The head of theatre and cultural studies department, Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), Professor Emmanuel Samu Dandaura, has stated that inadequate training of culture workers on the techniques of effective research and report writing is responsible for the current poor state of documentation of activities in the Nigerian culture industry.
Dandaura made this known in Abuja on Tuesday, 22nd October, 2013, while presenting a paper, titled, “Report Writing Skills for Arts and Culture Administrators,” at the just concluded 3-day national repositioning workshop organized by the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), with the theme, “Re-inventing Cultural Administration in Nigeria for Sustainable National Development.”
The professor of culture, development media and performance aesthetics disclosed that there was a huge gap between the quantum of documentation being generated on the Nigerian culture industry and the rich body of knowledge on the sector being held as oral traditions across the country.
According to him, when it comes to report writing, people hardly spent time to think of how to come up with a good report but just assumed that they knew how to do it without acknowledging that report writing was different from some other forms of writing, maintaining that a good report must take more efforts in planning rather than just rush into writing after an assignment or research.
His words: “You need to pause, carefully consider what you need to write, convince yourself on the purpose of your report and who is going to read it, what meaning you want to communicate, what the level of understanding of your reader is and the best format to use. That way, you will most likely end up with a more effective report.”
Commending the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), under the leadership of Dr. Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma, for constantly engaging cultural workers to sensitize them to their roles on how to reposition themselves and the sector towards national development, Dandaura said NICO-organized workshops remain a veritable platform for repositioning Nigerian workers in the culture sector.
“Particularly for NICO staff, you have the opportunity to, from time to time, re-think some of the things that you know and also exchange ideas on even topics that, ordinarily, you will say you are very comfortable with,” he said.
“It is indeed something you should be happy about. You might not know the impact of the intensity of the exposure that you find yourselves being given during this training until one day you might discover that you are going to be taking a decision on one thing or the other and it will be one of the issues that was discussed at such workshops like this that will readily come to your mind upon which you will make your decisions.”
The paper, which discussed in detail, the characteristics of good reports, traditional parts of an official report, vital steps in report writing and general processes of preparing a good report as well as the mechanics of effective report writing, aimed at improving the efficiency of culture workers in report writing.
Caleb Nor
Corporate Affairs
NICO, Abuja