Senate opposes planned sale of National Theatre, TBS, others

Taiye Odewale

Abuja

Determined to preserve key national monuments in the country, the Senate, yesterday, called on the federal government to, as a matter of urgency stop the planned sale of Tafawa Balewa Square, and the National Theatre, Iganmu both in Lagos.
The upper legislative chamber declared that both establishments as well as the President’s House at Marina, the Prime Minister’s Lodge, Onikan, and the National Assembly Complex, Lagos, are national monuments that should be preserved tenaciously.
It therefore directed the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture to immediately develop monuments into viable tourists attraction for the country.
These resolutions followed a motion, “Proposed sale of the National Theatre and the Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos by the Federal Government of Nigeria” sponsored by Senator Fatimat Raji-Rasaki (PDP, Ekiti Central).
Leading the debate on the motion, Raji-Rasaki said the media was recently awash on the sale of assets belonging to the federal government, including the National Theatre and the TBS in Lagos to raise more funds to finance the 2018 budget.
According to her, the TBS “represents the landmark on which Nigeria got the instrument of nationhood at a ceremony on the morning of 1st of October, 1960 when the Union Jack was lowered down and the green-white-green national flag was raised and hosted.”
She informed that the National Theatre was specifically built to host the 2nd Black African Art Festival named the Festival of Art and Culture (FESTAC) in January/February 1977, where all black people across the globe gathered to celebrate the uniqueness of the black race.
Senator Raji-Rasaki said that these institutions and structures occupied historical landmarks, monument and serve as symbols of our nationhood, desires and attainments, adding that “these economic and culture values are immeasurable to our cultural pride and symbols of nationhood that can be readily developed as tourists attraction and also for the teaching of history and civic studies.”
She advised that, “instead of disposing these edifices to private use, the federal government can look for other alternative sources of developing the Tafawa Balewa Square into an attractive profit making tourists centre.”

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