By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
Director General of National Council of Arts & Culture (NCAC), Otunba Olusegun Runsewe and States Commissioners of Arts, Culture and Tourism, have called on the federal government to merge Arts, Culture and Tourism ministries, as both cannot function independently.
Runsewe and over twenty commissioners made this known at the just concluded conference held in Abuja recently to review the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) for the first time since its establishment.
He said NCAC alongside other culture and tourism agencies have been at the forefront of the fight to separate culture and tourism from other ministries, not as individual ministries but one ministry.
“We want government to return the two ministries (arts, culture and tourism) together. The separation of the two ministries is comparable to having a woman give birth to a child and hand him/her over to another woman to breastfeed.
“Tourism sells culture. If you are a child of culture and you cannot promote, how do you build culture and the person to promote decides not to promote?
“We started the campaign to separate culture and tourism from other ministries. Unfortunately, some characters in tourism were celebrating when the separate ministries of culture and tourism were created. They are celebrating their doom days. Tourism in Nigeria has two parastatals, culture has eleven parastatals.
“The content you are supposed to build from this eleven, the two tourism parastatals cannot eleven market them.
“It is only in Nigeria that you have so many parastatals. In foreign climes, most of these parastatals are departments. The money we should use in moving around should have been put in one place.
“In Dubai, you don’t have all that. It is one department that takes care of others and there is no competition. In Nigeria, there is so much competition. Everybody wants to be big,” said Runsewe.
Similarly, Chairman of the review committees, Dr Gerald Adewole, said members resolved that tourism and culture should have a sole ministry because both were interwoven.
“The conference recommended that culture and tourism should remain as one ministry both at the federal and state levels to complement each other.
” And also to contribute meaningfully to the diversification efforts of government and the Gross Domestic Products of the nation.”
