My mission at CBAAC CBAAC stands for Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation. It is a parastatal under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It was established in 1978 immediately after FESTAC '77. Its establishment was legitimized and backed up by Decree 69 of 1979. The decree was signed and promulgated by General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was the Military Head of State.

The main reason for establishing CBAAC was as, to ensure that the art works, artifacts, 'works of culture mementoes of our cultural heritage which were displayed at FESTAC '77 were not lost. The decision was taken by the 59 countries present at FESTAC, to take custody and preserve those cultural materials.

Also, CBAAC was established to preserve, restore and keep the cultural heritages that were displayed at FESTAC. I can tell you that as of today, all the works of art, including recorded tapes of every event that took place during the festival, are in our custody. Having said that we were given a specific mandate to discharge that mandate not just promoting interest in African civilisation but also promotion and understanding of African cultural civilisation not just in Nigeria but beyond the shores of the land.

In other words, CBAAC has the mandate to propagate, restore and sensitise people to the significant aspects of African culture and civilisation. Beyond this, CBAAC has the mandate to reach out to blacks and African people in the diasporas, to forge an alliance for the purpose of promoting the culture and civilisation of Africa .

To do this, CBAAC has embarked on organizing symposia, seminars, conferences. and we have published not less than 31 books on these topics. Among those are the 10 volume publication of the colloquium that came out of the festival entitled: The Arts and Civilisation of Black People. We still have in our custody other publications we have done. You may ask what relevance is this. The relevance is that a people without a culture are like a tree without root. And if a man does not understand his root, he does not understand himself.

Africans have been marginalized historically, politically and economically largely because they have not been connected with the African culture and civilisation. For so many years we have also marginalised ourselves relegating our culture to the background, elevating and identifying with 'other people's culture. When Samuel Hutilton wrote his paper now a book: The Clash of Civilisation, where he prophesised that major conflict in the world would revolve around civilization, African civilisation was not included in those civilisations. We believe that one of the reasons why Africa is technologically and scientific backward today is that we have not considered our culture.

My mission in CBAAC is to redefine culture and reconstitute it in a way that is not going to be restricted to what I call antiquity want to lift culture beyond the realm of antiquity,. And I want to define culture to include the totality and the way of life, not just of Nigerians but Africans ­And that would mean, the new definition of culture would include thoughts and thinking processes, our technology, our knowledge, our philosophy of life because history has shown that those countries that have made it today, are those that have identified and celebrated their culture.

Therefore, we intend to ensure and elevate the Nigerian and African culture to a status in which we are going to make it inclusive to our indigenous languages and technology. I am convinced that many of our languages are at the verge of extinction, because we no longer speak them. Our children no longer speak them. And part of the reason we are backward is because our children could no longer think in our languages; they think in other people's languages, they behave like them.

No matter how you try to speak the Whiteman's language, you cannot out smart him. That's the problem we have been having with our children ,it defines their world views and their moral values. It defines their role models, their tastes and preferences.

But now, CBAAC is embarking on a mission of popularising African culture not only through symposia and lectures, but through other means of organizing programmes for the youths, to re-educate, re­orientate them about our own cultural values. We are going to do this through debate and competitions, with our local

artistes. We would encourage them to bring up programme like drama sketches about the significance of speaking our indigenous languages. We would give recognition to our cultural icons for those who are dead and living, so that we can tell our people what we have been doing.

Of course, in a bid to promote African culture and civilisation, CBAAC has organised international conferences and seminars. By November this year, we are organizing another international conference in Trinidad and Tobago , where there is going to be the participation of black people in Africa and the Diaspora. The theme of that conference is: Advancing and instituting research in the interest of Africa and the Africans in diaspora.

We are going to deliberate on our culture, philosophy of life, traditional governance system, those we can benefit from and we are also going to talk about indigenous village and technology. In a nutshell, these are some of the ideas put together by a team in CBAAC and we want to put them forward. We believe strongly that there is a need for cultural re­orientation.

We have to focus on the youths The media has a role to play. We ask for your corporation, so that together we could join hands to take our culture to a level where it could be the envy not only of other Africans but the rest of the world.

Does CBAAC enjoy constitutional backing and recognition by the law?

It is true that CBAAC has not been given the recognition it deserves. Out of the parastatals, it is only CBAAC that has Pan-African mandate, it is not global. I can assure, you that we have legal backing. The only thing we do not have for now is financial backing. That is why we are begging corporate bodies to sponsor our programmes. Aside this, we hope to market our books which we have not done before. We are going to have some of the events of FEST AC '77 on tape. They are still there and some of our children would never have the opportunity of knowing some of the cultures showcased then.

How do you intend to revive our cultural values-languages, indigenous technology etc.

We do not pretend that we have the solution to all our problems. We will encourage proposals on how to develop our indigenous technology. The other way is to sensitise our people to the fact that the way we have been operating before may not continue. That is the beginning of a process.

The moment we are conscious of a problem that is the beginning of the end. Those things that do not propagate our culture will be focused. We will let them know that culture is a thing of pride. We hope to 'hook up with the Ministry of Culture on this. We are ready to provide intellectual back up, even with other bodies.

What is the way forward on the conflict between modernism and traditional values?

My intension is not to dabble into what Christianity or Islam says about our culture. My mission is to look into those aspects of culture that are going to help us as a people to improve on our morality, on our value system, whether you are a Moslem or a Christian. I do not know any one who has been accused of corruption in this country who did not swear an oath with the Koran or the Bible. So, we are going to look into those aspects that the Christian or the Moslem cannot object to.

Phase one is to preach against nudity or promiscuity. We are going to focus on culture that incorporates our own mechanism. We (Africans) had the mechanism we have been using before the advent of the Whiteman. For instance, people are now into herbal medicines for remedy. This is an area people never went into before. And people are now providing them in capsules - what is known as Nigerian African traditional medicine. I think this is what we should be doing. Of course, this does not run counter to the Christian or Moslem values.

Our objective is for us to have a better and improved Nigeria , morally, until the nation is transformed.

If we look at the youth of today, their role' model are people who dress halfway, revealing sensitive parts of their body. We must change that perspective. This is why we intend to immortalize our traditional icon.

CBAAC has a big project called Hall of Fame. We are going to have a hall of fame for blacks and African people who have made their marks on the world stage. We are going to build it into a national and African status.

This is a project that the government and private bodies need to support. We need money to promote research into those areas of our culture to help our people.

How do you intend to translate the seminars and conferences to affect the com­mon man on the streets?

We cannot make the necessary impact if we do not link up with the ordinary people. And that is not all, I have talked about our outreach programme, children programmes - we are not going to restrict it to children in elite schools: Again I mentioned that we will link up with our local artistes, to draw up drama sketches on TV and radio stations on those aspects of our culture, we want to promote. There is no home today that does not have access to television or radio If 'we succeed in refurbishing our offices at the centre, to give it a face lift, then we can advertise it to the public that we have -structures that they can .come to us for business.

Although we are financially constrained, we would get over it. The gate will be open to the public. Every week, people can come to our centre, pay to watch the works of art on display not because we are out to make money but to appreciate the works.