Yoruba culture.

    While welcoming guests to the forum, Mr. Kufre Ekanem, Nigerian Breweries’ Corporate Affairs Adviser, who was represented by Patrick Olowokere, the company’s Corporate Communications and Brand Public Relations Manager, disclosed that the ‘Ariya Repete’ initiative was borne out of the company’s respect for tradition and values of the people.

    The special guest of honour, His Imperial Majesty, Oba Adeyeye Babatunde Enitan Ogunwusi, (Ojaja II), the Ooni of Ife, who was represented by Oba Adebiyi Asoya, the Asoya of Ile Asoya Kingdom, reiterated the need to sustain the current cultural revival among Nigerians as championed by Goldberg lager beer in the area of indigenous Yoruba music.