 Published
May 26th, 2010
Diplomacy is the normal means of conducting International
Relations. The present Nigerian government has set up a
policy of Citizens diplomacy as our foreign policy thrust.
It should be noted that this is however, the first time any
Nigerian government has enunciated a clear cut foreign
policy objective since independence.
Sometimes international relations is portrayed as a distant
and abstract ritual conducted by a small group of people
such as Presidents and Diplomats. This picture is not an
accurate one. Although Leaders do play a major role in
international affairs, some other people participate as
well. Other citizens participate any time they vote in an
election, they buy a Product or Service traded in the world
markets and every time they watch the news, films and other
programmes on television. Global communications are
profoundly changing how information and culture function in
international relations. The media over which information
travels - telephones, films, magazines and so forth shape
the way ideas take form and spread from one place to
another. According to UNESCO, there are about one and half
billion television sets worldwide.
According to Wikipedia, Films are cultural artifacts created
by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures and, in
turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art
form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful
method for educating or indoctrinating citizens. The visual
elements of cinema gives motion pictures a universal power
of communication. Films are the most influential medium in
the society today. Without a word of dialogue, images
rendered on a screen can evoke many different emotional
responses
The thrust of this write up is to attempt an expository
analysis on the use of our own motion picture industry to
launder the image of our dear country abroad through
International Rebranding and Diplomacy. Diplomacy has
developed various instruments and techniques of formal and
informal penetration. One of the pervasive of these is
Propaganda - the use of radio, press, motion picture and
other methods of making a direct appeal to Peoples rather
than to governments through formal channels.
Diplomacy is no longer confined to political and economic
relations, its activities now embrace the whole field of
educational and cultural relations. While this is as Charles
Frankel termed it “the neglected part of foreign affairs” it
is now receiving attention and is becoming increasingly
important. That is why Nigeria must key in into this aspect
of diplomacy so as to establish and achieve desirable
cultural policy objectives. It requires the cooperation of
many people in both official and unofficial positions and it
gives greater depth to our Nation’s relationships with other
countries. It means that our diplomacy will not just be
governments dealing with governments, but also citizens
speaking to citizens of different nations. .
Cultural Imperialism
The emerging global culture is primarily the culture of the
white Europeans and their descendants. The information
revolution carrying global culture into our midst is,
despite its empowering potential, an invasive force in
practice. This dominance has been referred to as cultural
imperialism.
Most communication over the worlds broadcast networks is
neither news or sports but drama, soap operas, films,
situation comedies(SIT-COMS), documentaries etc. Here
cultural imperialism is strong, because so many films and TV
shows originate in Hollywood [home of U.S. movie industry].
So there is need for us in Nigeria to replicate the
Americans in other to project our national identity and
values and minimize external cultural influences.
Nigeria’s image abroad is that of corruption, crime,
electoral manipulations and abject poverty. Our movies
always project rituals and the supernatural which portrays
us in a bad light. We need to re-evaluate our Movies and
check the way we showcase our value systems in our films. We
must be clear and certain in what we say or do and in what
we support or do not support. Projecting a good national
image through cultural diplomacy will eventually enhance our
acceptability in the international arena, fast-track our
vision and progress as a nation and add immense value to our
society.
Cultural Diplomacy
One of the ways to counter Cultural imperialism is through
effective, strategic and dedicated Cultural diplomacy.
Cultural Diplomacy comprises the exchange of ideas,
information, art, lifestyles, value systems, traditions,
beliefs and other aspects of culture. Nigerian government
should deliberately propound foreign policy decisions on how
best to project, promote and protect our National image.
Agencies like the Nigerian film cooperation should be
mandated to research and design procedures to pursue an
articulated cultural diplomacy regime through our films and
to ensure successful intervention in the area of pervasive
cultural intrusion into our society.
Since the middle of last year, there has been worldwide
celebrations of the 50th anniversary of ‘Things Fall Apart’
the African classic novel written by our own Professor
Chinua Achebe. It is considered one of the most influential
books ever written with more than twelve million copies in
over fifty translations. An equally classical Movie of the
same title was shot two decades ago by Nigerian Television
Authority [NTA] as an adaptation from the novel. As at the
moment that the celebrations were going on in different
parts of the world, we missed a unique opportunity of
exhibiting the Movie around the world to showcase our rich
cultural heritage and make our voices heard and felt in
every capital of the world. We have gradually let a golden
opportunity pass us bye. Film festivals all around the world
should have been ‘Nigerianised’ with this aesthetic Movie.
Cinemas worldwide would have been culturally taken over by
Nigeria.
Public Diplomacy
Film is seen by public diplomacy advocates as an enormously
important avenue for otherwise diverse cultures to
understand each other. It involves the use of truthful
propaganda to communicate with citizens in other societies
rather than their governments. Nigerians and Africans in
Diaspora are constantly being barraged with news about high
scale corruption, criminality, kidnapping etc by aggressive
and overbearing foreign media agencies. We must get adjusted
to the fact that the world does not view us as we see
ourselves. Any time there is an explosion in the Niger
Delta, the whole world raise their arms in despair to the
extent that the world oil prices shoots up. To an average
foreigner, Nigeria is in a state of war and the Niger Delta
is being compared to Darfur in Sudan.
We can use our films to talk to world citizens and explain
the true position of things, even to our fellow Nigerians
abroad who are even afraid to come back home to visit or to
come and invest in the economy. Through our movies,
intending tourist will learn to disregard Travel Advisories
pasted in their airports warning them about travelling to
Nigeria.
The movie Black Hawk Down showcases American intervention in
Somalia in 1991 and American Soldiers - One Day in Iraq
is
all about the Gulf war from the American point of view and
how they want they whole world to view it. We can reach out
to world citizens and consciously transmit pictures about
the true situation at home. We must use our Movies to
explain our big brother roles in Sierra Leone and Liberia
through our ECOMOG intervention. Equally, we must project
our National Tourism potentials and destinations as well as
attract foreign direct investments [FDI].
The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation [NTDC] has
recently introduced the Navigator Digital Map for Nigerian
roads. This innovative technology that helps a tourist to
navigate throughout the country is surely a suitable prop
for our movies. Choosing our UNESCO World Heritage sites
like the Osun-Osogbo groove as a movie set and location is a
sure way of attracting tourists into our country.
Documentary films, which is a broad category of visual
expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or
another, to "document" reality should be encouraged.
The Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation [NTDC] should
commission the Nigerian Film Corporation to produce
Travelogues and Instructional films. Our football stars like
Jay Jay Okocha and Kanu Nwankwo are the pride of African and
European soccer.
The Ministry of Information & Communications should
commission documentaries on the lives and career of these
living soccer legends and United Nations ambassadors . These
documentaries will be spiced with our foreign policy
messages and distributed as promotional films for the
country.
Citizens Diplomacy
Film can be said to be a powerful tool in citizens
diplomacy. Citizens diplomacy is the concept that the
individual has the right, even the responsibility to help
shape foreign relations. Corporate organisations,
Multinational companies and Multilateral agencies must
exercise this function as part of their Corporate social
responsibility.
Through our films, we stand to promote citizens diplomacy
for the benefit of our society. Conscious efforts should be
made by all stakeholders in the industry to think of Nigeria
first in all their movies. An Ethiopian lady who had cause
to spend part of her childhood in Nigeria promoted Nigerian
ideals of marriage in the her Hollywood movie, Fat Girls.
[2006].
Mexican Soap Operas of recent have dominated prime time in
our local television stations. Independent television
producers association of Nigeria [ITPAN], has strongly taken
up the advocacy of checkmating this ugly trend, in
consideration of the fact that it is killing the local Soap
Opera industry as well as subjecting a sizeable number of
our citizens to cultural imperialism from a fellow
developing country. That is citizens diplomacy in action
which is very, very commendable.
The fact still remains that we have always had a very
popular and thriving Soap Opera culture in Nigeria, from The
Village Headmaster to Cock crow at Dawn, Fortunes, Ripples,
Mirror in the Sun and the immensely successful Checkmate
which permeated into the rest of Africa culturally. A
conscious effort in this direction of using soap operas
effectively in cultural and citizens diplomacy will rub off
on Nigerians in Diaspora and enhance our image abroad.
The Nigerian musical video sector is really vibrant. In
Nigeria, most of our notable Pop stars like TuFace Idibia
and P-Square have promoted our image all over the world
through their superlative music videos. Asu Ekiye’s award
winning Niger Delta gospel video became a showpiece to be
delighted in. If you tune in to major satellite and cable TV
channels round globe, Nigeria music video reverberates all
the time. With our rich music video culture, we stand to use
the medium as a platform for vigorous cultural and citizens
diplomacy.
Nollywood -the Nigerian film industry, has the capacity to
provide a platform for the positive promotion and projection
of the values of the Nigerian nation, its cultures and
peoples. Films and television are enormously important
avenues for international cultural understanding, which is a
key goal of modern public diplomacy strategy. The can be
used as tools of shaping the message(s) that we wish to
present abroad, especially the current Rebranding campaign
by the Ministry of Information & Communications. In this
case, since this present Nigerian government has adopted
citizens diplomacy as major foreign relations policy, we can
now adopt “Population – centric foreign affairs” within
which populations assume a central component of our foreign
policy, since people and not just countries are of global
importance in a world where technology and migration
increasingly face everyone.
On the informal side, all stakeholders, participants,
consultants, practitioners and decision makers in the film
industry should now see themselves as our cultural
ambassadors and thereby assume responsibilities that will
lead to placing our cultural foreign relations in the right
perspective. The key factor here is the production of
didactic movies. Any time we produce films, Soap Operas and
documentaries, any time we premiere a movie, any time we
exhibit at film festivals, any time we screen our films in
cinemas and any time we distribute video tapes, VCDs and
DVDs, we should always think proudly Nigerian first.
George Ndukwu is Media/Legislative Aide to Deputy Chief
Whip, IMHA
He was a Special Projects Consultant to TELL Magazine
& was Producer of Technology Africa – NTA Plus Abuja. |
