Director General of National Council of Arts & Culture (NCAC), Otunba Olusegun Runsewe and states commissioners of arts, culture and tourism have urged the federal government to merge the arts, culture and tourism ministries, as both cannot function independent of the other.
Runsewe and the over 15 commissioners made the call at a conference held in Abuja to review the National Festival of Arts of Culture (NAFEST) for the first time since its establishment in 1970.
He noted that NCAC alongside other culture and tourism agencies had 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 giving birth to a child and handing 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.
