CONTESTING THE TERRAIN OF CULTURE

December 4, 2007
6 mins read

“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

 

 

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