When Hannatu Musa Musawa assumed charge of Nigeria’s arts, culture and creative economy portfolio, the promise was unusually ambitious. The creative economy was no longer to be treated as an ornamental appendage of government, periodically celebrated at festivals and cultural exhibitions. It was to become an engine of economic diversification, employment, foreign exchange and national soft power.

The ambition was subsequently enlarged to include tourism, after the Federal Government restructured the ministry and brought the tourism portfolio under the Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy (FMACTCE). Musawa formally assumed leadership of the restructured ministry on October 23, 2024.

FMACTCE was conceived as not just a Ministry, but as a catalyst for innovation, growth and the empowerment of Nigeria’s vibrant cultural and creative sector. The Ministry was expected to serve as a beacon of hope and progress in the realisation of the Renewed Hope Agenda of the administration. The ministry has promised to scale Nigeria’s creative economy from its baseline to contribute $100 billion yearly to the national GDP by 2030.

Musawa’s flagship roadmap promises the creation of 2 million sustainable jobs for Nigerian youths within the creative and tourism sectors by 2027–2030.

Partnering with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), the ministry promises to monetise both tangible national heritage (museums, monuments) and intangible assets (festivals, indigenous textiles, culinary arts) to create non-oil revenue.

The “Destination 2030” Soft Power Initiative: A comprehensive master plan to expand Nigeria’s cultural footprint globally, grow the local creative market by 400 per cent, and position the country as a primary global tourism hub.

While declaring open the 2025 Ministerial and Sectoral Retreat organised by the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Tourism, and Creative Economy, at the Nigerian Army Resource Centre, Abuja, the Minister outlined key challenges and strategic interventions to enhance the growth and development of Nigeria’s creative economy and tourism sectors.

In her keynote address, Minister Musawa identified limited funding access, poor infrastructure, piracy issues, security concerns, and inadequate data on job creation estimates as major challenges hindering the full realisation of these sectors’ capabilities.

“To address these challenges,” she said, “the Ministry will focus on infrastructure development, policy enhancement, skills development, tourism infrastructure, and data-driven decision-making.

“This includes investing in film studios, digital infrastructure, and global distribution networks, strengthening copyright and intellectual property protections and enforcement, establishing fashion incubation centres and creative hubs, enhancing heritage sites and museums, and leveraging primary and secondary data to guide job creation targets and policy interventions.”

The Minister emphasised the vast growth potential of Nigeria’s creative economy and tourism sectors, driven by increasing digital penetration and rising global demand for Nigerian content. She also highlighted the importance of leveraging the country’s rich cultural heritage and creative talents to establish itself as Africa’s creative and tourism powerhouse.

The Minister concluded that the strategic repositioning of Nigeria’s arts, culture, tourism, and creative economy is imperative for the nation’s future prosperity.

She urged stakeholders to be guided by data, inspired by Nigeria’s rich heritage, and motivated by the immense potential of these sectors for job creation, economic diversification, and global recognition.

Nearly two years into that expanded arrangement, however, an uncomfortable question is beginning to confront the ministry: how much of the impressive architecture announced under Musawa has translated into tangible economic value for the people and businesses it was designed to serve?

The question is not whether the minister has been active. She plainly has. There have been policy documents, financing schemes, international engagements, public-private partnerships, committees, cultural projects and a long procession of memoranda of understanding.

The ministry has cultivated the language of investment and economic transformation with considerable consistency. But governance is ultimately judged not by the number of agreements signed, press conferences held or committees inaugurated. It is judged by what changes.

That distinction is becoming increasingly important in assessing Musawa’s stewardship. The minister’s own recent remarks provide an unexpected entry point into the debate.

According to President of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners, Adeniran Makinde, the minister started on a strong note. “Rather than large visible infrastructure projects, the ministry’s most cited progress has come through partnerships and policy architecture,” he said.

Recent developments include collaborations with international development and financing institutions aimed at unlocking capital for creatives, improving data systems, and expanding access to global markets.

“There has also been emphasis on financing structures and investment vehicles intended to support film, music, fashion, and tourism enterprises—sectors often constrained by lack of credit and formal investment channels.”

However, critics note that many of these initiatives remain in early-stage implementation, with limited measurable outputs in terms of infrastructure rollout or nationwide creative employment statistics.
Supporters argue that Musawa inherited a structurally weak sector and is attempting foundational reform—building systems before visible outcomes.

Critics, however, suggest that Nigeria’s creative economy is too dynamic to be governed primarily through policy frameworks without faster, visible interventions such as creative hubs, tourism site upgrades, and industry-wide financing access.

Makinde said the greatest strength of Musawa is clarity of ambition: Nigeria wants to monetise creativity, export culture, and diversify beyond oil. Its greatest weakness is the slow translation of that ambition into everyday economic transformation visible to artists, tourists, and investors. “The ministry’s strongest conceptual weakness lies in what could be described as the “execution bridge”—the intermediate layer between policy design and grassroots implementation.”

Musawa’s ministry stands at a formative stage where expectations are high, but delivery timelines remain stretched by structural realities. In that sense, the ministry’s true challenge is not imagination—it is execution speed.

Whether it succeeds may depend less on policy declarations and more on whether it can adopt a more grounded, project-driven governance style—one that turns creative economy theory into tangible national infrastructure.

The MoU Question
The most visible feature of the Musawa years has been the sheer breadth of partnerships. In May 2024, the ministry signed an MoU with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group to pursue policy reforms and strategic interventions intended to strengthen Nigeria’s creative economy, improve revenue generation and create jobs.

A partnership with the British Council followed, with emphasis on strengthening capacity and creating opportunities for Nigeria’s creative professionals. Other engagements have involved international organisations, financial institutions, private-sector companies, sub-national governments and foreign governments.

In April 2025, the ministry announced a three-year partnership with Chocolate City Group to develop small-scale live arenas across the country, identify and nurture talent, create global distribution channels and strengthen intellectual property frameworks.

There have also been agreements around Abuja Creative City, the Renewed Hope Cultural Project, tourism development and cultural infrastructure. In Ekiti, for instance, Musawa signed a Renewed Hope Cultural Project MoU with the state government around the development of tourism and cultural assets, including the Ikogosi Warm and Cold Springs Resort.

In July 2026, the Federal Government and Rivers State signed another MoU covering tourism, arts, culture and the creative economy.

Governor Siminalayi Fubara, on Channels Television significantly, said the state intended to move beyond signing the agreement and demonstrate visible implementation within four months. That remark contains, perhaps inadvertently, the fundamental problem with the current debate. The signing is not the achievement. The implementation is. Yet the public record has made it easier to count the former than to measure the latter.

Speaking on efforts to get funding into the creative sector, at the Ember to Remember event, she acknowledged that the process of disbursement was still being worked through, including efforts to get funds directly into communities and the wider economy.

“We’re still in the process of disbursing them because, obviously, we’re working with a foreign bank, Afreximbank, which is a foreign commitment. We still haven’t received, or rather, been able to complete that process. But I’m working very hard to ensure that we can still disburse them, literally from this morning, as part of what I was trying to conclude.

At least, there will be some disbursement coming and going directly to the community or into the wider economy. So that’s what I’ve been working on for a while,” she explained.

Her explanation, points to the difficulty of moving from financing commitments to actual deployment. For an industry that has been repeatedly told that the government has finally solved its chronic financing problem, that admission is significant. The central issue, therefore, is not whether Musawa has ideas. It is whether the machinery she has assembled is delivering.

The Creative Economy Development Fund (CEDF) is arguably the most important intervention associated with Musawa because it addresses the problem that has repeatedly been identified as the creative industry’s principal structural constraint: access to capital.

The Federal Executive Council approved the fund, and the government announced a $200 million financing commitment from Afreximbank. Musawa described the facility as a mechanism for providing affordable financing to creative businesses and entrepreneurs. The ambition was compelling. The fund was designed to support sectors ranging from film, music and fashion to visual arts, publishing, gaming and cultural tourism, while exploring the use of intellectual property as an asset that could be monetised or used to unlock financing. The official CEDF platform describes the fund as intended to provide capital, expand access to finance, support job creation and enable creative entrepreneurs to leverage intellectual property.

The Federal Government’s launch of the FEC-approved Creative Economy Development Fund, with the announced disbursement dates of January 1, 2026 for Phase I and 1 April 2026 for Phase II, was a promising initiative. However, as those dates have passed, it is essential for practitioners to receive comprehensive public information regarding the fund’s capitalisation, successful beneficiaries, and the amounts approved and disbursed.

The minister has also consistently framed the creative economy as “the new oil,” projecting long-term goals such as significant job creation and multi-billion-dollar contributions to GDP.

That is precisely the concern articulated by Rowland Yohanna Goyit, the Secretary of society of Nigeria Artists (SNA), a visual artist, curator and art educator, who said the issue should not be reduced to an allegation about missing funds but to the absence of sufficient public information about implementation.

Goyit expressed concern over the growing dissatisfaction among Nigerian visual artists and other creative professionals, highlighting the importance of understanding these feelings.

He pointed out that the conversation should focus not on unverified allegations of missing funds, but rather on the crucial need for transparent implementation. The Ministry and fund managers have a responsibility to communicate details about the evaluation process, including how many applications were reviewed, which projects were selected, the types of financing approved, and the reasons for any delays in the published timetable.

Goyit noted the specific concerns of visual artists. While visual arts and photography were acknowledged as eligible sectors, it is imperative to provide an accessible breakdown of how different segments such as painters, sculptors, photographers, curators, galleries, art educators, conservation initiatives, and community-based cultural projects have benefited. Simply naming visual arts in policy announcements does not equate to meaningful involvement in the implementation process.

He called on the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy, the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, and the CEDF managers to produce a clear implementation report.

This report should include details on the fund’s actual capitalisation, committed and disbursed amounts, a beneficiary list, distribution across creative subsectors and states, and a revised timetable for outstanding disbursements.

Goyit clarified that his remarks are meant to foster dialogue rather than to criticise the Ministry or dismiss the CEDF.

“It is a legitimate demand for transparency, equity and accountability. The creative sector cannot be repeatedly celebrated as a pillar of national development while practitioners remain uncertain about interventions publicly created in their name. Government announcements generate expectations; credible implementation must generate measurable results,” he concluded.

Nearly three years into Musawa’s tenure, a question increasingly being asked within the creative community is whether the institutional and policy changes have translated into a meaningful difference in the lives and businesses of practitioners.

That question has become particularly pronounced around the Creative Economy Development Fund, which was presented as one of the administration’s flagship responses to the chronic financing challenges confronting creative businesses.

For Artistic Director of Arojah Royal Theatre and director of media and publicity of the National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners Abuja, Jerry Adesewo, the answer remains troubling.

Adesewo, who describes his assessment as a personal opinion devoid of political undertones, said the ministry’s greatest weakness is the distance between policy announcements and the experience of practitioners.

“If you had asked me whether I wanted to comment on the three-year journey of the minister, my response would have been a capital no,” he said. “Not because I do not know what to say, nor because I am afraid of saying what I should say, but because sometimes it is good to give people the benefit of the doubt.”

But after observing the ministry’s activities over the period, Adesewo said he could no longer avoid an assessment.

“Her tenure has been very ambitious in terms of policy direction, but considerably weak in terms of delivery,” he said, arguing that the gap became particularly obvious when the minister’s performance was measured against the expectations created by her promises around financing and the creative economy.

According to him, one of Musawa’s undeniable achievements has been changing the language through which government discusses culture.

“She has succeeded in reframing the ministry around the creative economy, rather than treating culture principally as heritage and ceremonial activity,” he said.

That conceptual shift, he acknowledged, was welcomed by practitioners who had long argued that Nigeria’s creative industries should be integrated into the country’s economic planning.

The minister has herself consistently framed the sector in those terms. At a ministerial and sectoral retreat, she identified limited access to funding, inadequate infrastructure, piracy, security concerns and insufficient data as some of the major constraints to the development of the creative economy and tourism. She also outlined plans around infrastructure, skills, intellectual property, creative hubs, tourism infrastructure and data-driven policy.

But it is precisely on financing that some practitioners say the administration’s promises have not yet translated into sufficient results.

Adesewo described the Creative Economy Development Fund as the “anchor point” of his assessment. “A lot of excitement was generated around the CEDF,” he said. “Many of us thought, this is it. The long-awaited financing for the creative sector has finally arrived. We were expectant. Everyone was watching and waiting for the programme to become operational.”

His question now is no longer whether the fund exists as a policy announcement.

“The real question is: how much money has actually reached how many creatives? Through what instruments did the money reach them? On what terms? Was it through grants, loans or equity? What measurable impact has the funding produced, whether tangible or intangible?”

For him, those are accountability questions that the ministry must answer.

Chief Executive Officer of the Abuja Metropolitan Music Society, Sam C. Ezugwu, is even more scathing in his assessment.

Speaking from his experience in the creative sector, Ezugwu said he had yet to see the impact of the ministry’s financing initiatives among practitioners around him.

“It has not been felt in the creative industry, and a lot of filmmakers can relate to what I am saying,” he said.

According to him, the financing problem remains particularly acute for filmmakers who want to tell Nigerian stories but lack the capital to do so.

“Filmmakers are always looking for funds to create films,” he said. “Even though there are those that collect funds and misuse them, there are still many genuine filmmakers that want to tell stories and foster the creative industry.”

Ezugwu said he had heard about the Creative Economy Development Fund but had not encountered convincing evidence of its impact.

“I heard about that thing last year, but it is not really functional,” he said. “I cannot count anybody that has said, ‘I have collected it and it is working’.”

His criticism goes beyond the absence of visible funding. He raised questions about the transparency of the systems through which government interventions are implemented.

“There is a transparency issue,” he said. “Whatever the minister is saying, whatever system they have set, the people executing these systems are battling with transparency. They are not transparent enough.”

The result, he argued, is a disconnect between policy makers and the people the policies are supposed to serve.

“There is a strong disconnection between the people on top and the people that are actually supposed to consume,” he said.

For Ezugwu, the result is a creative sector that continues to operate largely without meaningful government support.

“I do not see government involvement in the creative industry in Nigeria,” he said, adding that, in his assessment, the ministry’s performance deserved “zero” on the question of delivery.

His argument was echoed by Gabriel Jah, a creative, multimedia engineer and filmmaker, who described reports of funding disbursement as difficult to reconcile with the experience of many practitioners.

“Firstly, this is laughable,” Jah said. “The creative industry is by far one of the biggest industries that puts the nation on the map, yet such reports of a disbursement did not make it to the mainstream media across the entire country.”

For Jah, geography has also shaped the experience of practitioners. “As a creative in the East, alongside fellow Eastern creatives that I just asked, I did not feel the wave of a disbursement, let alone the presence of a creative and performing minister,” he said.

His frustration was sharpened by the absence, in his view, of visible evidence of the ministry’s interventions.

“Perhaps funds were truly released, and a group of creative thieves creatively disbursed it amongst themselves, and kept it moving,” he said.

“Whatever the case may be, I have never felt the presence of such a minister in the East.”

Kelvin Udochukwu, an artistic strategist and actor, similarly questioned whether the ministry’s policy agenda had translated into tangible change for practitioners outside the centres of power.

The concern is significant because the ministry’s stated ambition is much broader than Lagos and Abuja.

What is the baseline? How many jobs exist today? How much does the creative economy actually contribute to GDP? How much private capital has been mobilised? How much export revenue has been generated? How many creative businesses have become bankable? How many intellectual-property assets have been monetised? How many new cultural and tourism destinations have become commercially viable?

These questions matter because the ministry itself has acknowledged the weakness of the data available to policymakers. At its 2025 ministerial and sectoral retreat, Musawa identified inadequate data on job creation estimates alongside limited funding, poor infrastructure, piracy and security as major obstacles to the sector’s development. That admission should have been the beginning of a rigorous measurement regime. Instead, more than a year later, the ministry is still building the architecture.

The ministry is not necessarily failing because it is creating institutions. But it cannot indefinitely present institution-building as though it were the same thing as sectoral transformation. At some point, the architecture must produce buildings, financing, businesses, jobs, exports, tourism arrivals, intellectual-property revenues and sustainable livelihoods. Nigeria does not lack creative talent. It lacks infrastructure, financing, distribution systems, professional management and the institutional environment required to turn talent into scalable enterprises.

The test is not whether the MoU was strategically sound. It is whether the promised arenas are emerging, whether artists are being discovered and developed at scale, whether Nigerian content is reaching new markets and whether IP owners are earning more. A government that constantly announces partnerships eventually owes the public a partnership scorecard. Otherwise, MoUs risk becoming ends in themselves.