The new Director General, National Gallery of Art (NGA) Ahmed Sodangi formally resumed Tuesday March 5, promising that the NGA Establishment Act for Repeal and Re-enactment will receive his priority attention.
According to him, “passing the bill by the National Assembly is one of the most important things as far as I’m concerned because a place that is limited in terms of resources and has a huge mandate that entails so many programmes will always suffer.”
He spoke at the NGA headquarters, Abuja, during hand-over ceremony where the out-going DG, Chief Ebeten William Ivara, presented him a bulky Handover Note on his achievements and guardrails to watch out for.
Sodangi said pushing of the Bill into an Act of the National Assembly would require diplomacy, protocol and PR, stressing the importance of the cooperation of staff and management of NGA to achieve this.
He said he would leverage on his experience in the private sector and the cooperation of visual arts stakeholders to ensure the Bill is passed into law.
Recall that NGA and the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA) set up a joint committee in 2021 to iron out areas of concern in the old Establishment Act of NGA and the proposed Bill to amend it way back in 2007.
The result was a Harmonised Bill which is now set to be forwarded to the National Assembly for accelerated hearing and passage.
Sodangi also stressed the importance of having a national gallery; an edifice that the nation can be proud of, adding that the Federal Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, is equally interested in NGA having a national gallery edifice.
The new helmsman thanked President Ahmed Bola Tinubu for appointing him as DG of NGA, promising to live up to expectations.
He stressed the importance of team work to excel and achieve the mandate of the organisation while appreciating the efforts of previous DGs in moving NGA forward. “I am determined to take NGA further,” adding that his expertise in project management will be fully harnessed by creating the right image for the organisation to reposition it to attract much needed funding.
