“These are not issues of campaign; I should have spoken to you earlier. I’m not listening to you because I’m standing for elections. After April, we’ll hit the ground running. In the next four years, I want to move the country forward to where it should be. As a nation, we want to look at all sectors of the economy, especially those sectors where jobs can be created within the private sector’’.

Even if, expectedly, a section of the gathering and as well the larger public, millions of whom must have followed the proceedings via live television broadcast, would still be skeptical about the motive of the event, President Jonathan demonstrated that there is much to be taken to heart in the brief statement he made that night.

First, after listening to as many as 12 presentations by various sectors of the Culture Sector, including from writers, musicians, movie makers, theatre artists, visual artists, fashion designers and culture activists, the President said he had been moved to match the artists word for word in their passionate remarks. He abandoned the formal response that his team had prepared for him, and decided to speak extempore. He said;

“Government is probably too far from the creative industry. Government needs to be closer to the creative industry… There is a lot the sector can give if government can support it; every president should take the sector seriously.”

Then the President touched on the very basis of why the culture sector is impoverished, and why, more significantly, the nation seemed to be losing out grossly from the massive riches and resources it ought to be tapping and harnessing from one of its most enduring goldmines, the Culture Sector. He said:

“I think certain institutions in the sector are headed by wrong persons, and that we need to address.”

A few weeks before the March 20 gathering, the President had also given an indication of the seriousness he attaches to the sector, when he launched the Bring Back the Book campaign, with the symbolic gesture of his joining the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, to read to an assembly of over four hundred students drawn from as many as twenty schools from around Lagos.

The project was followed up with a conference that brought another over 200 workers in the Book and Literature fields from around the country together at Eko Hotel, where they fleshed out the Presidential dream. The proceedings of the conference is soon to be published in book form and publicly presented. The Bring Back the Book campaign had also gone virtual with a website that is up and running well. There has also been the launch of the project in select university campuses around the country. Last week, the Abuja chapter of the campaign was launched.

These indeed are indications of a government that is determined to fruitfully engage the culture sector, and harness its resources in the quest for national development. President Jonathan’s stride is markedly different from the attitudes of the past in which the State treats a vital sector of its national economy as a pariah, an orphan – despised, rejected and abused through actions that reduce it to a footnote in the national developmental dreams and aspirations.

Is it possible then that the Goodluck Jonathan administration will rescue Nigeria from the abyss of philistinism, and position it in the comity of civilized nations who have long recognized, and continued to tap from the civilizing principles of the arts to lift their people to glory of economic and spiritual development?

The stars are indeed very bright in the horizon.

Nigeria, Our Nigeria… The birth of hope

Since that glamorous event of the President sharing dinner table with the collective of creative community members, the event of the formal opening of the exhibition of images today under the theme NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, is yet the most practical step the government has taken to ascertain that it is indeed ready to critically engage the creative industry community in meaningful developmental projections.

By making the exhibition a part of the Inauguration ceremony, the 2011 Presidential Inauguration Ceremonies Committee has not done anything new; in fact they have simply reverted to an established tradition of celebrating such a landmark in the life of the nation – every presidential inauguration has always been marked with such artistic presentation. But that is where the story always ended. The artists, including those who participated and whose creative resources had been exploited for such ceremony were soon forgotten in the governmental thinking. In fact, most times they were often not invited to the state dinner or such feasts that would then wrap up the inauguration programme.

But what the organizers of this exhibition, making their own contribution to giving the President a befitting initiation to his exalted seat, have done this year, is to change the dynamics of the tradition and elevate the quality of artistic presentation to well above the usual feasts of the past.

A quick aside, through their composition and selection of works and participants in this show, the curators of Nigeria, Our Nigeria, have inadvertently resolved a recurring yawn in successive national exhibition projects, in which in purporting to present a full reflection of Nigeria’s visual arts, photography is always left out of the calculation or altogether understated. The last example of such an omission, and which drew wide criticisms from the community of photographers, was the 50^th Independence anniversary exhibition mounted in the velodrome of the National Stadium, Abuja. There were photographic works alright, but such were lost in the maze of over a thousand paintings and sculptures. And this was bad for a country that has produced internationally recognized and award winning photographers, and whose youth have increasingly discovered the power of photography as an instrument of documentation and socialization.

The collective of artists selected for this show reflects deeper thinking about the philosophy behind the theme, Nigeria, Our Nigeria. And in doing that the often critical question of guaranteeing quality of works to be displayed has been tackled, in the sense that such skewed schemes that have over the years contributed to the inability of the country to achieve meaningful progress, have been eliminated. The albatross baggage of favoritism smartly robed in such terms as Quota System and Federal Character have been seemingly eliminated.

It is clear that the artists whose works are included in this show have been selected based on earned credits; and they represent some of the best creative intellectuals that the country has had to offer the world.

Accomplished artists, Octogenarian ‘Okai Ojeikere and Septuagenarians Bruce Onobrakpeya and Tam Fiofori are sharing the podium with eminent ‘young-older’ artists as Kolade Oshinowo, Don Barber, Baba Shettima, Jerry Buhari, Olu Amoda, George Esiri and even much younger achievers, who have made quite a reputation at home and abroad, as Ndidi Dike, George Osodi, Adolphus Opara, TY Bello, Onyema Offoedu-Okeke, Anthea Epelle, Ebenezer Akinola Samuel, Richardson Ovbiebo, Taiye Idahor and Afolabi Sotunde.

The organizers and curators of Nigeria, Our Nigeria are indeed desirous to show the very best of the creative face of Nigeria in this narration of the historical odyssey of the country, which is quite luminous at a time that -- by his own rare gift of the intellect and moral uprightness -- Goodluck Jonathan has succeeded greatly in redeeming Nigeria from the pit of pariah-ism in the area of democratic culture. The man has just given practical expression to his expressed desire to erase the lugubrious reputation of Nigeria as a nation that is capable of all evils, including one of the most corrupt electoral systems in the world, in which rigging, vote-stealing, daylight electoral robbery are the orders of the day.

From the disastrous electoral experiences of 2003 and 2007, Goodluck Jonathan -- working through the instruments of the usually much-vilified electoral umpire, the same institution that had earned opprobrium as its natural name -- has given Nigeria a voice in the comity of civilized electoral systems. Even those who complain about pockets of inadequacies in the last election, would, and have admitted that it was the best election the country has had in the past decade. It took the will power of the President not to behave like the typical Nigerian politician by deploying the ubiquitous resources of incumbency to mischievous use in robbing Nigerians of yet another opportunity to make their electoral choices work in their favour. And it had started with the quality of personnel that the President appointed to captain the ship of the electoral process, in the person of Professor Attahiru Jega.

Consolidating the Culture on Hope

The golden age of poetry and power

Of which today is the noon’s day hour

— Robert Frost, at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy (1960)

And so we could start to conclude that Goodluck Jonathan represents a significant shift in the dynamics of power play. The greed and avarice of the past, where political leaders behave like rascals, have been upstaged, and the template is set for the emergence of a more cultured (and civilized) process of doing things. Importantly, the country may have been set on the path of abandoning cultic political individualism to an era of institution building.

President Jonathan represents the coming age of culture shaping the deeds of power. And Nigeria, Our Nigeria marks that new dawn.

Nigeria, Our Nigeria, in its collection of works, reflects the consolidation of that desire to begin to build institutions, to build a culture of meritocracy and qualitative humanity.

The artist in the society represents the finest of our humanity – the core of our social being who deploy their divinely given resources to create works that enrich our lives, balm our anguish and increase our ability to cope with the pains and burdens unleashed on us by the vicissitudes of life. The artists remind us of our purposes in life, of our missions and the extensive possibilities we could attain if we resolve to deploy our energies and resources to positive use. More important, the artists, through their visionary works record for us moments of our triumphs, travails and resoluteness; they remind us through their works of where we have succeeded and failed

This is what the collection of works in Nigeria, Our Nigeria represents.

The works in part are historical as in the photographic recordings that remind us of our past when we basked in economic and cultural affluences and so we contemplated and indeed achieved the best in infrastructural development as recorded in Ojeikere’s Ahmadu Bello Stadium (Kaduna 1974); General Ward, University College Hospital , Ibadan (1966) and Nigeria Institute of International Affairs (1966). And Baba Shettima’s documentary recordings of significant moments in our political and economic history as in the image of a letter from the British colonial lords thanking Nigeria for the donation of an Iroko furniture; the Big Three (1958), capturing in one frame the founding fathers of the country, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Sir Ahmadu Bello; and the 1958 picture of the first Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa with Captain of the ‘S.S. HUMUFUSIS’, a Shell Oil tanker that carried the first cargo of Nigeria’s crude oil for export at Port Harcourt.

A good section of the collection captures our emblematic cultural riches as represented in Dr Onobrakpeya’s plastocast, Mamiwater and Oracle, and Dance in the Bush (I & II). Onobrakpeya’s works have already been canonized, and have traversed world collections. Lending his bits to the current exhibition is indeed a blessing to the nation at its time of rebirth as Nigeria, Our Nigeria represents. Similarly, Tam Fiofori’s Great Culture series (Aso Ebi… and Oba of Benin coronation) both done in 1979 have travelled far and wide and have become subjects of popular acclaim. Their presence in this show is reflective of the belief that the people have in the possibilities that the country still possess in its season of democratic consolidation.

Kolade Oshinowo’s painting, Old City Gate and Don Barber’s picture, Sultan of Sokoto palace despite differences in medium would appear planned to share thematic thrusts. But these only affirm that documentation of the varied national heritage had always been the preoccupation of the artists, whose efforts have, however, remained uncompensated. Don Barber in Angel’s Elbow Obudu Ranch, also reminds of the natural riches of this country, which, in our preoccupation with the profane and the un-needful, we have either neglected or abused; a coded reminder of the yet untapped goldmine of the country’s economy -- Tourism.

The painters, Ndidi Dike, Jerry Buhari, Offoedu-Okeke and the sculptor Olu Amoda in their individual styles and techniques point at the dynamics of our visual representation, capturing in essence our yearning for modernity in cultural expression – a signpost that Nigeria is by all means, an artistically proficient and ambitious nation, capable of holding its head in international cultural gatherings. The four-some, one could say, belong to same Independence Generation clan of artists, but they have even at their relative young age, become masters of their techniques, with each of their careers already spanning over three decades of actual practice and scholarly engagement. They have been responsible for training the younger generation of artists, in various institutions (formal and informal), instilling in them the discipline of the vocations while keeping their thematic sensibilities focused on cogent issues of national importance.

In particular, George Esiri’s focus on children in two of his pictures in this collection reminds us of that disempowered segments of the society that are hardly subject of critical studies and attention by policy makers – the children and the aged. These are generations, that even though we have agreed represent our yesterday and tomorrow, we hardly work conscientiously for. In Happy Moment (Ibeshe Island), Esiri celebrates the joy and freedom of childhood, while subtly warning that the adult citizens must work harder at providing an environment of peace and freedom for the children to grow up normally and fully realize their potentials as the wealth of tomorrow.

Esiri strikes dual meaning in Youthful Steps of Sunset (Ibeshe Island) – with the sun setting in the background casting its golden hue on the lonesome silhouette of the child. Could the photojournalist be metaphorically reminding Goodluck Jonathan that his era ought to translate as a fresh burst of energies and rebirth for a nation that had indeed gone through decades of economic rape and political brutality?”

In Grandma (Zamfara 2006), Esiri tugs at our conscience, reminding of our eventual destination after we would have expended our youthful years. And when you contemplate the unsavoury stories of the rot in our educational system which have forked majority of our children out of school and dumped them on the streets as economic slaves (hawkers) and homeless urchins (area boys and girls), and the suffering our pension system subjects the old and retired to, coupled with the fact that there is no social security system in place to take care of the youth and the old, Grandma just like Happy Moment and Youthful Steps at Sunset — in one breath — scare and compel us to reflect deeply on the impact of our actions of today on the tomorrow that we would eventually have to encounter.

Yet quite fascinating are the images captured by the much younger generation of photographers, George Osodi, Tuoyo Omuagba and Adolphus Opara in their varied representations of the celebrative aspects of our cultural and social conditions, come across as Cultural activists.. Particularly the three photographers focus on themes relating to youth and cultural life of the nation. Osodi’s images peculiarly have touristic connotations as in Eyo (2009), a stylized recording of a column of the famous Lagos Adimu Orisha carnival, and Market Place, depicting a cattle market probably at Sallah period; and even Water No Get Enemy ( Zamfara 2009), which though appears a scene from a cultural carnival, however, has a strong didactic tone and texture.

Omuagba records the energies and tenacious resolve of the Nigerian youths in his two images of a traditional wrestling game. These capture the industry of the young; again a reminder of a vital socio-cultural aspect of the economy, which though have at various times yielded profits for the nation, are yet to benefit from an enduring policy of development by Jonathan’s predecessors.

Adolphus Opara again reminds that Nigeria is a vast land of cultural touristic resources, which, however, remain untapped in his Silhouette (Kebbi 2009), depicting a Durbar procession captured in silhouette, and Silhouette (Kano 2008), showing again shadowed images of an audience at a social or cultural event. But it is his picture featuring the head of a Drill that particularly reflect on yet another national wealth but which from his title — Endangered (Cross River 2009) — warns of the waste that the nation could make of its natural resources unless it embarks on a deliberate policy of protecting and harnessing such for its own economic and social good.

Afolabi Sotunde’s lens is trained on the transforming landscapes of Lagos. He records the hidden beauties inherent in the splendour of Lagos aquatic resources. His presentation of a section of the Oko Baba sawmill as it lounges on the brackish lagoon of Lagos in The Loggers is impressive just as his landscape shot of a section of Lagos Island, with the usually anarchist yellow buses arranged in a manner that could rankle the viewer’s cognitive memory of such a scene. Sotunde seems to love reimagining and reconstructing familiar sceneries in such a way to tweak at the conscience of his viewers.

However yet, instructive and irrepressibly romantic are the images recorded by TY Bello, which in poetic tonality remind us that Nigeria — in spite of the often daunting streak of failure of nationhood, of failed policies, of dashed dreams and wasted hopes — has remained a story of successes too in various endeavours. Thus TY, whose The Land is Green remains one of the evergreen songs of patriotism for the country, attests to the deep love the people of the country have for their beloved land as demonstrated in her recordings of several tense and joyous moments during the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing China, and in Lagos in 2010.

States TY in “When Nigeria Shows Up”

It’s beautiful to see Nigeria show up.

This Nigeria I speak of

is more tangible than her geography.

More passionate than her culture

More powerful than the number of her children.

I love it when she shows up in spirit.

And in spirit, she does, in the most diverse of spaces. From a football match far beyond her shores to a rally where hopes and dreams are rebirth

I see it happen. Nigeria takes our hearts over.

Wave after wave till in the unity of a trans-like state she can be seen in every eye. Pulsing through every heart.

Nigeria the amazing...gloriously now our victory.

This is the sort of song that reminds us all that the story of our nationhood can only be temporarily bleak; someday, the country shall emerge strong, virile and flowing with laughter and love.

That is the song of Hope.

Hope that binds the ruler and the ruled

This perhaps is the song that the Jonathan administration ought to aspire to instill in the consciousness of the citizenry who for years have been serially raped and abused through visionless governmental policies and political gangsterism that seemed deliberately designed to ensure that hard-toiling people of the country remain tangoed to dark fates that are only befitting of a hopelessly unfortunate orphan.

Yet, there is the more dastardly disadvantaged community of Nigerians, to whom Goodluck Jonathan owes an obligation: the Creative industry professionals and culture workers, whose contribution to the wellbeing of the nation celebrated in Nigeria, Our Nigeria, have always gone unacknowledged and unrewarded.

President Jonathan can make history today by refusing to go the way of his many predecessors in office who treated the creative artists as irritants, and thus ended up being branded as philistines-in chiefs. Already the President in his pre-election meeting with the community has signified that he is an enlightened leader, who has not only been properly educated as an intellectual, but is well schooled in progressive thoughts and ideals. He was indeed the first head of state in recent recollect-able time, to share a dinner date with such a huge number of members of the creative community.

Consolidating the song of Hope

Yes we (Nigeria) do have our problems and so does every other country, and as a young Nigerian its takes hope and faith to get by — Idahor (Evbako, 2010)

One of the malignant debates in Nigeria public circle is the degree of sense of patriotism that the Nigerian youths have for their country. The debate was triggered by a public commentator who having cursorily studied the contents of the musical works and public carriage of some Nigeria young celebrities, felt irritated by the serial subversion of national norms and etiquettes such that the name of the country had been ‘distorted’ to Naija and its national anthem and pledge have become subjects of disco-fied interpretation. Of course, the youths rose in defence of their clan, asserting that their patriotism and reverence for their father’s land had not been compromised.

Taiye Idahor, perhaps the youngest of the exhibiting artists in Nigeria, Our Nigeria, seems to have made the most cogent defence of the young not just in her statement above, but in the creative dynamics and quality of her works.

On her eclectic creation, Evbako, executed with newspaper prints, acrylic and used 35mm film cans and plywood, she says, “I created Evbako in 2010; it’s about 3ft, a bust sculpture of a woman, my portrait of Nigeria with eyes and mouths on her neck and shoulder creating a sort of discomfort. People outside Nigeria say so many things about life here and a lot exaggerated, creating this uneasy feeling about being Nigerian. Yes, we do have our problems and so does every other country, and as a young Nigerian its takes hope and faith to get by.”

The creative prowess of the young artists, which, in spite of abject lack of State, and paucity of corporate Nigeria support, has manifested in Nigerian music, movies, fashion works as well as sporting products, take on the world, is further expressed in the sculptures of Richardson Ovbiebo, who in Life Line 3 (2011) creatively engaged unusual materials – mirrors, copper wire, wire mesh, acrylic and plastics -- to achieve a work that is both aesthetically pleasing and artistically accomplished even in its simple-ness. Ovbiebo achieves same feat in his 2010 work Point of View 2 done with steel, plastic, acrylics and newspaper.

Hope as the good and the luck the people seek

And so we return to the very words of the President himself at the March 20 gathering – to examine the three poignant points in his speech:

1. I believe it is in the creative arts sector that we can create jobs for our teeming youths and fast track our economic growth… there is a lot the sector can give if government can support it to earn foreign exchange… and that’s why I am committed to the sector

So, would the President initiate and spearhead policies and actions that would ensure that full potentials of the creative industry are explored and harnessed to grow the economy and particularly, engage the energies and resources of the youths, and give them hope in the future of the country; thus stopping them from herding towards crime or stampeding through the borders?

2. Government is probably too far from the creative industry. Government needs to be closer to the creative industry… However, we (governments) don’t tend to take it very seriously; but every president should take the sector seriously.

So, would the Jonathan administration deviate from the established ways of successive Nigerian leaders by taking the Culture Sector and its millions of workers seriously, through reviewing the edicts setting up the various culture agencies, with a view to reforming them to ensure that they serve the purposes for which they were set up -- to help nurse the growth of the sector and empower the practitioners to contribute their quotas to national economic dreams and growth?

3. I think certain institutions in the sector are headed by wrong persons, and that we need to address.”

So, having identified this major flaw, would the Jonathan administration take the most appropriate measure of ensuring that never again would such a sensitive sector of the national economy be left at the whims and caprices of visionless political heads, myopic and self-centred civil servants and people who have little clues about the importance of culture to the health of the national aspiration?

Should the Goodluck Jonathan administration address these key challenges, he would have CROWNED the decades of toils and deprivations of the Onobrakpeyas, Ojeikeres, Fioforis, Oshinowos, Shettimas, Don Barbers; implanted good measure of SMILES on the aging faces of the Buharis, Amodas, Dikes, Esiris, Osodis, Offoedu-Okekes, while installing HOPES of a possible brighter future in the souls and sensibilities of the Oparas, Epelles, Akinolas, Ovbiebos, Bellos, Omagbas, Sotundes, Idahors…

More importantly, the President would have assured TY Bello that her recurrent dedication of love ballads to her dearly beloved country, Nigeria, is not out of synch with the reality. Besides, the President would have assured Nigerians that they could indeed stand up and own the country, proclaiming NIGERIA, is OUR NIGERIA.

-Jahman Anikulapo, May 2011