New
NGA DG, Ahmed Sodangi, Resumes, Promises Action on Harmonised Bill
The new Director General, National Gallery
of Art (NGA) Ahmed Sodangi formally resumed Tuesday March 5, promising that the
NGA Establishment Act for Repeal and Re-enactment will receive his priority
attention. According to him, “passing the
bill by the National Assembly is one of the most important things as far as I’m
concerned because a place that is limited in terms of resources and has a huge
mandate that entails so many programmes will always suffer.”
He was speaking at NGA headquarters, Abuja,
at the hand-over ceremony where the out-going DG, Chief Ebeten William Ivara presented
him a bulky Handover Note on his achievements and guardrails to watch out for.
Sodangi reiterated that pushing of the
Bill into an Act of the National Assembly will require diplomacy, protocol and
PR, stressing the importance of the cooperation of staff and management of NGA
to achieve this. He said he will leverage on his experience in the private
sector and the cooperation of visual arts stakeholders to ensure the Bill is passed
into law.
Recall that NGA and the Society of
Nigerian Artists (SNA) set up a joint committee in 2021 to iron out areas of
concern in the old Establishment Act of NGA and the proposed Bill to amend it way back in
2007.
The result was a Harmonised Bill which is now set to be forwarded to the
National Assembly for accelerated hearing and passage.
Sodangi also stressed the importance of
having a national gallery; an edifice that the nation can be proud of, adding that
the Federal Minister of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy, Barr. Hannatu Musawa,
is equally interested in NGA having a national gallery edifice.
The new helmsman thanked President Ahmed
Bola Tinubu for appointing him as DG of NGA, promising to live up to
expectations. He stressed the importance of team work in order to excel and
achieve the mandate of the organization while appreciating the efforts of
previous DGs in moving NGA forward. “I am determined to take NGA further,”
adding that his expertise in project management will be fully harnessed by
creating the right image for the organization to reposition it to attract much
needed funding.
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