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Nigeria: Country Gets Unesco's Nod for Culture Institute
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This Day (Lagos)
29 October 2007
Posted to the web 29 October 2007
Bukola Olatunji
Paris
Nigeria has secured the approval to establish an Institute for African Culture and International Under-standing, as a Category II Centre under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Other institutes, which also got the organisation's nod at the weekend, were the Regional Centre for Underwater Archaeology in Zadar, Croatia and World Heritage Training and Research Institute for Asia and the Pacific Region in China.
A Category II Centre has global status and access to national and international funding, under the supervision of UNESCO.
Its independent board of governors has representatives from the national government, the private sector, civil society, UNESCO and the relevant sector, which, in this case, is the culture sector.
UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Culture, Ms Françoise Riviere remarked that the establishment of such centres depended on a country's readiness to accommodate them and commended Nigeria for the initiative, with a call to other countries to come forward with similar requests.
The Nigerian Institute, which will serve the whole of Africa and Africans in the diaspora, will have centres in each of the six geo-political zones of the country. That of the Western Zone will be situated in the Osun State capital, Osogbo, where one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Osun Osogbo Groove; is situated.
Ahead of last Saturday's consideration of the proposal at the on-going General Conference of UNESCO in Paris, the Osun State Governor, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola had met with top officials of the organisation to aquaint them with the state's readiness to host the Institute.
In a meeting with the Director of the World Heritage Centre, Francesco Bandarin, Oyinlola explained that the state had paid for the works of Prof. Uli Beier, which will form the initial materials for study, while the contract for the building of the structures had been awarded. He assured that the state would be ready to receive UNESCO's Inspection team that is scheduled to visit the Institute in April, next year.
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Bandarin commended the Nigerian Ambassador to UNESCO, Prof. Michael Omolewa and the country, for the efforts to establish an Institute that would serve the whole ofAfrica. Omolewa said, when completed, the Institute would be the first of its kind inAfrica and a valuable research centre for scholars all over the world
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