CORA Art Stampede 2025: ‘Scrap Ministry of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy, set up endowment fund, board instead’
* ‘Most of these funds are not actually designed to help artists thrive; they’re exploitative’
By Godwin Okondo
“SO, my opinion is this; it may be ill-informed or inadequate, but it’s my opinion. I think we should scrap the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy. We should scrap it and retire those we can retire and fire those we can fire and just clean the place. Let me give you an instance; if you think of the salaries that go to these individuals, from the minister down to the last man, think of the money being spent on salaries and benefits, the maintenance of their offices and entitlements; take all of that money and put it together in a fund or endowment; take money allocated to NAFEST every year, put it in the same endowment. Take the money spent on the minister’s cars, entourage and all that and add all of that together in an endowment and then wait, and let us continue to struggle for the next five years, as we have been doing before…
“And then in five years, go back to that fund and find out how much it has yielded and begin to disburse that money to artists, to cultural workers. Let’s stop the politics and call a spade a spade. We really don’t need the culture ministry.”
Those were some of the radical views of the University of Illinois professor of Theatre Studies, US, Segun Ojewuyi, as he spoke on the theme ‘The Creative Economy in the Renewed Hope Era’ alongside investigative journalist, Lady Ejiro Umukoro of Lightray! Media, a former Federal Director of Culture, Mr. Babajide Ajibola, writer and culture journalist, Anote Ajeluorou and panel moderation from UK-based theatre-maker, Dr. Lukman Sanusi at this year’s CORA Arts Stampede at Freedom Park, Lagos.
CORA Secretary General, Mr. Toyin Akinosho had set the stage for the conversation when he reeled out some of the funding facilities the Federal Government has supposedly provided for the creative sector. From Investment in Digital and Creative and Creative Enterprise Programme (iDICE) to Creative Economy Development Fund (CEDC), N5 billion Creative Fund Loan managed by Providus Bank Ltd, and a few others from which government expects to generate over N100 billion annually, yet the culture sector reels from lack of support and absence of government.
The overriding questions therefore are: do these funding instruments reach targeted creatives to help them in their work? How can creatives access these funding facilities and how easy is the paper work process? What measurable impact are they expected to make or have been making in the culture sector? However, while these funding initiatives appear laudable, with some creatives reportedly accessing them, there is still so much funding gap in the culture sector. In fact, the funding gap is so huge that many simply dismiss government as ‘an absentee father during Christmas’. In other words, Nigerian creatives make culture in the belief that government does not exist. This was the backdrop on which CORA Art Stampede was held last Sunday, November 16, 2025 to bring the 27th edition of the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) to a resounding close after seven days of intense panel conversations, children’s Green Festival, live painting and much more.
Prof. Segun Ojewuyi and Lady Ejiro Umukoro PHOTOS: TOJ TAIWO
“We hear of these big funds all the time, but we don’t know where they go,” Ojewuyi continued his unrelenting criticism of government’s continuing absence in the culture sector with its cosmetics approach that fail to address concerns of artists and culture workers. “There are grants, fellowships and loans. What are these funds for? Are they grants, loans or fellowships? Most of them are loans; that’s not what we really want or need at this time. The corporate and bank people have suddenly found out that there’s something really growing in the arts and culture sector and that there’s an opportunity to make some money, and they’re establishing these loans and we’re excited, that ‘oh, yeah we need to apply’. But it’s all a joke, because it’s going into the same pockets. Some of us are really smart and have studied these things and found out that they’re questionable. We really have to question vigorously the ‘Creative Economy’ term in the Ministry of Arts and Culture. What does it really mean for us?
“For example, we have the British Council and the American Endowment for the Arts; those (two countries) don’t have a ministry of culture. They don’t have a secretary of culture in America or Britain; they don’t have that, but the lives of artists are hugely impacted in those countries. Constitute a board that is rotational that will manage and disburse this fund, so no one sits there permanently. For example, what killed the National Troupe of Nigeria? As far as I’m concerned, it is dead. It was turned from a private enterprise into a civil service entity. So an actor or a dancer gets into the troupe and waits for retirement, whereas the actor or dancer constantly needs to recycle and produce and perform. It should be like players in a football team; if you’re not playing your wing well they will replace you with a new talent, because you’re on contract; that’s how you bring vibrancy to the system. In all these, it’s only the (independent) artist who gets things really happen.”
However, a former Federal Director of Culture, Mr. Babajide Ajibola, who joined the session virtually like many others, stoutly disagreed with Prof. Ojewusi’s radical view, arguing that in America, it was the states that created the federal government whereas in Nigeria, it’s the federal government that created the states, noting that it’s why America does not have a secretary or ministry of culture like Nigeria. Mr. Ajibola said the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy ought to have a policy on culture but this has consistently been scuttled by successive ministers, alleging that Mr. Lai Mohammed sabotaged the last effort he and one Mrs. Grace Gekpe (also retired) made by passing to his desk a reworked national culture policy for his action that never happened before he retired from service.
“Till now the culture policy and endowment funds are lying there in limbo at the minister’s desk,” Ajibola charged. “Nigeria has signed about six UNESCO Conventions on Culture, but they have not been domesticated in the National Assembly. And nobody is pressurising the National Assembly to work on domesticating them. The 1954 UNESCO Convention is about War and Culture. As at now, if they bombed the National Theatre, there will be no repercussion, because Nigeria does not have a law on it. The 1954 convention says you cannot attack palaces, shrines, national monuments and museums, but these are not in our laws today.”
Ajibola also argued that artist have failed to act as pressure groups like medical doctors or lecturers for their rights to force governments to act in certain directions in their favour for their demands, suggesting that artists were not pushing enough to make government act in areas they want.
The CEO of LightRay! Media, Umukoro couldn’t agree more with Ojewuyi, and narrated her personal experience when she tried to secure an advertised loan being curated by an appointee-agent of government. She informed creatives in the Kongi Hall at Freedom Park, Lagos that her efforts turned out the most fruitless endeavour ever, as the website took forever to open and when it did, the requirements were insane, with the use of IP as collateral being one of them, a proposition she said was evil in intent. She, however, advised fellow creatives to understand and apply corporate governance practice in their work, so they could take advantage of whatever funding help was on offer in their sector.
“Whether we like it or not, the creative industry is a business, and if we don’t understand how business models work, how to make business plans, if you don’t have accountants who understand the process of how to write proposals and things like that, we will just moving round in circles.”
Lady Ejiro Umukoro (left); moderator, Dr. Lukman Sanusi and Anote Ajeluorou
WHILE the use of IP as collateral is of grave concern, Ajeluorou said young creatives just coming into the scene would be hard put to provide any IP and so be shut out of any funding opportunities that demand such collateral. He also said politicising culture has been the bane of the sector as government’s pronouncements have always proven to be empty, amount to nothing over the years. He recalled President Bola Tinubu promising an endowment fund at the recent opening of the revamped National Theatre in Lagos, and wondered what has become of such lofty pronouncement almost two months after. Neither the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy nor the presidency has come up with interpretation of that pronouncement nor implementation plan for Mr. President’s proposed endowment fund for the arts that is contained in the abandoned in the 1988 National Culture Policy.
Ajeluorou gave the instance of a Brazilian who attended a festival in Ghana last year and lamented the absence of African governments in funding interventions in the culture-making process, saying Brazil has a constitutionally guaranteed sponsorship model Africa could copy to help creatives excel, with governments at federal, local and corporate bodies constitutionally mandated to sponsor culture projects.
Before making his radical suggestion of scrapping the culture ministry, Ojewuyi had given a caveat about his proposition, saying, “My response would disappoint, enrage, and challenge,” warning that his views would likely not be well embraced. He said Nigeria and Nigerians didn’t have to look to America for models, but should use “our knowledge to come up with policies.” Policies are not Nigeria’s problems, he said, but implementation of such policies was usually where things go wrong.
“I think I have stayed in this field long enough to know a few things about the history and the inclination of the people who run the culture ministry. Let’s face it. What does a ministry of culture or whatever name it’s called do? What do they do? What has it done for us that is instructive and positive? Every year they come up with this thing called National Arts Festival (NAFEST), to use it as one example. Who here has really benefited from NAFEST, not just financially, but structurally? Has that advanced the art in this country? Rather, it has been used as a platform for government’s officials to award contracts and put money in their pockets. That’s why they have maintained it for so long. Why is the culture policy not functioning? If you have a policy, it’s an expression of intention by a government to do something. The government then hands it over to its officials to make it happen. That’s always where the policies have ended; they just die on the tables of the civil servants every time.”
Umukoro projected the impunity that characterises Nigeria’s national life as a disincentive for the funding of culture as laws enacted are not implemented, because such officials were far removed from the lived reality of Nigerian artists since they feel smug and secure in their jobs.
According to her, “The nature of the persons given the responsibilities to effect, monitor, evaluate and come back with feedback mechanism are the problem. All the funding given so far, who has come back to say these are the beneficiaries, these are the projects executed, these are the impacts made by these projects vis-a-vis the solutions to particular problems or improve the revenues of a given state. We don’t have that data. Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) does not have that data. So, transparency is part of our problem, and the rule of law demands that there should be transparency and people should be accountable. Most of these funds are not actually designed to help artists thrive. They’re exploitative; they want to collect from you that have nothing.”
Ojewuyi pointed at artists who go into government, as the real problem of the culture sector since they get sucked into the bureaucracy and mediocrity that pervade government’s ministries.
“Those so-called colleagues of ours who got into the civil service became the clogs in the progress of the arts,” the theatre director said. “Let’s face it. They all sit down and are looking for retirement. What did Mr. Ajibola say about artists not being pressure groups? It’s the responsibility of government, in the first place, to execute its own policies and should not be waiting for artists to be a pressure group that they then treat like idiots. The artists are constantly creating works; there’s Lagos Book and Art Festival 2025 going on here and there’s Lagos International Theatre Festival going on at MUSON Centre and there is Museum of Yoruba History down the road. All of these things are efforts by artists, and we continue to challenge ourselves to do better, and then someone says mount pressure? What sort of pressure is that? Noise-making? By the work we produce, we’re mounting enough pressure. Once our artists get into the culture ministry, they become something else. So scrap that ministry and let’s start the work of rebuilding the sector.”
Ajeluorou also gave the telling instance of how government’s inconsistency thwarts the works of creatives and sabotage a nation’s aspirations in certain directions that requires urgent help.
“A new literature prize just came to the country and some African countries, but what has emerged is Nigeria’s government’s policy trumping common sense,” he said. “The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) just started operations in Nigeria and came with its EBRD Literature Prize for translation from indigenous languages to English. The prize is worth €20,000. But the Minister of Education Mr. Tunji Alausa recently announced the cancellation of the teaching of Nigeria’s indigenous languages in schools, because according to him, it was allegedly why there was mass failure in WAEC, NECO and JAMB exams this year. This is an unscientific and unverifiable claim by the minister, by the way. So in years to come, not many Nigerians will be literate in Nigeria’s many mother tongues and be able to read or write in them to stand a chance of winning this prize. That’s how policy chaos, a typical Nigerian factor, undermines development of culture and heritage. Only in 2022 was this same language policy restored after Prof. Babs Fafunwa’s scholarly efforts way back in 1986.”
AND to make matters worse, Mr. Ajibola made a submission that further reinforced the dissonance between the culture ministry and Nigerian creatives. He stated that artists do not understand how the ministry’s governance structure works or operates but would rather apportion blames and criticise it. He then blamed Ibrahim Babangida’s regime for making ministers ministry’s accounting officers rather than permanent secretaries, a development he said disrupted the smooth running of ministries. He added that by the time this ill-conceived policy would be revised after it was discovered to be a bad precedent, so much damage had been done. He also argued that civil servants have limitations in how much they could push for independent operatives in the various sectors if the ministers, political appointees, are not favourably disposed to their ideas.
But Mr. Ajibola’s submission of lack of understanding of how the ministry works among artists further incensed Prof. Ojewuyi and gave him amunnition to nail the ministry in its failure to serve the interest of artists, saying, “Ajibola just gave us reasons why the ministry should be scrapped. He said we do not know or understand the governance structure in the ministry, but we know we’re in a democracy; we know we voted in persons to run our governments. How can someone who was in government tell us we do not know how it works or should work for us? It felt like an insult to say that artists do not understand the ministry’s governance structure. That’s not true. Dr. Ogaga Ifowodo here is a lawyer and artist; we have so many people like that. For someone to even say something like that is really disturbing, and that was not an accident. When you get into an institution, you begin to imbibe the culture of that institution, and at some point you begin to believe that these thoughts are your original thoughts and the only way things can be done.
“That’s the orientation, the culture of governance ‘inside’ the ministry; we are talking about ‘outside’ the ministry. I’m not saying scrapping the ministry is the most reasonable idea that one can proffer, but I’m saying let’s try it and see the result. We’ve been doing the same thing every day and expecting different result. How’s that even possible? Something is wrong; it (the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy) has not worked. Let’s scrap it; let’s all die; we’re already dying, anyway. Those who survive will come up with a new structure. It’s useless; the ministry is useless.”
Indeed, other creatives like Mr. Mahmoud Balogun, Mr. Eriata Oribhabor, Dr. Ifowodo, Mr. Adeniyi Kunu, Ayo Ganiu, made inputs before the session was brought to an end. It was soon followed by the unveiling of LABAF 2026 theme: ‘The Make-Over Starts, Now’ by Mr. Akinosho.
