By Frank Meke
There’s a game of absolutism of power in our culture and tourism ministry, and our minister, Barrister? Hannatu Musa Musawa is the game master. We won’t bore you with her quest to absolutely and completely turn the ministry to her farm. The pretty lady from Katsina spares no rod to brow beat any opposition to her rulership and militarisation of the ministry, which historically is older than her.
Indeed, her miserable quest to extinguish and blot out the institutional memory of the ministry, which she had described on the assumption of office almost two years ago as a ground zero affair, having no memory, a new project from the scratch, is telling and evidential to her quest to farm our sector as her backyard Garden of Eden
Despite critical institutional memories and structures known to industry operators, the federal government and even the management of agencies focal and related to the ministry, madam born to rule like Hitler would prefer to adjudicate with iron hands and not lead with wisdom as one under authority, and expected under a democratic process.
Madam Minister is the maximum ruler of the ministry with over thirteen agencies, and she probates and reprobates with absolute grit and unapologetic brashness. Hannatu Musa Musawa is not only an accomplished propagandist but also thrives on a theatrical presentation of moonlight stories, poorly scripted along poetic lines, confusing and confounding, dipped in mysterious mirage. Fact check her delivery credentials, there are absolutely nothing to show for her appointment as Minister of Culture and Tourism and Creative economy other than just her pretty face. That’s all!
Honestly, I don’t know why it should again be a subject public discourse that Hannatu Musa Musawa hugs endless controversies or that she is the most senior failed minister in this administration! It is crazy to continue to chant her poor leadership drive, which even her friends and associates are tired of acting the script as hired choristers and band leaders.
Like despotic leaders deaf to public uproar and disenchantments, Hannatu is long gone from the reality of her operational failings in the ministry and chooses to employ willing book reviewers to remind us that she is the best mistake that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu made in the past two years.
About two weeks ago, precisely March 31st, Hannatu announced to us that she had just acquired another accomplished storyteller as Director of Press in the Ministry. The guy, one nice fellow that we don’t actually know or have heard about since madam minister came to the sector, in a very lengthy piece published on page 19 of the SUN of 31st March, took us back to the propagandist lines we had long been praying to forget.
Honestly, I wonder why a director of press of a critical ministry where national cultural tourism and creative economic history and policies should be protected and husbanded would deliberately come to public space to repeat worn out lies and cheap rationalisation of a non existence cultural tourism projects deliveries,
profiling same and crediting Hannatu?
If the director of press has lost his memory, we on this side of the divide, kept records of everything Hannatu had said, wished, imagined, and chanted about since her coming to rewrite the history of our cultural tourism narratives.
Now that brings me again appeal to the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and possibly to the Head of Service of the Federation to please give us a Permanent Secretary.
Twice in recent times, permanent secretaries had been deployed to various ministries to help to administratively guide and power government policies but non sadly were sent to keep our administrative and institutional memories alive in the ministry of culture and tourism.
Truth be told, Madam Head of Service of Federation has been struggling to meet our our expectations of a truly recalibrated and functional civil service, what however beats me is her grave silence over the issues of deployment of a substantive permanent secretary six good months after the former permanent secretary existed the ministry on account on retirement policy.
Trust our minister, the gap gave her an unending opportunities to deploy divide and rule tactics, fully exploiting the ambitions of the ministry directors who wished to step into the vacant position on acting capacity to process a total absolute hold on both budget expenditure and procurement deliveries.
The clever quest to either influence or turn a blind eyes to pushing for a substantive permanent secretary to help guide her and the feuding directors to critical health of the avant garde ministry has impacted negatively on the industry, living it prostrate and castrate.
After the immediate past substance permanent secretary, Robert Ibienne, left in November 2024, Hannatu Musa Musawa, has comfortably chosen to run with the following directors one, after the the other. There was a Raphael Orelumo, November 2024 to January 2025, Ibrahim Suleiman, January 2025 9th 2025, and lately the most senior Director, Akudo Ugochi Nwosu, who took over on April 10, Thursday last week.
This development is a disappointing and sad rubric in a government with renewed hope agenda determined to build a Nigeria cultural tourism economy and to which those who appointed Hannatu and those of us who chose to keep silent in face of the orchestrated intentional campaign to set our cultural tourism values chain backwards must be ready to explain to our generations yet unborn.
This ministry under Hannatu is now a franchising caterpillar, roaring unhindered to hand over all cultural tourism products, from festivals to structures to certain imaginary entities, some with hurriedly procured certified papers to process critical assets of the industry.
A certain private sector operator famed for the ownership and management of one of the best resorts in Nigeria and the founder of Mother Land Reckons, allegedly took his brand to the ministry last year to seek collaboration and before he could wake up the next day, the Ministry of Hannatu Musa Musawa was alleged to have called a press conference to announce the franchise of same Mother land initiative with another company.
The man has suddenly developed blood pressure and has been writing letters of “save our soul” (SOS) to Mr. President in the past two months. I understand that the president is even the lead cultural ambassador of the original Motherland Beckons initiative, rechristened last November as “Ipada” a Yoruba word meaning “Return” (to the mother land).
Like I said last week, there is no doubt that Hannatu is a threat to our cultural tourism economy, and the earlier the government hurriedly and surgically remove her cancerous management of the Ministry, the better for our sanity and return to winning ways.
*Postscript:* Otunba Biodun Ajibola, Executive Secretary and Chief Executive of National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), is hell-bent on reinventing history with his fanciful Nigerian Academy of Cultural studies (aka )National Institute of Cultural Studies which actually is the training centre for cultural studies in Nigeria.
While the old NICO schools had an established institutional memory and academic collaboration with Nasarawa state university and had even ex graduates bearing the university’s degree certificates on culture studies, our able and all-knowing executive manager has his own fanciful academy, down graded to a monotechnic and certainly would edge out the old Nico schools from their original operational bases or campuses across the country.
Ajibola is just playing to gallery, and instead of taking the original Nico schools to greater heights and making it more attractive to thousands of Nigerian young persons and even foreigners who desire deep knowledge of our cultural values and significance, our man is busy selling us a dummy script as original concept. Ajibola, who claimed to be a notable advertising and public relations guru, has not factored the impact of that duplicitous arrangement, the cost implications in changing letter headings, sign posts and other administrative consequences in relation to having a university certification collaboration for Nico schools and a monotechnic certification as lately advanced by him.
This would process a conflicting image disaster for NICO. Ajibola has been breathing hard on us since his appointment as a rabid noise maker. No doubt, we can request Sango to go after those who have no respect for our cultural values and invisibility but however, Can you imagine, that Nico schools from a university of Nassarawa approved cultural studies degree certification pushed down the academic ladder by Ajibola’s monotechnic shenanigans, what’s is this fellow up to? Who is supervising him, and why does he want to kill Nico’ s testimony? Na waoo, Hannatu Musa Musawa, and some of her foot soldiers in our cultural tourism economy!”. No wonder the National assembly members are confused!:
