RECOGNISING THE SELF-IMPOSED MANDATE OF YOUTHS IN PLATEAU STATE TO CREATE A SHIFT THAT WILL PROVIDE NEW NARRATIVE FOR THE ECONOMY IS AN URGENT NEED

Ibrahim Mohammad-amin (Shades)

There is no arguing the fact that the Nigerian economy has been in a limbo for some years. The consensus of opinion by most economic analysts, public commentators and development practitioners with regard to the state of the economy remains the fact that the country is running a mono-economy, driven specifically by oil.

Lovers of the Nigerian economy and lovers of Plateau state economy particularly, and the lovers of entertainment, are in a position to understand, appreciate, encourage and promote in multiple ways and platforms the dancing activities of Ibrahim Mohammad-amin, Jabir Husseini, Steady Atli and Hephzibah Christopher and numerous others for a new and special wave of socio-economic activities that their approach, modalities and operations, though not totally new, but unique enough that their collective efforts have within a short period led to a solid structure that is courageously, systematically and strategically deployed to redesign an old product and system as a transformation instrument, a re-engineering tool and a community for gathering and building through the processes of grooming and nurturing a segment of the Youths, Teens and Kids whose talents may have forever rut or remain dormant without their intervention, considering the way the society has decided to structure itself, and would care less if the society loses such wonderful talents.

Ibrahim Mohammad-amin, popularly called Shades by his multitude of admirers in and out of Jos, Plateau state, is leading a massive movement with other members of his team: Jabir Husseini, AKA King Jaja, Steady Atli and Hephzibah Christopher to live a reliable, free flowing and dynamic structure, necessary for reinventing dance, re-positioning and re-injecting it effectively into the now rising tourism industry in Plateau state and Nigeria, and establishing it among the outstanding products of the cultural and creative industry in Nigeria, improvement and increased activity of which is urgently needed to give the economy the necessary boost it requires to move it away from the dungeon of economic obscurity to a self-reliant and self-sufficient economy.

Ibrahim and his set of youths are active and committed to living a decent and healthy life style, established, focused and determined, very much aware of the need to carve a respectable and sustainable niche through dance in the creative industry, suitable for a comfortable social and economically viable existence for themselves, Pateau state and Nigeria as a whole.

Quietly but consistently, Ibrahim with his team has been brewing and testing their ideas and efforts in different ways, times and terrains. They have offered the outcome of their efforts as need-satisfying products and have been handsomely rewarded within and outside Plateau state. Apart from direct financial rewards, their efforts have seen them sleep in luxury hotels in the state and beyond, boarding flights with tickets and days of rest paid for by consumers of their narrative, storytelling dances. 

Consumption and admiration of their dance span years and extend internationally where citizens of more than 100 countries in the globe glue to both the traditional and new media to watch them, and have always yearned for more.

Thank you for visiting and reading Scoreline. Please keep visiting and reading us, as we are poised to furnish you with developments in the Cultural and Creative Industry, including the story we are following on Dance in Plateau state. More stories on this and other developments involving dance and the dance community is on the way.