Nigeria’s cultural policy implementation: sustaining cultural diversity through cultural resource management

Abstract

Nigeria is one of the few African countries with a written cultural policy as well as government established and funded institutions charged with the implementations of this policy. This article interrogates the implementation of the tenets of the policy, given Nigeria’s cultural diversity and the growing demand for tangible, verifiable economic indices of the contributions of the culture sector to both internally generated revenue (IGR) and the gross domestic product (GDP) of the nation. It suggests the need to expand the traditional understanding of cultural resource as land, labour and capital to embrace diverse forms of ‘soft’ cultural capital as assets whose management is critical to individual, community and national economic empowerment. The paper concludes with suggestions on strategies and best practices to enhance Nigeria’s creative economy as integral evidence of continuing implementation of the cultural policy.

Keywords: Cultural policy, Cultural resource management, Cultural diversity, Creative economy