On Wednesday May 3, Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi Ambode was host to the committee on Diaspora Festival, Badagry, 2017 led by Hon. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Diaspora and Foreign Affairs. It was the first time a governor of the state would demonstrate overt commitment and interest in a festival whose content, context and concept have demonstrated so much potentials to open up the state to outbound tourists via the ancient city of Badagry close to two decades now. In his response to the presentation earlier made by Hon. Abike Dabiri and this writer on the need for the state to blaze the trail in harnessing the benefits associated with Diaspora engagement and reintegration into the state’s socio-economic make-up and how international tourism would flourish with the festival, the governor declared that Lagos remains the capital of the black states in the world and that Diaspora Festival will do well to position the state for diaspora reconnection and eventual return. Governor Ambode further declared the festival as an elongated programme of the 50th anniversary of Lagos State which he stated, shall continue until the end of the year and that the Diaspora Festival, Badagry 2017 would form a cardinal part of the events commemorating the creation of Lagos State.
The governor unequivocally expressed government’s commitment to recreating and developing potentials in Badagry and advised that a framework for its sustainability on annual basis should be put in place. The governor concluded saying ‘We’ll support everything that is Badagry’.
One cannot but applaud the governor’s uncanny ability and insight to decipher potentials and opportunities for growth and development where it seems none to others. Diaspora festival is a peculiar kind of festival that is a common phenomenon that has become a force in driving international tourism along the coastal states of West Africa. In Ghana it is referred to as Pan African Festival (PANAFEST); in Gambia it is called Homecoming Roots Festival, in Senegal it is Goree Diaspora Festival, and in the Republic of Benin it is referred to as Voodoo Pilgrimage Festival, to mention just few. These festivals have been designed to attract the historic African Diaspora back to their cultural and ancestral roots. The importance attached to the festival by these countries is reflected in the fact that the presidency of the respective countries is involved in its organization. This is premised on the history of enormous socio-economic opportunities and potentials the diaspora has come to symbolize for many countries across the globe. Many of these countries have created ministries of diaspora and tourism for the purposes of diaspora engagement and building their economies through cultural connections.
The formation of the diaspora is generally premised on dispersals of people into spaces which could either be voluntary or forceful. In mapping the history of African Diaspora, three historical dimensions can simply be configured: the people of African descent that had migrated from Africa in the pre-historical period about 6 – 7 million years ago to populate other parts of the world (based on the proven hypothesis that Africa is the birthplace of humanity); second is those that were the consequence of forceful dispersals as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade starting from the 15th century; thirdly, those Africans that found their ways in foreign lands as a result of failure of social, economic and political order in their respective countries and the economic pull of the global North. As a fall out of these historical trajectories, people of African descents are to be found today in all continents of the world.
It is however to be noted that these groups of African ‘emigrants’ have evolved and developed into economic, technological, intellectual and social capital in their countries of residence. But inherent in the complexion of the diaspora is the fundamental issue of vestigial discrimination culminating in constant nostalgia to link up with the primordial or ancestral homeland as the ideal final home of return, hence there is always the element of personal or vicarious relations to the homeland development in an ethno-communal consciousness, though not all diaspora share this ideology.
Therefore, beyond sending remittances and other indirect investment through stocks, bonds, and deposits accounts and the growth of specific sectors such as tourism or information technology through means other than direct investment which have been very instrumental to economic recovery and development of many countries all over the world, the diaspora can also promote trade and foreign direct investment, create businesses and spur entrepreneurship, and transfer new knowledge and skills. In the contemporary African socio-economic world that labours under lack of investment and international business acumen, lack of professional and technical skills, isolation from global networks of knowledge, and exclusion from global supply chains, proper and coherent diaspora engagement policy can fill this vacuum and reposition Africa for global reckoning. The reason therefore is not far-fetched why the African Union in 2005 declared African Diaspora as the ‘sixth region’ of the continent. But much still needs to be done in this respect.
The Diaspora festival is in itself a global tourism product which has been described as a ‘nostalgic tourism’. It celebrates the identity, culture, history, heritage and tradition of a given people in a given destination usually in the primordial homeland at a given period. In other words, the festival aggregates both the tangible and intangible cultural resources as expressed in the history, artefacts, monuments, places of memory, religion, topographical attraction and the rustic environmental ambiance of the homeland as instigator for homeland nostalgia or pull factors for the diaspora temporal or permanent return. The festival is usually weaved around the tragic history of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as occasion to celebrate African history, freedom and achievement of the Black race.
The adoption of the Diaspora festival by Governor Ambode with the symbolic Door of Return ceremony as against Point of No Return, a vestige of the gory slave trade history in Badagry is awesomely historic. The state will go down in history as the first in Africa to symbolically open its door to diaspora return and engagement. In developing tourism, the state needs such a mega event as Diaspora festival or Diaspora tourism to drive and achieve its tourism development target as contained in the Lagos State Development Plan 2012 – 20125 of attracting 150 million annual tourists arrival and that tourism revenue to contribute 10% to the State’s GDP. The state remains the most endowed in terms of tourism resources and if fully harnessed and developed will catapult the state from its present fifth position to first economy in Africa in no distant future.
Diaspora festival as a nostalgic form of tourism has the potentials to turn around the history of tourism in Lagos State. California is a state in the United States of America whose economy is dependent virtually on tourism. Today California is the 6th largest economy in the world. As a matter of fact the economy of the global North is hinged 70% on tourism. Tourism has become an integral part of the global economy that cannot be ignored. Lagos is well positioned for fantastic tourism development and a huge potential to become a major tourists destination in Africa with its socio-economic performance indicators of being host to over 2,000 industrial establishments, 10,000 commercial ventures, 22 industrial estates, responsible for 30% of the nation’s GDP, and accounts for 80% of national aviation traffic, 70% of national maritime cargo freight, 50% of national energy consumption.
What is more, with a population that hits 20 million in 2015 according to the UN making it the third largest city in the world and the socio-economic indices and demographic details enumerated above, and monumental efforts of the present administration towards infrastructural development, reclamation of marinas, security and the erection of world class statues in strategic centres in the state are steps consciously taken by the governor to prepare the ground for thriving tourism business in Lagos State.
- Olaide-Mesewaku writes from Badagry, Lagos State.
