Professor Mabel Evwierhoma of the department of theatre arts, University of Abuja, has called on Nigerians to use the country’s cultural diversity for economic and political gain, saying that Nigeria as a country is rich and its multicultural resources were yet to be tapped.
Stating this while presenting a paper at the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO) national media workshop, with the theme, “Developing media strategies for organizational growth in the culture sector,” Evwierhoma added that, the media cannot be sidelined because of its power in influencing the economy, politics, race, society, and culture across the globe.
According to the university don, the culture sector, through the use of media strategies, including but not limited to the combination of visuals, sound, picture, words, text in analogue or digital forms, should be channelled towards promoting the agenda of making Nigeria’s diverse cultural resources and heritage the vector for its socio-economic and political growth and development.
She called on supervising officers of the culture sector to put forward verbal queries as regards dress, ceremonies, language, and names, to mention a few, on a daily basis to government officials, so that they in turn would use the power of the media to set agenda for the populace, who would use the ideology in impacting on the economy of the country.
To achieve this, Evwierhoma also charged culture administrators to see themselves as agents entrusted by government and the people of Nigeria to manage the sector, stressing the need for organizational growth, taking into consideration factors, such as, education, integrity in office, workable cultural policy, security, peace and stability, nationalism and cultural pride.
Concluding, she emphasized that NICO, as government’s cultural academy, must align the production of culture with its consumption and study, be they local or international, and that it must be clear to all that what is oriented is indigenous and without intolerance, also adding that the choices of mixed media and multimedia strategies could be invaluable.
Ama Essien
Corporate Affairs
NICO Abuja