BY ABUCHI IFESINACHI, AWKA
The Ace Nollywood multiple award winning Actor , Chief Nkem Owoh, popularly known as Osuofia has called on Ndi-Igbo both at home and in the diaspora to fight to sustain and ensure their culture does not go into extinction.
Chief Nkem Owoh who made the call at this year annual award ceremony for movie practitioners, artistes and marketers organized by the Association of Music and Film Producers and Marketers of Nigeria in Awka, promised to remain an ambassador of Igbo culture anywhere he goes.
He frowned at the idea where Africans would reduce their culture just to identify with a foreign traits that does not represent their cultural values but taught on how to sustain the unique quality in African cultural heritage and values that should be given its rightful place in the comity of nations.
Mr. Owoh, dissociated himself from the perceived motive adorned nationwide especially among the youths to project western culture at the expense of their culture, which he suggests should be streamlined.
He pointing out that Africans should cultivate the habit of promoting their cultural value and be proud to associate with it anytime any day, I quote him; ‘’Our people are so much adulterated, they are so much Europeanizing themselves, forgetting that European culture is imported , it has an influence on us, let us not leave our culture completely.’’
‘’A lot of people that talk about religion and that church thing, are talking about what we all know, people who are imbibed in ecumenical now are gaining more ground than the people who are so dogmatic on following the principle of that thing they claim to believe as their religion, if you broaden your mind, you will incorporate the culture of Africa’’ he explained.
Osuofia said, Halloween cultural festival that is being celebrated in Britain and other western countries of the world are uniquely preserved for their international tourism attraction but Nigerians, even Ndi-Igbo have completely deviated from promoting their masquerade festival and other cultural exposure which has same cultural symbiosis with the European Halloween culture to the standard of placing it for international tourism attraction, which could be another medium of foreign earning
Mr. Owoh though lamented that African culture is being regarded as fetish act by the colonial master just to make it lost its value before its people but called for a total reorientation and attitudinal change to sustain the potency of the nation cultural heritage and urged government to invest more in projects that will place our culture more on the international scene.
Osuofia, who was honoured with an award of ”The Most Comic and Celebrated Nollywood Entertainer” said the award would spur him to improve on his project delivery but not did spear pirates which according to him remains the only challenge Nigerian movies industry is being faced with and called for collective efforts by Nigerians not to patronise them , which in turn would in no distance time would send them our of business.
Also speaking, the Aka ji Ofor na Nri, Prophet Ramas Okoye Asuzu , who was honoured with the award an the ”Ambassador of Peace” with the called on Ndi-Igbo to consider a total shift from the western worship to the inherited Igbo Religion which he claimed is supreme to the two major religions his people are worshiping.
He described though Igbo are people known for travelling far and wide but urged them to be an ambassadress of their culture anywhere they find themselves.
Prophets Ramas Asuzu, urged government at all tiers to institute programmes that will place Igbo culture above any other borrowed culture into the society and solicit for serious value chain rebirth to arrest the idea of westernization, according to him, if not treated as a priority, may send the people language and culture to suffer cultural sumersault.
