By Gregory Austin Nwakunor and Anote Ajeluorou
A writer and his vision for any society will always resonate,
especially if his ideas stand the test of time. ONE of the major panels of the
festival was the one that dwelt on ‘Literature and the Sustainability of
Cultural Heritage’. It threw up a lively conversation among the panelist, which
gave Nollywood actor and Director of
Rivers State Carnival, known as CARNIRIV, Sam Dede ample time to enunciate on
some of the thorny issues plaguing Africa’s cultural standing. He paid tribute
to late Chinua Achebe’s dismal outlook on what African culture would be in the
character of Okonkwo.
It ws moderated by Farafina
COO and author, Dr. Eghosa Imasuen, with Dede, Ayodele Ayeni as panelists. First,
Dede declared, “We have all killed the Okonkwo Spirit!”
Okonkwo is the
cultural ideologue and protagonist in Chinua Achebe’s iconic novel, Things Fall Apart, who refused to accept
any foreign culture and domination and dies defending his ancestral heritage
from any kind of contamination.
For Dede, it is this
Okonkwo Spirit that Africans now lack; it’s the ruin of their rich cultural
heritage for which efforts must be made to resuscitate for Africa’s survival
and identity in globalizing world order that is manifestly Western or
Eurocentric.
He said no one
should blame China for taking its culture to heart, just as “We are rejecting
our own African names for foreign ones. Now, we have all kinds of stupid names
what without knowing what they mean. We need to be aggressive about what we
have. We need to aggressively push what is ours – that’s what globalization is
all about. Why are we not thinking? The Chinese are moving to take over the
world while we are allowing our cultures to die.
“Perhaps, that is
why Achebe allowed Okonkwo to die. Achebe foresaw the death of our cultures,
the unmasking of our masquerades. Okonkwo died in frustration for us allowing
our culture to die. Perhaps, Achebe should have allowed Okonkwo to live. Like
us, Okonkwo’s friend, Obierika watched his friend die by standing aside and
allowed things to fall apart.
“So, we need to be
aggressive in promoting our culture. The world is waiting to see Africa. Early
European historians had nothing good to write about Africa. The Transatlantic
Slave Trade wasn’t a trade but a raid. Now, what do you see? There’s
evangelical tyranny against our culture. We must begin to think and revive that
Okonkwo Spirit in us!”
On Nollywood, Dede also said the only way
to reposition it would be through enlightened collaboration with experts so as
to revamp content of films. He noted, “The problem we face in Nollywood is about those who started the
business of Nollywood, although I
give them credit for starting it. Nollywood
wasn’t something I wanted to do because of (poor) content. Those of us from the
theatre didn’t want to do anything with Nollywood,
but we realized it was telling African story, our own story. So, it was an
unconscious mistake made from the beginning when experts failed to move in and
change it by chasing away the rodents and lizards. Now, it’s hard to change it
as it is because of the lack of enlightened investors. People there put in a
little but take away so much.
“The way to go is enlightened
collaborations with experts and Nollywood.
Let’s make our culture for global audience. But we don’t know what to package
because all sorts of people are doing it, which affects the content of films.
Most people doing films don’t have background in film. So, we do not know what
to package for foreign audience.
“We need to create a
new breed of directors and producers to change Nollywood through enlightenment. We need continued process of
engagement with Nollywood the way it
is currently constituted”.
Like most
independent cultural producers, Dede finds so-called cultural managers in the
various ministries vastly illiterate about what they administer and so hard to
work with. He stated thus, “Another problem is that the culture sector is 80
per cent in the hands of civil servants. What you see is that the culture
sector is completely ignored. The civil servants work in the creative sector
but are not creative themselves.
“National Arts
Festival (NAFEST), organised yearly by the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and
Orientation, is just a repetition each year. We need to invigorate the culture
sector by involving investors; it’s a goldmine but we need to package it
properly. We need to encourage business people to invest. The same with film.
We got investor for Mission to Nowhere,
which was blown up to 35mm in Los Angeles, U.S. It stood side by side with
Hollywood films.
“We need to have
more roundtable sessions to sensitise people about our culture. We need to look
past hydrocarbon years and see the goldmine in culture. We want to globalize
the culture sector, especially CARNIRIV”.
The director of
CARNIRIV disclosed that his organization has made a five-year development plan
to build Africa’s Film Capital in Rivers State. The stated objective being to
produce intelligent movies that would get world attention from Nigeria. He said
The Lost Number, which was produced
in Port Harcourt was making waves outside Nigeria, adding, “Nollywood is not only what we see on AfricaMagic; it can be made better than
that!”
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