The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Abuja Carnival

  • Abuja Carnival kicks off tomorrow

    The annual Abuja carnival instituted by the Federal Government ten years ago as a rallying point for Abuja residents and visitors takes off tomorrow.

    In a statement, the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Chief Edem Duke said that this year’s carnival will feature all the traditional programmes and a few additional ones. They include, contemporary musical fiesta, exhibitions, street carnival, masquerade parades, boat regatta and more. According to him the carnival is a continued demonstration of our unity in diversity as states of the federation display their unique heritage through a carnival platform thus building bridges and enhancing friendship, among others.

    In his own reaction, the director of Abuja carnival, Biodun Abe said that this year’s theme is Creating an enduring creative nation which is to encourage artists of all genres to be more up and doing in their profession. The carnival will be declared open by President  Goodluck Jonathan at the Eagle Square, Abuja, and will come to an end on November 27th at the same venue

  • PDP’s Ill-advised Abuja Carnival

    PDP’s Ill-advised Abuja Carnival

    A trend has long been established. We now know that anytime President Jonathan plans to undertake some of his unproductive foreign trips or embarks on political jamboree similar to his last week coronation as the adopted PDP candidate, at the Abuja Eagle Square, it has often been preceded by a pattern of brutal killing of innocent men, women and children by the sick minds that fraudulently claim to be fighting in the name of God in the besieged north-eastern Nigeria.  The President and PDP’s reckless celebration in Abuja last week was no exception. On the eve of the event, in the words of the President, “Government Science Secondary School in Yobe State was bombed by insurgents, killing our promising young children who were seeking education to build the country and support their parents”. Casualties were put at over 50. Of course, this did not dampen the enthusiasm of PDP and its rented crowd just as our inability to rescue over 200 girls abducted from their secondary school in Chibok six months back did not stop the President’s storm-troopers from organizing misguided carnivals across the country to collect over 17 million signatories of those who want Jonathan to continue his good work come 2015.

    The response of government handlers to criticism however has always been to portray the President as a man of steel who must not be seen to succumb to Boko Haram blackmail by abandoning his planned foreign trip, and mobilization of his party faithful across the country. The tragedy however is that because such trips or planned jamborees add little value to the well-being of Nigerians, buffeted by various problems ranging from insecurity of lives and property and poverty arising from corruption by those in government and their fronts, the message people take away is that of an insensitive government interested only in power ignoring the admonition of St Thomas Acquinas (1225-1274) ‘that government is about the people’.

    Consequently, if the objective of committing heinous crime against the people by Boko Haram was to portray PDP and the President as inept leaders pursuing anti-people policies, they seem to be succeeding. The insurgents have shown that they are not only effective on the battle-field, but that they are more strategic in their battle over the minds of their supporters as well as those of their victims. As against the government subliminal messages based on lies aimed at portraying Jonathan as the messiah we have been waiting for in spite of worsening insecurity, poverty in the midst of plenty and pervasive corruption and government impunity, Boko Haram’s brutal attack on innocent Nigerians which are often followed with the images of the President dancing in carnivals in Ilorin, Kano or as in Abuja Eagle Square last week, a day after brutal murder of over 50 innocent school boys left a more lasting unfavourable image of government. And in an age of social media, the footage of a dancing president in a PDP carnival, a day after such national tragedy that ought to have been declared a day of national mourning could not have been anything but a display of recklessness.

    It is not any more comforting that what went on at the Eagle Square last week was a celebration of injustice. There was no level playing ground. Jonathan candidacy was like everything else in PDP, a product of bargaining and trade-off by PDP governors who wanted automatic ticket for another term or those who wanted to go to the senate after eight years as governors. There was also stories of intimidation and blackmail of the President’s rivals some of whom were alleged to have been threatened with EFCC. It was also all about political subterfuge. While the President was telling Obasanjo who had reminded him of his pact with the northern governors whose turn it was to produce the presidency in 2011, he had not told anybody he was interested in the 2015 contest, his promoters armed with billions of naira were let loose on the land. In this misguided celebration, Christ message  of ‘equality, humility and service’ to rulers who must also be judged with the same moral compass with the ruled ‘ seemed to have been lost on the President and PDP that fraudulent calls itself Christian  party while denigrating the opposition as a party for Muslims.

    The question also arises as to why a nation at war needs such a jamboree and laying of red carpet to celebrate a Commander-in-Chief whose soldiers are in disarray with some finding their way to Cameroon. This was only a week after the fall of Mubi to Boko Haram and the attendant killing of over 200 innocent Nigerians. It was bad enough that this was six months after government’s failure to rescue over 200 girls abducted from their dormitories, but more tragic that it was the week parents who were told to expect the release of their loved ones following a cease-fire promoted by the chief of defence staff were rudely told by insurgents who outwitted government that the girls had been married out to insurgents or sold into slavery. And this was the very week the UN reported that Nigeria scored a world record as a country with the highest number of people (estimated at 4,000) killed in one year by insurgents.  The President’s declaration of interest last week ought to have been a period of deep reflection and not an occasion for pomp and pageantry. Sometimes it is difficult not to doubt the sincerity and loyalty of those paid by the taxpayers to protect the President against himself.

    At the end, the celebration was all noise and fury, signifying nothing beyond self-glorification. The president reeled out list of his achievements ranging from new power plants, an ‘African Great Green Wall’, rail lines, ‘gas infrastructure’, the National School Agriculture Programme, ‘ Nagropreneurs Programme’ and the ‘YouWin’, the establishment of 14 new universities and the Almajiri schools, the National Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) and the National Enterprise Development Programme, all of which The Guardian in an insightful editorial described as ‘work in   progress’. Also listed as part of Jonathan success was “the rebasing of the Nigerian economy to now read a GDP of N80 trillion and the 26th largest in the world”, forgetting to add we have equally been classified as one of the poorest nations of the world. He also took credit for the containment of the Ebola Virus Disease credit that rightly belongs to Lagos State. The President also claimed “Some of our hospitals now perform open heart surgeries, kidney transplants and other challenging operations…” without identifying those hospitals which definitely do not include any of the government teaching hospitals  where patients buy water including UCH, once rated as one of the best in the whole of Commonwealth.

     On power generation, one would have expected the President to allow Nigerian electricity consumers who depend on cheap Chinese generators to power their houses and small business to pass the vote of confidence on his handling of the energy sector. The reality on ground is that government and its appointed agents generate only about 4500 MW, a marginal improvement on 4200MW, the late Governor Olusegun Agagu claimed was generated under Obasanjo in 2002 in spite of injection of between US$24 and 50 billion. Just as the President was awarding himself marks, his estranged godfather, ex-President Obasanjo was accusing his administration of scuttling the plan that would have taken Nigeria to aprojected 20,000MW by 2015.

    The president had hardly finished scoring himself high in the management of the economy when Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, often obsessed with economic growth rather than economic development, spoke of austerity measures as panic reaction to an unfavourable variation in the crude oil market finally admitting what informed Nigerians have said for years- a rentier nation importing the labour of other societies will end in economic ruin.

    What also got lost amidst last week carnival was the President’s undertaking while accepting his nomination as a candidate in 2011. He said, “It is with great humility that I accept the monumental mandate … This mandate is unique as it makes a decisive statement in the history of our great nation. This statement is that our people have chosen the unity of our country above all other considerations. It is a quantum leap into the great ideals to hold our great nation together”.

    Those ideals and its promoters like Obasanjo have been sacrificed in the pursuit of 2015 ambition. The President captured by ethnic irredentist has opted to put his fate in the hands of his South-south and South-east compatriots and praise singers as represented by ‘Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria’ (TAN), a clone of 1993 Arthur Nzeribe’s  ‘Association for Better Nigeria’ (ABN) that wanted Babangida to continue after  eight years of ‘transition without end’;  Daniel Kanu’s 1997 ‘Two million march of Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha’ (YEAA) and  the self-serving sycophants that lured Obasanjo to his third term fiasco.

  • Heralding new Abuja Carnival

    Heralding new Abuja Carnival

    For some time now, the tempo and fun surrounding the yearly Abuja Carnival have been low.  But in order to re-infuse life into the Carnival, the federal government has just appointed Mr. Biodun Abe, a stage design expert whose love for artistic aesthetics is never in question as the Director of the Abuja Carnival.  In this encounter with Edozie Udeze, he bares his mind on how to run a carnival that is all-encompassing where aesthetics, guerilla theatre, street jams, and decorations and more, will be involved.  Excerpts.

    In the past few years, the Abuja Carnival event had been a bit in the doldrums. Owing to the lacklustre organization and some other fundamental issues, many people, particularly Abuja residents, had come to see the event as lacking in glamour, style and colour. Abuja carnival was started about ten years ago to give the nation’s capital an opportunity to enjoy such a festival for relaxation and fun.

    A few weeks ago, the federal government announced the appointment of Mr. Biodun Abe of the National Theatre, Lagos, as the new director of the Abuja Carnival. It is part of the attempt to make the carnival come alive once again.  And Abe, a renowned stage designer and director who has produced several stage designs and plays both locally and internationally says in this encounter that he is ever ready to re-ignite the flame of the carnival and make it a must watch by both the low and the high. “It is time for us to make Abuja people and other visitors to the city to fully participate in the carnival. It is their carnival. It is a carnival to make everybody unwind, loosen up and be in the best mood for relaxation”.

    With the theme as Building an Enduring Creative Nation, he said: This is time for hard work, more work to make sure that I do not disappoint the people who reposed the confidence in me by appointing me. It is also time to work to keep the people in the industry attuned to the issues of the carnival. About the content of the carnival as it is now, I am cool with it. It is the execution, the pre-carnival events and so on that needs to be changed. For the carnival of that stature to make a lot of impact, there must be emphasis on the pre-carnival events. The people need to be sensitised. You should not turn the people that own the carnival to mere spectators. The people have to be partakers in the big event called Abuja Carnival. And when we do so, we refer to the indigenes, the people who are living in Abuja. These people must be given a sense of belonging; let them be part of it”.

    By this, however, Abe intends to engage the six satellite areas of Abuja to fully be conscious of their roles in the event. He said, ‘Yes these areas include, Nyanya, Gwagwalada, and others. From there, we will start the campaign from the grassroots. Three weeks to the event proper, we will hoist and install big balloons that hold the images of the people, showing the mood of the people to be in the carnival. The title here will be the last time you saw a carnival. With glistening light that can show at night, and then during the day, it will keep reminding the people that the carnival is here to stay. This balloon is about 18feet tall hovering over the city, with different colours of the rainbow. This will of course form a mini-carnival on its own.”

    Hoping to use this as a formidable platform to engage most of the stakeholders in the industry to be at their best for the purpose of the carnival, Abe explained thus: “Everybody will be totally involved so that they will continue to talk about it like people still talk about Festac ’77. To hoist the balloon, I intend to engage artistes that can work in a guerrilla performance; that is street theatre to also attract attention. Thus, there have to be certain scenarios that have to do with a festival. They will wear gorgeous costumes and while they are doing this, they are telling the story. This will be more noticed in those areas peopled by visitors and residents who hardly mix with others. The awareness has to be total and effusive. There will be stickers in conformity with the carnival that will also be in place. This will be distributed alongside the street performances. Both private cars, buses and passers-by will be given these stickers”.

    By also engaging transporters like the interstate big buses, the carnival planners hope to spread the awareness to more rural places. “The campaign will include Ifesinachi and the rest of them. We want to make them also show interest due to the number of people they bring into the city. I intend to hold a meeting with them next week to fine tune modalities for this. We will brand their vehicles with big posters and stickers for the carnival. Even the six local government councils of Abuja must be part of this initial preparation because the local people have also a role to play. I will have some colourful posters pasted at the council offices announcing the carnival. This has to be at the entrance of each council so that people will see it easily. This will also encourage the workers to be fully involved in the whole exercise”.

    For Abe who loves aestheties and uses colourful materials to improvise most often, this is the appropriate time to bring this to total fruition. “Arts, to me, thrive on aesthetics. And for me what does this mean? You cannot take away light, you cannot take away the effect of light. Two weeks to the event, I will be able to extend my scratchers in Abuja to let people know that something very special is about to happen. Two, I will have a street gallery that shows popular roads and streets in Abuja where you can get images, framed images, wrapped in beautiful colours and these will glitter from time to time. But there will be light at night too. This will be an unparalleled aesthetic appeal. All these images will have a footnote of Abuja Carnival 2014”.

    Because all aspects of the arts will be engaged in this, the plastic artists have their own roles to play. This is so in order to ensure that no one is left out. “Yes, it is one big market and therefore they have to be involved in it. The plastic artists will have the theme to explore, put people in visual form to be able to see and view the carnival on canvass. They have to create designs and pictures out of the theme. There’s going to be an artists’ village where they will converge for people to come and view what they have. This is referred to as a stationery gallery. At the end of the day the artists will sell and people will still go back there much later to buy more works”.

    Also in all these, all the film houses in and around Abuja will be engaged. Abe insists that this will help to encourage artisans to be in the show. “For sure, I will engage all the film houses, art institutions and all to be able to collate all the films running within the time to be shown from time to time. We will encourage them to announce these also in our event programme. This will help people who would like to go to cinema to watch the films to do so. This is also to make it a show of varieties. From the cinema, you can come and be part of the musical jam. This will run into the early morning, where different musicians and the rest of them are expected to perform. In addition, the Abuja Cultural Centre will have plenty of live theatre running to hold the interest of those who love such. All the days of the carnival, the live theatre of different kinds will be on stage”.

    Other usual events of the carnival like the regatta, the children carnival, the durbar and others will be in place. However, the street will be shortened in such a way that they will be heavily manned and decorated in varieties of colours. The float tolls have to change to include the usage of bicycles, motor bikes and keke napep to decorate them to suit the tastes of visitors. Abe said, “All these will help us to have different concepts. We need to move away from the old routine to give modernity and varieties to the concept of floats. While people wait at the Eagle Square, they will feel good doing so, because the variety of floats will give joy to their hearts”.

    He intends also to engage the less-privileged and the cripples whom he says will be expected to perform with their rollers. “when I get to Abuja, I will talk to them.

    You have to give them some costume that doesn’t cost much for them to come and do their stunt.  They will use this to welcome people to the Eagle Square in their own special way of doing so.  Also, I don’t feel good when you ask a taxi driver to take you to the Eagle Square and he’d ask you what are they doing there?  That is not proper; everyone within Abuja has to feel the mood of the festival and try to be part of it.  Thereafter, we will have a forum where we will analyse how we fared.  This has to happen after the carnival so that we’d know how much of what we intended to do that we achieved.”

    Then after that, the team hopes to concentrate on how to improve in the marketing aspects of the carnival so that the next edition will come out better.  In terms of security, Abe agrees that those responsible for that are also getting fully prepared to secure the venue and the people who are going to be part of it.  “I know the necessary things are being done for us to have a carnival where we will not have issues,” he said.

    For now, Abe was not sure how many foreign countries that would be participating in the carnival but was quick to add that as usual those who have been part of the show in the past editions are likely to honour the invitation once more this year.  “Now that we know that Nigeria is free and safe, I hope a bigger number of countries participating.  But as at now, I can’t categorically name names or say the exact number that will be coming.  It is the content that I am so bothered about; in that area I want to make a whole lot of difference.  I want to deliver a carnival that is unparalleled with aesthetics experience that has never been seen or witness before.  Abuja is the biggest carnival in this part of the world and what we intend to do is to make it much more bigger and appealing to the people.  And by His grace, we will have the best carnival that everybody will be proud of.

    In the area of masquerades which have over the years drawn the attention of guests to the Eagle Square, Abe said, “yes, we will make them more dynamic this time around.  Instead of mere parade, they will be made to perform, to thrill the people.  Those antics of traditional masquerades have to be displayed so that people will have value for what they’ve come to watch.  In this case, we will have to work with the handlers of the masquerades before the day of their outing in order to fine-tune all these areas.  They have to be dramatic and aesthetically involved in whatever they do.

    Abuja Carnival therefore is bound to draw people from all over the world as a vital tool for tourism.  The number of people who troop into Abuja every November to watch the carnival, to participate in it, the food sellers who come from all over the federation to hawk, to sell and make money, all add value to the carnival.  In all, we’ll ensure that this glow and tempo are raised from this edition onwards,” he proffered.

    This year’s carnival is expected to begin on November 24th and end on 28th at the Eagle Square, Abuja.

  • Abe becomes director of Abuja Carnival

    Abe becomes director of Abuja Carnival

    The federal government has announced the appointment of Mr. Biodun Abe as the new director of Abuja Carnival. The appointment which was made during the week is with immediate effect.

    Abe, a deputy director with the National Theatre, Iganmu Lagos, was until his appointment in charge of events and management at the Theatre.

    A consummate artiste, designer and dramatist, he studied Performing Arts at the University of Ilorin, Kwara State and Creative Arts at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos. He was once the president National Association of Nigerian Theatre Arts Practitioners (NANTAP). It was a position he held for several years during which he uplifted the standard of stage theatre in Nigeria. He also empowered young artistes to find fulfillment in the profession.

    A professional stage designer, he is known for his classical and exceptional stage designs and lighting which cut across all genres of the stage.

    He had in the past designed Abuja Carnival floats for some participating states some of whom used the floats to emerge winners in various categories.

    With his appointment, Abe is entrusted with the responsibility to re-jig, fine-tune, and rework the Abuja Carnival which in recent times had lost its original thrust, flavour, direction and beauty.

    The carnival was begun about 10 years ago by the federal government to lubricate and showcase tourism in Nigeria and probably attract other people and tourists to come and savour the aura of Abuja city. The Carnival is usually held last week of every November.

  • PHOTO: Closing ceremony of Abuja Carnival

    PHOTO: Closing ceremony of Abuja Carnival