Expanding creative industry option for investment – Part 1

For the country’s next government to establish a quality economic governance framework built on sustainable fiscal, monetary, macroeconomic specific consolidation, the input of creative industry is needed writes GREGORY AUSTIN NWAKUNOR.

Despite a rise in non-oil earnings, the current state of the Nigerian economy reveals that there is a massive decline in revenue. The economy is still largely mono product.

For Independent Consultant and Executive Vice President Metacura Development Initiative, Ademola Henry Adigun, “debt servicing is about 90 per cent of earnings from all sources. Borrowing window closing due to lowering revenues. Nigeria has foreign exchange crisis based on poor exchange rate policies. Official inflation figures at about 22 per cent: real inflation in some basket of goods at over 45 per cent.”

He said, “the cost of petrol subsidies continues to be huge and economic diversification is harder with higher cost of inputs. The unemployment figures are officially at about 33 per cent, but will decline further. Multi dimensional poverty is about 64 per cent across the country.”

This is the economy the President-elect will inherit on May 29, 2023.

“Debt servicing is currently the highest expenditure item in the budget and is projected by the World Bank to hit 160 per cent of revenue by 2027, meaning we will need to borrow to pay interests on and repay our debts. Petrol subsidy gulps more N500 billion monthly, and crowds out expenditures in areas critical to human and national development,” Adigun said at the last National Advertising Conference held in Abuja.

These economic challenges will not disappear easily. The next president will need to initiate sound policies with coordinated and sustained actions across fiscal, monetary, trade, industrial to take Nigeria out of the woods.

According to stakeholders in the creative economy, there is need for more investment in the sector. They said the creative industry has potential and capacity to save over 100 million youths by creating viable employment for them.

Unfortunately, the industry itself has not made a credible case to the government on how this can be achieved. The industry is made up of great artists, but not businessmen, hence, the challenge. Therefore, government has been lukewarm in its support for the industry.

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has a huge data on Nigeria’s remarkable contribution to the music, arts, creative and fashion industries in Nigeria and across the world. How would the new government leverage this?

According to a report by Statista Research Department, the contribution of Nigeria’s creative industry to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 2021 were: motion picture and music recording provided roughly N753 billion. However, despite the large contribution of the movie and music industry to the country’s GDP, telecommunications and information services held 12.2 per cent of the country’s GDP, representing the most valuable sector in the creative, entertainment and information industry.

According to President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s creative industry is positioned as the second largest employer with a potential to produce 2.7 million new jobs by 2025.

“After agricultural, the creative sector is the second largest employer of labour in Nigeria today,” he added.

Buhari described the creative sector as the hub for exporting Nigeria’s culture, currently employing more than four million people.

The Nigerian creative industry suffers challenge, because people see the industry as separate entities: film, music, sports, fashion, fine art, culinary arts, dance, publishing, photography and crafts, among others. So, government just lumps the creative industry with the Ministry of Information and Culture, with a minister to basically supervise it and not necessarily monetise it.

The industry requires specific knowledge and skill to monetise it. The minister must be able to establish symbiotic relationships with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and commercial banks. The person should not just fund edifices, but should show the banks how a symbiotic relationship can be kept.

Currently, the country’s culture policy is outdated and its content needs to be fine-tuned to meet up with modern demands. The Guardian gathered that there was an attempt at reviewing the culture policy in 2008, some 21 years after it was formulated, but the exercise came rather late.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) guidelines, a cultural policy shall be reviewed at least once in eight years.

So, it was more than twice a belated exercise. Also, due to the restricted circulation of the text, it wasn’t addressed to the Nigerian people as sovereign owners.

This contrasted sharply with the case in 1988 when culture administrators mobilised universities, journalists, trade unionists, civil society representatives, among others, to make their input to the implementation strategies. But the belated 2008 exercise wasn’t like that.

It was handled rather perfunctorily, without any serious demonstration of commitment. The document was not given the legal teeth to make it justiceable.

The government does not understand or see why there should be cash infusion in the industry. This is very unfortunate, though the Nigerian government is fully aware of the international exploits of Nollywood and the Afrobeats music industry, they still do not understand how the industry can be viable.

THE National Gallery of Arts is one of the parastatals charged with the task of promoting Nigeria’s unity through its duty of preserving and documenting the country’s modern and contemporary art.

But it is challenged by the fact there is no edifice that could be called a national gallery.

At a forum, themed, Beyond Art Preservation And Promotion: Gallery Edifice As A Major Drive For Diversification of Nigeria Economy, stakeholders in the visual art sector of the creative industry canvassed a befitting national edifice for the NGA.

They recommended a minority status for the Federal Government in ownership and operation of the national gallery, which should be funded on a Public-Private Partnership.

Other terms for the realisation of the project include: to create a national gallery in compliance with the digital world; create programmes and activities to work with artists on a continuous basis; continuation of major intellectual discussions on the value of art towards building on those poor areas of our history; explore new areas for national collection growth and make significant investments in personnel and train human capacity of the industry.

At the 12th National Gallery of Art (NGA) Annual Distinguished Lecture, in Abuja, Prof. Jerry Buhari of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) raised the need for art to be given its proper place beyond speeches, adding, it will “be able to redirect our energies, creativity and imagination toward new approaches in addressing national issues.”

He disclosed the consequences of not having a national edifice. He called on the government to urgently fast track the building, at least, one national edifice for contemporary art in Abuja, with a profile that can accommodate the volume and diversity of artworks created in our vibrant art scene.

Omooba Yemisi Shyllon noted that Nigeria has the potential of attracting about six million visitors per annum to its national gallery, thereby, generating an income of $56 billion per annum.

To achieve this, the above recommendations need to be taken seriously with a view to showcasing the inherent economic strength and human creative resources of Nigeria into providing some significant inputs in the diversification of the nation’s economy.

A physical edifice holding artworks that represent the artistic practice of a country, both the building and the works can easily and effectively deployed to build unity, integration and a national dream. The edifice could become a symbolic image that a country can be used to protect our shared cultural heritage.

A national edifice is able to rescue masterpieces of a country’s creative endeavours transfer them to future generations their tangible and intangible cultural value. It is a repository of artworks that by their nature require dedicated and appropriate spaces for storage, display and access for educational purposes, tourism, and celebration of human civilisation.

“The artworks of many Nigerian artists are thus lost in the long run and their impact remaining uncoordinated for public exposure, permanent exhibition and promotion. It is not an exaggeration to state that the lack of a national gallery edifice is a key retardant to the development of modern and contemporary art in Nigeria. A national gallery edifice being a public space for the unique and important collection of artworks over time for the public benefit, tell some coherent stories in paintings, sculptures, and photographs, spanning decades and reflecting how artists in our nation have lived and responded to the myths of religion, history and contemporary events, covering human forms and our unique cultures,” he said.

According to Shyllon, a national gallery edifice constitutes a living legend of Nigerian peoples’ cultural achievements as expressed in art forms and is therefore an estimable resource for understanding our world and heritage. He noted that a national gallery therefore owes a national responsibility to cater for and add to the national collection for display to the public, in advancing scholarly search and to promote enjoyment and understanding.

STAKEHOLDERS in the book value chain who congregated at a one-day Publishers Forum in the course of the 23rd Lagos Book & Art Festival, LABAF, stated that deliberate policies and actions needed to be initiated and taken to increase literacy in the country that has been badly challenged by vagaries of seemingly intractable socio-political and economic defects, and with no sign of amelioration by an obviously clueless successive governments and public education administrators.

They reminded government of its role in the continued nurturing and development of the book sector, beginning with the coming into effect of a National Book Policy within the shortest possible time.

They equally encouraged governments across board, and particularly at the local government area level, to establish, maintain, staff and furnish at least one community library per LGA, whose book stock must be renewed and updated annually.

That going forward, libraries should be seen and regarded as more than ‘houses of books,’ but even more appropriately as ‘living community houses and centres of ideas and culture’ where unfettered dissemination and transmission of information is maximally encouraged and takes place.

That government, as well as stakeholders in the book trade, should pay even greater regard to factors of ease of availability and affordability of books as a way of engendering improved readership patronage. That in a practical sense, stakeholders should do more to facilitate the coming into being of at least one ‘National Books Distribution Company’ as a practical vehicle for lowering distribution and marketing costs within the next three years.

THE Nigerian indigenous publishing industry in the last two decades has experienced a downturn due to numerous challenges of book piracy, undefined boundaries in business relationships and government interference, among others. But all these can be turned around if the government implements the proposed National Book Policy.

There is a necessity for the government’s intervention in the all-important sector for better performance, as the book sector impacts the country’s educational development and general progress.

While addressing the issue of broken book chain, which spans from authors/writers to publishers/printers to booksellers/bookshops and book users/readers, whether it is because of policy somersault on the part of government or government as patron of the industry, they said book business is challenging, especially in a country like Nigeria, where the reading culture is very low.

The former Chairman of Nigeria International Book Fair Trust, Mr. Gbadega Adedapo, is sad that there is no umbrella body for the book industry.

“What we have is a department under NERDC (Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council). Our recommendations for the past 18 years have not been implemented because we do not know who to report to. We need a Nigerian Book Commission where issues relating to the industry can be properly looked into”. On the need to transition into digital reading, Adedapo further stated that the unavailability of most African published books on digital platforms is quite unfortunate. He also made emphasis on the need to address the slow pace at which the digital revolution is being embraced for adoption in the publishing industry,” he had said at a book function.