The General Manager, National Theatre, Lagos State, Prof Sunday Ododo, speaks to TOBI AWORINDE on plans for the Federal Government to revamp the national monument and the right to freedom of expression amid the controversial social media bill
you were appointed as the General Manager, National Theatre in August. How did you find out about your appointment?
It was a mix of drama. First, a friend of mine who is a colleague in the University of Maiduguri called and said he had been appointed as the Director General, National Commission for Museums and Monuments. I was so happy for two reasons – he is a colleague with whom I’ve worked so closely on many projects and my wife works with the museum and the fact that my friend was going to be her DG also gave me comfort. I was happy because we could share ideas with him on how to make the place more progressive. Then my wife called and said congratulations. I thought it was for my friend who had been appointed. I said thank you and that I was happy. She said, ‘You already knew and you didn’t tell me?’ I said, ‘I’m just being told that my friend is now your DG.’ She said, ‘No, your name is on the list.’ I said, ‘Wait, I don’t understand.’ At that moment, a friend in the media then called and I asked him, ‘Is it true? How did you find out?’ He said, ‘I will forward the press release from the Presidency to you.’ In truth, I was not anticipating any appointment from anywhere. After that exchange, I got a call from the Ministry of Information and Culture, which was the confirmation.
What is topmost on your agenda as the GM, National Theatre?
Topmost on my agenda is to connect the National Theatre to the strategic priorities of President Muhammadu Buhari for the culture and tourism sector. The topmost of his priorities for this sector is to see how we can diversify, using the culture and tourism sector as a key-earning sector for the Nigerian economy. So, I intend to see how to key the National Theatre to help to build a thriving and sustainable economy for Nigeria and also to enhance social inclusion and reduce poverty. This is topmost on my mind. To achieve this, we have defined a vision. We envision that we are going to mould a National Theatre that will yield optimal commercial value to both the government and the creative industry, especially industry players, while establishing itself at the centre of gravity for Nigeria’s creative and performative endowments.
To this effect, the new vision will be driven with the vehicles of entrepreneurship, being dynamic, and collaboration, because we believe the government cannot do it alone. We have to go into partnerships and collaborations to get many things done. We are going to be diverse in our approach, so that many critical players in the sector can be brought on board and synergised. When we get all of this going, we have to make them sustainable and through our National Theatre, which is the oyster of our culture and arts, we should be able to tell the Nigerian story and, overall, stalemate the creative abilities of our youths, children and women. By this, there should be job creation.
Don’t forget that the National Theatre is a major tourist attraction. So, we want to reposition it, so that tourist value can be more profitable. We want to run workshops targeted at youths to bring out the creativity in them in terms of music, dance and crafts. But our major focus will be in the performing arts.
What are the hurdles in achieving these goals?
Just like any other business intention, it is money. But we cannot put our dreams on hold because of that. That is why we want to do all we want to do through partnerships, corporate sponsorships and endowments. That way, money will not be the main factor, but services that people can bring in.
How do you plan to garner support needed from the creative industry to revive the National Theatre?
I’m actually at a meeting with critical stakeholders. We are planning a festival for December and key representatives of the stakeholders are here with me, so I had to excuse myself for this interview. This is like an introductory parley for us to know one another and see what we can do together. For us, it’s not just to use the National Theatre as an event centre, taking money from people to use the facilities. We want to introduce programmes that can begin to bring critical stakeholders to come home because this is their home. Through such programmes, the best of our arts can be on projection.
My core mandate is to preserve, project and present Nigerian arts and culture, and to run this place as a business entity – profit-yielding. For me, the profit shouldn’t just be for the government. It should also be for the industry players. So, we hope that, as we make progress, we will be able to prize their arts better, so that the Nigerian public will also place the correct value on the talents and their artistry. That way, they also will profit and that will reduce profit; new talents will emerge, find their bearing and grow to become national and international names. The artists that we don’t know now, through our programmes, we will give them platforms to showcase what they can do and that can become a pedestal for them to go to greater heights.
Won’t the COVID-19 pandemic pose a challenge in planning the festival?
It’s actually motivated by all the hardship we have gone through in the past few months. The pandemic kept us at home for many months, though we are coming out of it now with some of the protocols being relaxed. As we were coming out of that, the #EndSARS protests started. So, we think it is time to restore peace. So, it’s a triple ‘P’ for us: pandemic, protest and peace. The theme driving this is to see how all of us can live together peacefully. The protest itself has some strings of ethnic distrust and political misgivings, but I believe coming together as one with strengthened commitment to patriotism and national instincts, we should be able to drive the Nigerian project to be fair to all of us that will serve the Nigerian people better.
To that effect, we say we’re having the first-of-its-kind National Theatre Festival of Peace, to bring out the best in us, showcasing music, dance, drama, film shows, and traditions. We’re also looking at using it also as a prelude of Christmas festivities, to bring in families to come and enjoy themselves, people from all walks of life – private and public political sectors to converge. As for the pandemic protocols, we’re looking at an exterior event. We have the space, so we’re not thinking of packing people into the halls. Different platforms will be created within the vicinity and we have enough space to observe social distancing and enjoy the festival. It’s a mini festival, though, so the success of this will strengthen us to expand the scope for next year.
In the arts, freedom of expression and social commentary is encouraged, but many believe the Federal Government is using the #EndSARS protests as an excuse to promote the controversial social media bill, which allegedly limits freedom of expression. What are your thoughts on this?
I’m talking to you as the GM/CEO of the National Theatre. That is not my beat. If you’re talking to me as a Nigerian, yes, there should be freedom of speech, which is what the #EndSARS (protest) is all about, and the government also responded well, saying, ‘The matters you put on the table, we will attend to.’ And swiftly, Mr President began to attend to all of that. But unfortunately, what was a peaceful and focused peaceful protest was hijacked for whatever reasons. But I think that is behind us now.
Many state governments have set up relevant committees and investigation panels on the issues that are still at stake. I’m sure within the next few months, many of these things will have been well taken care of. It’s unfortunate that lives were lost and properties destroyed. We were complaining that we don’t have enough, we are suffering, and the magnitude of what was destroyed, I think, compounded that sorry situation. So, it doesn’t really make sense. And that is why I believe that the youths that came out peacefully to protest couldn’t have been the same people that went to destroy these huge national facilities. It’s not logical. I just pray that the government, through its security apparatus, will be able to fish out the real culprits. It’s a shame that this had to happen.
Do you encourage performers and artists to use their platforms to speak out on injustices?
As an artist, you have social responsibility. It is not a question of ‘do I support?’ It has always been on. Every artist – drama, music and dance – has been speaking through their art, and that’s history. Any artist that does not respond to social realities of his or her environment can’t last. Music and songs that address our social inequality and injustice endure more. That is why Fela is still so relevant today. Many of the things he sang about, we’re still living with today. William Shakespeare died many centuries ago, but his works are still as relevant as then, because they are based on a better society.
The human condition everywhere is essentially on two platforms – the ‘doing well’ and the ‘not well to do.’ It’s okay to be doing well; it’s not okay for a set of people alone to be doing well. There should be a minimum level of human comfort for everyone. A situation where we become scavengers, going into the dustbin to search for food to eat is not acceptable and this social inequality is not caused by the government, but by us. How many people use their wealth to serve humanity? How many rich people in Nigeria amass their wealth genuinely?
If you deny the common masses access to the commonwealth, then you’re an enemy of the society. Government is an amorphous concept – people run that government. So, are we serving in government faithfully to our conscience? Are we serving in government to the interest of the common man on the street? Those are the questions for governors and administrators at whatever level to answer. We should fear conscience, serve our people and serve them well.
There are some that are pessimistic about the National Theatre being restored to its past glory. What investment should be made by the government?
It is understandable if people are pessimistic because of the road we have passed through. Many efforts in the past to rewrite the story of the National Theatre and all to no attestable success. For that reason, I can only be cautious. With what President Buhari is doing, with the invitation of the Central Bank of Nigeria to come in and radically revamp the National Theatre, so far, so good. The steps are clear and, one movement after the other, the groundwork is taking shape. We have seen enough to trust the process, but it’s also too early to be very emphatic. But I have a lot of confidence that the process will work well and yield results.
Don’t forget that the partnership in this is between the Federal Government via the CBN, Bankers’ Committee and the Lagos State Government. And the motivation is to create jobs for the Nigerian youths. That is why, apart from revamping the National Theatre to its past glory, the Bankers’ Committee has also got approval to create an entertainment village within this vicinity, which will create four creative hubs in fashion, film, music and ICT, to drive job creation and employment, so that poverty will be reduced, wealth will be created and the Nigerian image within the creative industry will also soar. It’s about N27bn for the two (projects). The background work is still going on. It is about to be completed. But that may change the cost value of what they want to do.
Some have expressed concern over the involvement of the CBN with claims that it would take over the National Theatre. What is the role of the apex bank in the renovation of the National Theatre?
It’s a presidential directive and approval to come and fix the National Theatre because, essentially, it’s the entertainment village that came first. The CBN governor, in his informed judgment, said, ‘You can’t have an entertainment village shining in a city where the National Theatre is not functioning well. It should be a total package. It must be revamped, so that they complement each other.’ As far as I know, for now, the National Theatre has not been sold out, as is being peddled. It’s still a national edifice of historical relevance. It’s our national monument.
Does that mean the CBN has no oversight in the operations of the National Theatre?
No, at least for now. I just imagine – this deal was struck in July and I was appointed in August. I assumed office on September 1. If it were so, I don’t think I would have been appointed. That is just the logic I can bring to bear on this. For now, I don’t have any such information and there is no such evidence to that.
Is there a fixed duration for the exercise?
Ideally, the project anticipates completion within two years and COVID-19 slowed things down. I want to believe that as soon as they conclude all the background work and all the necessary approvals are got, the project execution and implementation will commence.
The National Theatre has been involved in some legal battles. One of such is a case from 2012 that resurfaces involving a N467m contract between the National Theatre and some contractors. Why has that case gone on for this long?
The case is sub judice, so it would be wrong for me to make any comment. Let the legal process take its course.
Connectivity headaches as students adjust to virtual learning
Nigeria’s tertiary institutions go slow in a face-to-face classroom model. But the stranded students in this traditional arrangement are frustrated already by a learning model that freezes during emergencies, writes Gbenga Ogundare
AS Nigeria navigates through a devastating pandemic strike and striking lecturers adamant about returning to the classroom, Mojisola Alabi requires no rocket science to realise she will need an extra year to wrap up her Mass Communication programme at the University of Lagos.
“I am supposed to be on industrial training now,’ gripes the 300 Level student, ‘but that will have to wait till next year again because higher institutions are still on strike.”
The budding broadcast journalist isn’t the only one nursing her frustration. Several millions of youths scattered across the nation’s 174 universities, 134 polytechnics and monotechnics, and 220 colleges of education are watching helplessly as their lives continue in a tailspin until the coronavirus strikes ebb and the federal government reaches a compromise with striking lecturers.
Amid the lockdowns and restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 attack, 1.2 billion learners have been shut out of schools across 186 countries, the World Education Forum says. That’s more than 73 percent of the world’s enrolled student population, a figure significant enough to spawn a new world education order.
E-learning now becomes the only opportunity to save the students’ minds from addling. And in Nigeria, majority of tertiary institutions are still struggling to shift to this entirely remote learning plan.
Only Osun State University, a state-owned institution in the southwest, migrated online during the nationwide lockdown when it administered matriculation oaths to its new students on Wednesday, May 13 to kick off academic activities in a virtual space.
But the transition at the University of Osun has merely exposed a deep disparity in the system: a technology and internet access divide Olu Arowosegbe fears will limit the ability of both teachers and students to connect seamlessly with one another in a virtual classroom.
“One is the problem of internet access in terms of economic cost,’ argued the Law Lecturer.
“Two is the problem of internet connectivity and network issues,’ worried Arowosegbe.
Move over the normal
When it’s all over, certainly, things will not remain as they were. It never is since SARS hit the world in 2003; e-commerce changed life as it was before the epidemic. Even now, sustaining learning in bad times will become a hot potato in the education sector across the world. And e-learning, as the game changer, will get more attention – especially at the tertiary level.
Professor Olugbemiro Jegede, Nigeria’s foremost expert on open and distance learning, foresees two things resulting from this pandemic that hit Nigeria’s education.
“First, the formal face-to-face teaching and learning is changing and giving way to ODeL as the mainstream teaching and learning vehicle,” the pioneer vice chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) said recently.
“Second, the way is being paved for the eventual merger of the face-to-face instruction and ODeL instruction. Very soon, no one will know the difference.”
The change Jegede sees coming soon in Nigeria has begun elsewhere, though as some sort of innovation—not a fail-proof measure during disruption.
In the US, for instance, the rate of e-learning (or Open and Distance e-Learning, (ODeL) adoption, in peace time, has been increasing by 20 percent annually. It’s declining in the UK by 5 percent; Canada’s expanding by 10 percent to 15 percent. Other developed countries are moving at appreciable rates, too.
In Nigeria, there’s no figure yet. But NOUN, a federal university, is the only institution practising ODeL. And it has witnessed more than 50 percent annual adoption rate for years after its new take-off in 2004. Others—the University of Benin, the University of Ibadan, the Obafemi Awolowo University, the University of Lagos, and the University of Abuja—are also fiddling with distance learning, which they try to pass off as e-learning.
What these other institutions adopt is no ODeL; otherwise they will still be running now. Their model, whatever it is, has offered them no resilience in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. So the regulator had to step in.
“As part of the measures to contain and prevent the spread of the coronavirus throughout the country, approval was granted for the closure of all schools,” the Nigerian University Commission announced in a March 20 circular.
Later, Education Minister Adamu Adamu teleconferenced with VCs, rectors, and provosts, urging them to switch online. It was a tall order.
Watch it, glitches ahead
“I do not see any prospect in an immediate compliance with the directive of the minister,” said a former Caleb University VC, Prof. Ayodeji Olukoju. “It’s not going to be feasible in the short run.”
Olukoju isn’t exactly bluffing. Nigeria is the 31st nation with the worst internet speed, according to Cable Magazine.
And yet, these institutions, for one, will require a Learning Management System (LMS) that enables them deliver and track educational contents in virtual space.
It also comes with a huge pricing, in addition to tranches of implementation expenses such as professional consultancy, hardware installation, software customisation, data migration and integration with other hosts of software, all of which could grind academic activities to a collapse in the event of poor internet connection.
But this problem, inability to adapt, is, however, not peculiar to Nigeria.
In the wake of the pandemic in the US, Harvard University, Columbia University, Princeton University and others switched to online classes, as they shuttered the campuses. It was an attempt, really. And it was fraught with challenges—for both students and school authorities.
“The difficulty is faculty who don’t have experience in teaching online, they have to shift quickly, as well as translate class materials online,” Al Jazeera quoted a don in Georgetown University as saying in March. “Not all students will have access to sufficient technology,” he said.
“If, at home, they don’t have good broadband, the right hardware, this could be a problem that we have to scramble to fix.”
It was also a whole lot of scrambling in the UK. According to Study EU, many universities across the country have limited or completely suspended face-to-face teaching.
Clearly, not many nations, developed or developing, have any plan for e-learning as back-up for when things go bang in traditional education. For many, online education is only an alternative, a second chance, in the bi-modal system of learning, for those who can’t access education in brick-and-mortar institutions. But there is a difference. As vulnerable as its application seems now to the viral pandemic, online education, in the developed world, has got a strong foothold. Post-COVID, these countries will have a solid launchpad to adapt online learning for a smooth run during emergencies in the future.
That change, to hazard a guess, begins in a year’s time. Not in Nigeria, though. Whatever gives in Nigeria, it won’t start at the same point as the US, the UK, and others.
As an alternative, for one, online education has not caught on in Nigeria. It doesn’t matter that a few universities have satellite campuses in some states, where a lot of chalking and talking takes place, or that they host an online portal for registration.
It’s more than that actually. Other than NOUN, none of the other ivory towers is faithfully implementing what ODeL experts and policy makers prescribe as models: the industrial model, where the process gets simplified and minimum supervision becomes the overriding goal; the mass-media model, where teaching and learning take place on radio and television; and the small-scale model which largely depends on the internet.
However, considering its economies of scale, reach, and access, the small-scale model appears the one to beat.
And that’s the model open universities across the world deploy, in peace time and otherwise. NOUN’s uninterrupted run, for instance, since COVID-19 hit, speaks volumes about the model. “NOUN as it stands today is the only university in Nigeria which academic calendar do not suffer any form of dislocation occasioned by the closure of all schools in country,” said Ambrose Bernard Gowong, communications officer, ACETEL, Abuja. The Africa Centre of Excellence on Technology Enhanced Learning is the World Bank-sponsored Education Management System that runs NOUN.
Other open universities weathering the storm of the pandemic, like the UK Open University, too, have switched online, from face-to-face learning, for the remaining part of the session in 2020.
For this model of education management system to be effective, two things are important: connectivity and network. And the internet provides both of them. Where it works, again in most open and air universities, the plusses are staggering.
As of 2018, NOUN, with 11 faculties, was gunning for 500,000 enrolled students in its 78 study centres across the six geo-political zones. It’s projecting one million by 2024.
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in India, founded in 1987, boasts more than 4 million students. It has 21 schools of studies, 67 regional centres, 2,667 learner support centres, and 29 overseas partner institutions. Its programmes add up to 228 certificate, diploma, degree, postgraduate and doctoral programmes. All of these are managed by 810 faculty members, 33,212 academic counsellors from various institutions.
Are the cost of running all of these not too heavy for the students and management?
In both NOUN and IGNOU, and even in all open universities, the fees are affordable. When the student population rose from 10,000 to 100,000 in the world’s largest varsity, fees also fell from 6,251 rupees to 1,370 rupees, according to a UNESCO study on e-learning in developing countries.
NOUN’s freshmen paid N36,000 in 2018, and its returning students paid about 50 percent of that.
It then becomes curious why NOUN, with its ODeL schema, remains resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic when top-notchers like the UI, UNILAG, and other varsities lie prostrate in Nigeria.
Education technology experts like Janet Adeogun see a number of reasons. And the most prominent one, Adeogun explained, “is connectivity—the difference in its deployment.”
As at July 2019, Cable Magazine ranked the country’s internet download speed at 176th of 207 countries measured globally– 24 places down from its 152nd position in 2018, and 81 places from its 95th position in the 2017 rankings.
According to the report, Nigeria has an average download speed of 1.56Mbps–a dip from 1.86Mbps recorded in 2018. Situating the figures in context, it means then that it will take more than seven hours to download a five-gigabyte HD file on the average.
This is several hours behind the fastest broadband speed 85.2Mbps of Taiwan, where it takes just eight minutes to download the same file.
It is one fundamental problem. There are about 50 companies in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector. Apart from MainOne, the first undersea fibre optic cable provider in Africa, and a handful of others who are into broadband infrastructure provision, most of the industry players largely provide telephone services with their infrastructure, and, on the side, internet connection.
Yet, for now, all they can provide in terms of connectivity and its quality is not enough for the millions of users in Nigeria. Even with the groundwork of the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Satellite Cable that links Africa to Asia and Europe, the gap remains wide, which is an opportunity for the business-savvy.
“There is a shortage of transmission and fibre links in Africa and this is certainly a very big growth area,” Coleago Consulting’s chief executive Stefan Zehle told the BBC in February.
“Mobile infrastructure requires a lot of fixed connectivity. The base stations and networks need to be connected to data centres and globally to the internet.”
As millions of businesses and hundreds of institutions now innovate using the internet to give education, especially the ODeL, a priority it deserves will require a lot of thinking. The Nigerian government and policy makers in education and telecommunications will have to take that responsibility. And part of the policymaking must include investment in ODeL—not just for NOUN alone.
“Government must [also] pay additional and effective attention, at the national level, to the management, coordination, quality assurance and daily practical offerings of ODeL,” said Jegede.
By structure, experts mean the coordinating body, the pedagogical body (which designs material), the technical support body, and the administrative support—all dedicated to ODeL. Without these, the system wobbles and gets beat by disruptions.
And for Nigeria, there will be no stability—for as long as the nation resorts to the hit-or-miss approach in managing its tertiary education during emergencies.
The problem will only double—as it has now. Of the four million kids heading out of secondary schools in Nigeria annually, about two million of them will be jostling for admission into the nation’s 174 universities, 134 polytechnics and monotechnics, and 220 colleges of education, according to figures by the World Educations News and Reviews. Of these, only 25 percent will be admitted.
There’s not enough room
Carrying capacity has always been a problem in Nigeria’s tertiary education that thrives on face-to-face learning alone. Now COVID-19 and a worsening industrial action have compounded it with a dislocation of the academic calendar.
No sudden switch in the middle of the strikes will do the trick. Post-COVID is just about the best time to plan for the move to the virtual model.
Accidents and emergencies will still happen again.
*This story is done with the support of BudgIT and the Civic Hive Media Fellowship.