Despite the prevalent economic challenges, this year’s National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST), which was held in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital last week, engendered creativity and capacity development of the rural people, especially the artistes and the youth. But only 18 out of the 36 states participated in the 40-year-old national festival, reports Assistant Editor (Arts) OZOLUA UHAKHEME.
Unlike past editions, this year’s National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) focused mainly on how to develop the capacity of youths in the creative industry to eneable them generate employment.
With the theme ‘’Exploring the goldmine inherent in Nigeria’s creative industry,’’ the 29th edition of the festival, organised by the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) between October 2 and 9, provided a platform for children – a major plank not only in transmitting culture, but also in long-term economic empowerment.
From various competitive and non-competitive events, such as painting, drawing, essay writing, traditional wrestling, colloquium and indigenous poetry performances, the children drawn from public and private schools in Akwa Ibom State had rewarding experiences.
NCAC Director General, Mrs Dayo Keshi, described this year’s festival as a huge success considering the state of the economy, adding that such a festival would always encourage healthy interactions that would lead to building bridges of understanding, harmony and peace, which are imperative in the country.
According to Mrs Keshi, NAFEST has consistently promoted national integration, peace and unity. This, she said, had been demonstrated in the level of participation, which cuts across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Also, participating in the festival were non-governmental organisations, artists, craftsmen, community-based groups, professional associations as well as schools.
She said the festival was designed to redirect the nation’s attention towards using the indigenous cultural products and expressions to develop the creative industry.
She added that NAFEST leverages on traditions, indigenous knowledge as well as creative capital of the people.
“Its capacity to mobilise the grassroots, the custodians of our various traditions is one of its defining characteristics. This gives the festival the peculiar flavour of being a platform to directly engage with greater percentage of rural dwellers and producers of the art, crafts and other creative products exhibited at the festival.
“The capacity of such a large gathering of vibrant, productive Nigerians to impact directly on the economy of a host state can be determined by the brisk trading, direct exchange of products such as souvenirs, indigenous fabrics and services such as transportation, hotel accommodation, feeding and allied culinary services,” she added.
Continuing, she said: “It is against this backdrop that we aim to encourage the continuous development of NAFEST while working on its syllabus to encourage the staging of at least, one festival in every geo-political zone of the country. For a nation with a population and culture as large and diverse as ours, one festival per zone is not in any way superfluous.”
She also canvassed a deliberate and structured investment in the creative industries – an economic structure that would engineer demand for products of creative industries, provision of soft loans for art vendors to increase the sales of art works as well as establishment of arts and crafts villages or clusters in states capital to serve as marketing outlets for artistic products.
Admitting that the nation’s cultural assets abound, Mrs Keshi, however, noted that converting such potential to economic benefits has been a serious challenge. She hoped that through the forum, the private sector would see the cultural sector as a viable and profitable area for investment. She charged culture administrators, intellectuals and professionals to come up with a roadmap for exploring the positive dynamics of the collective heritage.
“It is against this backdrop that we aim to encourage the continuous development of NAFEST while working on its syllabus to encourage the staging of at least, one festival in every geo-political zone of the country. For a nation with a population and culture as large and diverse as ours, one festival per zone is not in any way superfluous,” she said.
Mrs Keshi described the cultural market as representational of the geo-political zones as products on display cover all aspects of Nigerian culture. She noted that the arts and crafts market is what will sustain the soul of NAFEST.
“Moving forward, there is no doubt that we will continue to improve both in the quality of products and the number of participants. Moving around the market, I observed that some have sold close to their third batches of products and the market is just few days old. At this year’s festival, we observed that the recession is not seriously affecting the sales as the artists are here showing their wares.
‘’Again, it is one aspect of our economy that touches every Nigerian, especially the grassroots and we must begin to empower them in a bottom to top approach.
“We must continue to make it a strong industry because this would reduce employment at the grassroots. I am impressed by this festival, but I am aiming that next year will be much better in terms of sales, exhibition and participation because we will start planning much earlier,” she added.
However, she observed that at this year’s outing, size of state contingents has dropped compared to past editions when a state could send close to 200 delegates, noting that some states sent 20 participants at this year’s edition. This development, she said, must not be taken as a failure of any sort, adding that it only shows the signs of the time.
“I do believe that in future, once we show the few that took part in the current edition that there is money to be made many artists will on their own sponsor themselves to the festival.
The festival can only grow bigger and better and again, it has nothing to do with the size of delegates from states. I am hoping that we will have more states participating next year.
On why the colloquium was focused on the youth, the director-general said though the colloquium remains the intellectual segment of the festival, ‘’’we thought this year, we needed to think outside the box in line with the festival theme. That is the reason we brought specialists who are practising to share their experiences with the youth. At that colloquium, we had children who were curious to learn how to make it in life, having listened to presentations by resource persons who were drawn from the fields.’ The high point of the colloquium is that there is no age limit to use creativity to generate wealth.
The two lead speakers at the colloquium were Mr. Dayo Adedayo, an accomplished photographer and Mr. Chimezie Uwando, a small-scale entrepreneur. Discussants were Prof Best Ochigbo, Prof Femi Shaka and Ngozi Uya, while Prof Ben Ekanem chaired the colloquium. Expectedly, the Art and Craft market provided opportunities for arts and craft dealers to sell their wares. Also, for the eight days the festival ran, food and drink vendors, keke operators made quick business as participants and tourists thronged the Ibom Hall premises daily in large numbers. Among the 18 states, including FCT that participated in this year’s edition of NAFEST, were Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Benue, Bauchi, Delta, Kano, Katsina, Taraba, Ogun, Lagos and Niger.
NAFEST as a flagship festival must be given adequate attention-funding and promotion- for its game changing capacity in the creative industry. The festival should not be seen as mere celebration of dances because all its activities have direct economic impact on different areas of creative industry-arts, crafts, branding, tourism, costuming, drama, music, among others. There is no better way to act the talks about diversification of the economy than believing and promoting the creative industry.
Apart from the negative impact of the recession, the festival however suffered from late arrival of contingents from states in the Middle Belt and northern zone. For instance, some members of Niger State contingents did not arrive in Uyo until Friday, a day to closing of the festival. The delay, according to the contingent, was due to the poor state of the roads, which affected their journey from Minna to Uyo.
But movements in and out of all the venues in Uyo were hitch free as the roads were in good shape and devoid of heavy traffic. Local musicians, such as Twins Solototo, Sir Wilka Jackson and AT Bass, took turns to thrill the contingents at the opening ceremony of the festival at Uyo Township Stadium.
Expectedly too, most contingents to the festival savoured the hospitality of Akwa Ibom State, with its capital Uyo, priding itself as one of the cleanest capitals in the federation. The state is third on the list of states that have hosted the festival more than once since 1970. Kaduna and Lagos came first and second with four and three hostings.
