abdulraheem
“In order to make economic and political occupation complete and
effective, the coloniser tried also to control the cultural environment –
education, religion, language, literature, songs and dance, every form
of expressive practices – hoping in this way to control a people ‘s values,
their world outlook and hence their images and definitions of self” –
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Idang Alibi was very angry at last week’s Editorial Board
meeting. I can’t recall exactly what nudged us in the direction of a
discussion of programming on Nigerian television, but he was
very unhappy about the popularity of Mexican soap operas,
which have now become part of the nation’s television fare in
recent years. He illustrated his angst with one that is currently
running on Africa Independent Television (AlT). I think it was
the NTA that first brought into the country these Mexican soaps,
either in the late eighties or early nineties, with the very well
followed THE RICH ALSO CRY. I remember that a current joke
then was that if you wanted to reach members of some families,
especially the female, call them when those programmes were
being aired and you almost always could be sure to reach them.
The Writings of a Media Life.Those programmes were cheap; explore themes that people
could follow, especially in their exploration of romantic themes.
What stations did was to get a trans-national company to sponsor
these programmes, and they are in business. They run on our
television stations, episode after episode, with the lovelorn
audience held in awe each night. The eternal themes of art and
literature, such as love and betrayal, hatred and tender emotions,
never stop to fascinate people; however, the question has always
been whether or not to domesticate these eternal themes with
productions located in the realities of our own societies and
within the ambiance of our own national cultures. This is my
understanding of the anger expressed by Idang Alibi at our
Editorial Board meeting last week.
What is expected of our national television institutions, such as
NTA and AlT, is that they would be at the forefront of sponsorship
and production of national programmes, which explore different
aspects of the human condition, but always from the perspective
of our own national cultures. The advantages of such a platform
are numerous. As the various productions of Wale Adenuga’s
SUPER STORY have shown, the capacity to explore our national
cultural motifs is not unavailable. They also show that we can
attain relevance and a high degree of professionalism can become
the order of the day in the industry. There is the added, but very
vital element of being able to keep generations of highly-trained
young graduates of film, theatre, television and related
disciplines very busy, doing what they have been trained for and
assisting to strengthen our independence at the cultural level.
Within the context of the complete surrender to imperialism and
capitalist globalisation in our politics and economic policies
today, not a few people have forgotten that the terrain of culture
was one of the arenas of the struggle waged against colonialism.
Generations of Africans had to fight to assert our rights to a
cultural existence at a time when Africans were presented as
people without history or culture. Today, most people have
forgotten, and official Nigerian policy choices have reinforced
this forgetfulness, that pioneering historians such as Professor
Kenneth Dike had to fight for the right to an African
The Writings of a Media Life.historiography, which use the oral traditions of our peoples as
authentic sources for the interpretation of our history. These were
major historical as well as cultural victories, which reinforced the
struggles against colonialism from the end of the Second World
War. Given the general state of confusion in our broadcasting
today, one might also be forgiven the ignorance of the national
ambience within which post-colonial broadcasting policies were
formulated, implemented and enforced. I joined the defunct
Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) as a Studio Manager
Trainee in February 1977 during the Black and African Arts
Festival, FESTAC.
The NBC then had a tradition that in the compilation of a music
programme, a presenter was obliged to play seventy percent
Nigerian music, twenty percent African, and the remaining ten
percent was given to music from other parts of the world. These
were policies that were enforced. When I later became an
Announcer, we were taught to speak English in an educated way,
but as Nigerian speakers of the colonial language. As a News
Reader on the network service of Radio Nigeria in 1980, there
was the late Papa Emdim who spoke more than six different
Nigerian languages as a permanent fixture helping to rehearse the
pronunciation of Nigerian names. In the sweep of the national
pride of those times, it was unpardonable to mispronounce a
Nigerian name, while ‘affected’ or foreign accents would
certainly not get a prospective announcer a job on radio in those
days. Today, many have turned FM to mean foreign music; there
are all kinds of accents and announcers and presenters that seem
to be in a race to outdo themselves in how foreign they sound or
how well they mutilate Nigerian names. The bigger picture
reveals a truly depressing condition all around us. Up to the early
seventies, the public school system still had a very good quality in
terms of curriculum, the quality and dedication of teachers and
the standard of pupils turned out. Of course, the public school
system is the basis upon which a nation’s educational
infrastructure can be built in the effort to produce citizens with
the civic consciousness to build a country, fight
underdevelopment and neo-colonialism. But the picture is
The Writings of a Media Life.different today; the public school system is in crisis and private
schools are everywhere. The more difficult part of the scenario
for me is that around us are American, British, Lebanese, Turkish
and such schools. I often wonder what curricula these schools use
and what consciousness they are forming for Nigerian children:
American? British? Turkish or Lebanese? It is no wonder that an
ideology of ‘foreign is best” has taken hold of our ruling circles.
The most welcome experts today are those coming from the
heartlands of imperialism. A few weeks in the Harvard School of
Government has become a passport to riches in the Nigeria of
neo-liberal capitalism, while a few workshops organised by some
right-wing American think-tank are prized above any nationalist
education acquired in our universities, with courses taught by
patriotic professors. It is this conquest of the political and
economic infrastructure that is being consolidated at the level of
the cultural: the popular media and in education. Tile imperialists
and their institutions are determined to consolidate the neo
liberal capitalist conquest of Nigeria. This also has a basically
ideological value, and this explains why those driving the neo
liberal reforms are individuals who have been educated, cultured
and also accept that we are living at the “end of history,” as
Francis Fukuyama said, and have come to believe that there is no
other viable way of development, except total surrender of our
country to imperialist globalisation. The terrain of culture was a
hotly-contested terrain in the struggle against colonialism. That
was why African history became a major victory of the
educational system in post- colonial Africa; it was the reason why
pride in being Nigerian and African became a major gain of the
post-colonial period. Of course, we can argue that colonialism
soon gave way to neo-colonialism, and the process that led to
what Frantz Fanon described as “Black Skin, White Mask.” But
no matter the deficiencies of independence, it was better than the
naked violence and rape of colonial plunder.
Today, Nigeria, and indeed the whole of Africa, faces a greater
danger. Because all over the continent, there are the Obasanjo
type rulers and their coterie of economic advisers doing the
The Writings of a Media Life.bidding of imperialism, and implementing the most reactionary
Neon-liberal policies in the economy. More than at any point in our
history, we are faced with a near total loss of sovereignty, the theft
of our national patrimony in controversial privatisation policies,
the nurturing of a bandit capitalism that does not aid national
development and which pauperises the majority of the people of
our country and our continent. As a matter of fact, many
intellectuals in Africa, faced with the gradual slide to a new form
of colonial take-over, abetted by leaders such as Obasanjo who
aid the triumphal march of neon-liberal capitalism, are beginning
to reconsider the issue of national liberation as the main task
which faces the African people; national liberation to free our
national productive forces, regain our political independence and
institute the process of genuinely-popular democracy and to
regain our cultural independence.
I think the word of the great African freedom fighter, Hamilcar
Cabral, speak for the present: “We can state that national
liberation is the phenomenon in which a given social economic
whole rejects the negation of the historical process. In other
words, the national liberation of a people is the regaining of the
historical personality of that people, its return to history through
the negation of the imperialist domination to which it was
subjected. National liberation exists only when the national
productive forces have been completely freed from every kind of
foreign domination.”
Clearly, the words of Cabral resonate for the conditions in
Nigeria today. The wholesale surrender to foreign domination
has become the new orthodoxy that the imperialists have sold
through the neon-liberal policies of the Obasanjo
