By Osa Amadi
The government, in this part of our world, has never been good managers of anything. Government businesses and properties are regarded as nobody’s business or property and therefore allowed to fall and waste, or even run aground by citizens who are employed to manage those businesses and properties.
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Interestingly, and it has been the trend; whenever any failing government business or property is offered for sale or concessioned to private individuals, sometimes to those same individuals previously employed to manage it for government, the business or property experiences a surge of life and turnaround for good.
The National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, unfortunately fell casualty to that destructive national scourge. For more than three decades, the institution of the National Arts Theatre which is supposed to be a monument, a symbol and an embodiment of our creative wealth and cultural heritage, has been mismanaged and on the verge of collapse, both physically in terms of capacity utilization.
Therefore, the plan of CBN and Bankers Committee to revive the dying national edifice to create jobs for our teeming unemployed youths is a highly commendable one.
The CBN projects that apart from the 25,000 employees that will be engaged in different sections of the monument when the ‘Signature Cluster’ of the building is completed, construction work during the upgrade of the theatre will create a minimum of 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. The Signature Cluster of the building is planned to consist of a building each for music, film, fashion and information technology verticals.
According to the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, “the revamp of the National Theatre to a world-class creative hub would position it to attract local hospitality and international tourism prospects, and thereby, boost the sector’s GDP contribution. A growing revenue from the arts, entertainment and recreation sector might also relax the government’s over-dependence on the…
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