Why Nigerians must encourage creative industry, promote core values – Lai Mohammed

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has urged parents, schools and other stakeholders to inculcate in children societal core values which made the difference between a brute and decent man.

Mr Mohammed made the call at the cast of “Death and the King’s Horseman”, produced by the Founder, Terra Kulture, Bolanle Austen-Peters, on Monday in Lagos.

“Death and the King’s Horseman”, a play by Wole Soyinka, is based on a real incident that took place in Nigeria during the colonial era.

“We probably cannot go back living in caves; we know what technology has done; we know the value of modern medicine, but we must take it together with our core values. It is those core values that are very important.

“It is those core values that will make the difference between a brute and decent man.

“That explains why you find that when we talk about rape, incest, on all kinds of crime, it is even more prevalent in the Western world, because, here, there are certain values that are important to us that we must not let go.

“You must bring up your children every time to understand that there are values which they must keep,” he said.
He urged organisations and individuals to support the creative industry through donations in order to create job opportunities.

According to him, apart from the agriculture industry, the creative industry employs the largest number of people, especially the young and women.

“You can imagine when they were introducing the cast and the crew and staff, imagine how many people earn their livelihoods from Austen-Peters productions.

“That is why we must continue to encourage creative industry, the arts the film industry, music industry, fashion, makeup, whatever makes up the craziness because after agriculture today, it employs the largest number of people and especially the young and women.

“So, we need to support through donations, sponsorships because this production would not have been possible without the sponsors,” Mr Mohammed said.

Speaking, Ms Austen-Peters said that casting the play and many other African stories helps to tell stories that are relevant to the society and people could learn from.

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She said: “It is nice to have plays or movies that are for fun, but at the same time, we must be able to use the arts as a great driving force for change in our society.

“We tell meaningful stories, especially folklore; we have done “Olurombi”, “Moremi”; we did a story on Fela and his wives.

“The intention is that we continually bring to the fore stories that our forefathers created and taught their children values from and that is what we are trying to do with this type of story.”

(NAN)