Ake festival: When Osinbajo celebrated creativity

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said that those into arts are probably the only occupational group that still have reputation left in our world today, and this is simply because they do not really allow anyone to put them in a box, as they can always escape, and can become anything they like at any time.

The vice president said this while delivering his goodwill message on the second day of the 2018 Ake Arts and Book Festival,with the theme “Fantastical Futures,” in Lagos.

“Why do we, in today’s world, dare to hope for a future so fantastic that it can be described as fantastical?” he asked.The reason, he responded, was that creatives, like the organisers of Ake Festival, have not allowed their visions to be beclouded with the cataract of discouragement that so easily besets us.

According to him, there are two of versions of these cataracts. “The first is the disdain for introspection, which has come over time, like capacity for deep thought and making that the basis for planning and action.”

Armed with the poems of Niyi Osundare “Eating tomorrow’s yam” and Tanure Ojaide “No longer our country,” Osinbajo argued that it is the disdain for introspection that causes our elites to spend or emblaze all the cash and opportunities of the present, and making the burden of a leaner future to pay for our corruption and carelessness.

“And this leads me to the second cataract that blurs our vision, and that is the failure to recognise the responsibilities of individual, especially the gifted individual,” he said, stressing that societies are built by men and women, not spirits.

“Does the artist have a responsibility to society beyond that of the ordinary citizen? Is there a civic task payable on talent? Does a fact of your genius place upon you a moral burden to attempt to use the powerful voice of your art to fight for the soul of the land? Can you afford to be neutral? Can you be politically neutral?” these, among other questions, he asked.

About whether there are government policies for creatives, Osinbajo answered, “Earlier this year, the government established a technology and creativity sector working group, a policy committee of federal government ministers and heads of agencies with creatives, techs and entertainment business owners. The group meets to work on policy including rules and regulations regularly.

So, we do have now a policy group that takes into account the sort of views that creative may want, especially in formulating policies and that is so for persons in technology as well. So, I think there is plenty of room for expression, especially the way we want to see policy shaped that could affect creatives and those in involved technology.”

The festival’s founder/director, Lola Shoneyin, in her welcome address, noted that since the inception of the festival in 2013, its venue had always been Abeokuta, but this year’s edition was located in Ikeja, Lagos.

“It was always my aim to build a festival that will transcend physical restrictions, a festival that will move around and plant itself in different spaces and still maintain that familiar essence, that energy many others have come to known,” she said.

“This year, at Ake Festival, many of our conversations will focus on questions, which we know, will generate discussions that will go on long after we have return to our homes,” she added. “Sometimes, when leaders and politicians fail us, who else do we rely on then the creatives who are almost always committed to fairness, to justice, and to greater good for all.”

This year edition of the festival had 112 authors, poets, filmmakers, artists, dancers, musicians and thinkers who came from Nigeria, Ghana, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Uganda, South Africa, Egypt, Jamaica, the US, the UK, among others.