After a two day critical conference on the draft of 2008 National Cultural Policy in Abuja last week, stakeholders drawn from the Culture and Tourism industry, academia, Federal  Inland Revenue Services, media and independent and group culture interventionists unanimously called on the Federal Government to review  the provisions of Section 4 of the contentious 2008 draft.

The stakeholders came to this conclusion, when they found out in the course of the  deliberations that the culture sector, more than any other sectors  grantees an automatic economic relief to a good number of Nigerians through its very many outlets.

They therefore ,called on  Government to review the current policy direction on tax  incentives with a view to ensuring that the Culture sectors which has never significantly  benefitted from deliberate government fiscal policies does not suffer in consequence of  reduction in incentives in line with the progressive approach to taxation in which the rich
or more prosperous sectors bear more tax burden than disadvantaged sectors;

In a recommendation made to Government contained in a communique issued at the end of the  two day brain storming, the conference stated as follows:

That the  Federal Ministry of Culture should address the following key next steps:
Set up a panel of experts to review the following documents

-Section IV of the draft National Policy on Culture; – The existing National Endowment for the Arts Decree; and- papers and reports from this Conference with a view to coming up with a blueprint, including work plan/time frame, for the accomplishment of the Conference’s objectives;

ii.    Integrate the parallel efforts on the National Endowment of the Arts and the Film Fund/Film Tax Incentive Scheme, and, gain the buy-in of all relevant MDAs within the culture, information and financial sectors. These include the Ministries of Culture & Tourism, Information & Communication, Finance, and Justice as well as FIRS, NFC and Culture parastatals; and

iii.    Set up of an advocacy group to ensure that the objectives of the Policy are implemented at governmental and other levels.