Fulfilling our lost promise-Chika Unigwe

Chika Unigwe writing in the Guardian:

Image by dan mogford via Flickr

In a society where the pursuit of money takes precedence over everything, one can expect a decline in culture and in the quality of cultural production.Regrettably, this is going on. People are reading, but it's a different sort of literature: self-help books published mainly by evangelical pastors eager to win souls over to the gospel of prosperity. There is art on the street, but it is splashes of paint on trucks and buses, outsized drawings (usually religious, with a blonde Jesus). There is nothing of the grandeur and quality of Ife art in it...Perhaps this is too pessimistic. I was witness in Nigeria to the collective sense of hope in a people who, like the phoenix, keep rising from the ashes. There is a renaissance in Nigerian literature...