Beyond Entertainment: Why Nollywood and Afrobeats are Nigeria’s Newest Teachers

By Tolulope Oke

The script for Nigeria’s future is being rewritten, and for the first time, the protagonists are only five years old. At a landmark stakeholders’ engagement held at Ogidi Studios, the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) launched a Creative Industries Coalition for Early Childhood Development (ECD), signaling a new era where “celebrity power” is harnessed for “social wellbeing.”

The event, supported by the World Bank and Ogidi Studios, moved past the typical pleasantries of industry gatherings. Instead, it served as a technical laboratory for social change. Experts revealed that only 24 percent of Nigerian children aged four to six can write a single word, a deficit that threatens to turn Nigeria’s 2050 population projection of 375 million into a demographic liability rather than a dividend.

Fadekemi “Fae” Olumide (Actress, Educator, and Cultural Advocate), delivering the keynote address, used a striking example to illustrate the untapped potential of the young Nigerian mind. She recounted an experiment where four-year-olds debated international resource allocation after hearing a story about the Mediterranean migrant crisis. “Nations are built twice,” Olumide argued. “First in imagination, and then in policy. If we do not intentionally shape what our children see, hear, and rehearse, we will inherit an imagination we did not design.”

The industry heavyweights in attendance, including rapper and entrepreneur M.I Abaga and filmmaker Steve Gukas, engaged deeply with the “Incentivize, Don’t Moralize” pillar of the new strategy. This approach seeks to provide structured funds and grants for high-quality children’s content, ensuring that “what reigns” in the charts also builds the nation.

Cobhams Asuquo reinforced the need for inclusive distribution. He warned against the “digital divide,” noting that while TikTok and Instagram are popular, millions of Nigerian families cannot afford the “Urgent 2K” for data. He called for a resurgence of shortwave and AM radio content, citing his own journey of learning physics and chemistry through the airwaves before he even stepped into a formal classroom at age ten.

Adding a layer of cultural heritage, “Grandma Wura” spoke on the necessity of “responsive feeding” and “play-based learning” disguised as simple family time. She highlighted how her market-woman leader mother and present father balanced the domestic workload, a key behavior the coalition hopes to normalize through television and film.

The DG of CBAAC, Aisha Adamu Augie, concluded the session by affirming that this coalition is a strategic effort to reposition Nigeria’s youngest citizens at the heart of national development. By bringing academia, international development partners like the World Bank, and the “heavy weight” of the creative industry into one room, the initiative aims to increase long-run GDP per capita by 10 percent through one simple focus: the first five years of life.