Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - THE DRUM‹Re: BUILDING OGUN STATE

BUILDING OGUN STATE, NIGERIA, INTO A CREATIVITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND A SPLENDID TOURISM COSMOPOLIS WITH THE WORLD DRUM FESTIVAL

By Funmi Odusolu, June 21, 2019

The DRUM is the primal-perpetual Pulse and Socio-Spiritual Galvanizer of Being; and, as "the linguist of heaven" that interprets, enjoins, and furthers the ethics, virtues, bearings and resources of heaven that every unit of creation totals and develops on earth in Yoruba culture and civilisation, the Drum is indispensable to material and spiritual compassing, acquittance, and arithmetic-geometric-harmonic progression in life and living.

It is undeniable fact that our World Drum Festival [WDF] is the first and only global cultural tourism celebration of own creation to date [FESTAC 77 was only Black & African] that Nigeria and Africa shall be hosting the world with; and which fact, with its alloyed responsibilities, only advances for resolution the equally indisputable declaration of immediate past United Nations World Tourism Organisation [UNWTO] Secretary-General Taleb Rifai, at the opening of the 59th Meeting of UNWTO Commission for Africa, 18-21 April, 2017, Addis Ababa Ethiopia, "We all came out of Africa, and went to inhabit the world, making Africa the first source market in history. Africa is the future…" It is this élan vital 'first source market is world's own future' Truth has touchstoned World Drum Festival's present initiative. This same ennobling Truth is the future history milestone of Nigeria's pivotal role in global cultural tourism and creative socioeconomic prosperity long repeatedly advocated by Leopold Sedar Senghor's 1966 Dakar declaration "Nigeria is to Africa what Greece was and still is to the history of Europe."

This onerously gratifying cause and ideal to chart inclusive self-acquittance in compacted past, present and future has now been crafted by Time, invisible handler of the visible, to take root and blossom as visible handle of a golden age in our own Ogun State of Nigeria, now, at long last, led and managed by auspiciously appointed Governor Dapo Abiodun, whose informed technocratic resolve to invest in, promote and secure tourism, high-gear culture and cultural ferment, social responsibility and public-private partnership calls to mind the age of Pericles in Athens as it quietly designates a new prodigious wealth-and-health-producing cynosure, even in the face of reactionary portents, an indomitable will to triumph that shall bequeath a distinguishing Yoruba-African-and-Global success story.

SHORT BRIEF ON OGUN PEOPLE, CULTURE AND TOURISM RESOURCES

  Peopled predominantly by the Remo, Egba, Ijebu, Yewa, and Awori as main ethnic groups, it also has subgroups Ketu, Ikale, Ilaje, Ohori, Anago, and Egun, with generous numbers of Nigerians from various parts of the country including foreign nationals that have found perfect irreplaceable home in the state.

  Cradle of education in Nigeria and major economic hub and industrial capital of resilient Nigeria, Ogun State has an enviable concentration and ever growing number of industries, as it serves as major corridor for transportation of goods, services and people between the nation's coastal commercial centre of Lagos, the country's massive hinterland, and its westward large West African markets.

  Some of the well-known festivals in Ogun State are Sagamu Day Festival [Sagamu]; Ojude-Oba Festival [Ijebu-Ode]; Lisabi Festival [Abeokuta]; Oronna Festival [Ilaro]; Eyo Festival [Iperu]; Egungun Festival [Ota]; Izangbeto-Egun Festival [Imeko]; Igunnuko Festival [Ifo]; Agemo Festival [Ijebu-Ode]; Osousi Festival [Ago-Iwoye]; Aaya Ugborowo Festival [Odogbolu]; and Balufon, Egungun and Oro Festivals [Sagamu].

  Ogun State tourism sites and resources include the following: Olumo Rock in Abeokuta; Bilikisu Sungbo Shrine, Moat, Botanical and Zoological Gardens at Oke-Eri, near Ijebu-Ode; Yemoji Natural Swimming Pool, Ijebu-Ode; Orisagamu Ewa Shrine, Sagamu; Oyan Dam in Abeokuta; Iwopin Boat Regatta and Ebute-Oniru, Ogun Waterside; Madam Tinubu Shrine, Abeokuta; Oronna Shrine, Ilaro; Area J4 Forest Reserve, Area J4; Tongeji Island, Ipokia; Ijamido River Shrine, Ota; Adire Factory at Itoku and Asero, Abeokuta; Osuru Spring Water, Imeko; Laogo [Paradise] Island, Ogun Waterside; Erifun Stream, Itolu Village, Ilaro; Obafemi Awolowo Museum, Ikenne; and June 12 Cultural Centre Park and Museum, Kuto, Abeokuta.

In all the above Ogun State Festivals and Tourism Sites and Resources [Products & Destinations in tourism parlance], Rhythm, which is the tangible-intangible aural-visual resource of WDF, does have primary, direct-indirect-intrinsic tectonic, basic or complementary but fundamentally emotional/experiential/tonal/tonic/exponential roles and functions to play. All of those existing products and destinations, magnificent endowments though they are independently and collectively by international tourism standards, cannot today be seen or said to be major profit-generating enterprises for state or national economies, nor be mistaken to be viable avenues for improvement of the livelihood of local communities and low-income groups that they qualify to be by all accounts. This saddening business-economic performance of our richly abundant natural and cultural resources may only be due to managerial failure that show deficits in best-practices norms and values, bureaucratic negatives, and political handicaps; all of which delinquencies current Ogun government evidently does not suffer.  

Some essentials of global tourism best practices will provide needful lifelines.  

As defined, collated and published by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation UNWTO, of which World Drum Festival is an Affiliate Member, there are 10 prioritized tourism types thus: Cultural Tourism; Ecotourism; Rural Tourism; Adventure Tourism; Health Tourism; Business Tourism [related to Meetings Industry]; Gastronomy and Wine Tourism; Marine/Coastal Tourism; Urban Tourism; and Mountain Tourism. All of these prioritized tourism categories are prevalent in Ogun State.

UNWTO explains further.

"Tourism Value Chain is the sequence of primary and support activities which are strategically fundamental for the performance of the tourism sector. Linked processes such as policy making and integrated planning, product development and packaging, promotion and marketing, distribution and sales and destination operations and services are the key primary activities of the tourism value chain.

Support activities involve transport and infrastructure, human resource development, technology and systems development and other complementary goods and services which may not be related to core tourism businesses but have a high impact on the value of tourism.

Quality of a Tourism Destination is the result of a process which implies the satisfaction of all tourism product and service needs, requirements and expectations of the consumer at an acceptable price, in conformity with mutually accepted contractual conditions and the implicit underlying factors such as safety and security, hygiene, accessibility, communication, infrastructure and public amenities and services. It also involves aspects of ethics, transparency and respect towards the human, natural and cultural environment.

Quality, as one of the key drivers of tourism competitiveness, is also a professional tool for organizational, operational and perception purposes for tourism suppliers.

Innovation in Tourism is the introduction of a new or improved component which intends to bring tangible and intangible benefits to tourism stakeholders and the local community, improve the value of the tourism experience and the core competencies of the tourism sector and hence enhance tourism competitiveness and /or sustainability. Innovation in tourism may cover potential areas, such as tourism destinations, tourism products, technology, processes, organizations and business models, skills, architecture, services, tools and/or practices for management, marketing, communication, operation, quality assurance and pricing.

The Competitiveness of a Tourism Destination is the ability of the destination to use its natural, cultural, human, man-made and capital resources efficiently to develop and deliver quality, innovative, ethical and attractive tourism products and services in order to achieve a sustainable growth within its overall vision and strategic goals, increase the added value of the tourism sector, improve and diversify its market components and optimize its attractiveness and benefits both for visitors and the local community in a sustainable perspective.

A Tourism Product is a combination of tangible and intangible elements, such as natural, cultural and man-made resources, attractions, facilities, services and activities around a specific center of interest which represents the core of the destination marketing mix and creates an overall visitor experience including emotional aspects for the potential customers. A tourism product is priced and sold through distribution channels and it has a life-cycle.

A Tourism Destination is a physical space with or without administrative and/or analytical boundaries in which a visitor can spend an overnight. It is the cluster (co-location) of products and services, and of activities and experiences along the tourism value chain and a basic unit of analysis of tourism. A destination incorporates various stakeholders and can network to form larger destinations. It is also intangible with its image and identity which may influence its market competitiveness.

A Destination Management/Marketing Organization (DMO) is the leading organizational entity which may encompass the various authorities, stakeholders and professionals and facilitates tourism sector partnerships towards a collective destination vision. The governance structures of DMOs vary from a single public authority to a public/private partnership model with the key role of initiating, coordinating and managing certain activities such as implementation of tourism policies, strategic planning, product development, promotion and marketing and convention bureau activities.

The functions of the DMOs may vary from national to regional and local levels depending on the current and potential needs as well as on the decentralization level of public administration."

Although 'not every tourism destination has a DMO' says UNWTO', the current dysfunctional state of our tourism thought-system and wherewithal nationally calls for discretion in this matter, if we shall increase our fair share of international receipts which today must be less than 0.5% of Africa's total 5% of global tourism earnings.

The need to make this presentation as brief as possible will not permit me to give more than one example of social innovation, let alone marketing and technological options, that are crucial and critical for positive transformation of our tourism fortunes in Ogun State. This one illustration requires committed hands and minds of all stakeholders from grassroots constituencies in all aforementioned festival and tourism resource reaches to business and executive managerial handlers for us to practically reinvent the wheel of our cultural health and wealth. OUR INHUMAN CONDITIONING OVER THE YEARS NECESSITATES A COMMUNALLY SPRUNG 'REVOLUTION' OF HEART, MIND AND SOUL FOR OUR COLLECTIVE SELF-RETRIEVAL.

This pilot-scheme called ARTS, CULTURE, & TOURISM IN QUALITY-OF-LIFE CREATIVITIES [ACTIQC] is designed as a monthly series of Melting-Pot Laboratory-Factory engagement of, on the one hand, the arts of music, dance, drama, visual-verbal arts, games, emergent arts and, on the other hand, the environmental 'sciences' of our listed state-wide tourism products, services and destinations geared, acupuncture-wise, to educate and capacitate a cross-section of Ogun State polity in and with the demand and supply potentials and mechanics of localizing global best practices in the UNWTO-defined Tourism Product, Destination, Value Chain, Competitiveness, Innovation, Quality, Hygiene, Security, Production, Marketing, and Management Signs and Meanings.

We must EXPERIENCE THE TRUTH, to avoid learning or not learning from experience as fools do.

ACTIQC Has 2 Fundamental Objectives of Objects-In-View.

1. By empathetically-interactively engaging people, their culture, tradition, and tourism resources for socioeconomic development and, thereby, facilitate good and ethical governance, peace, security, and even per capita, this tapping and making productive of individual and collective potentials for creativity and inventiveness will generate cross-pollinating trust and confidence when leaders and their people are seen and experienced to be mutually concurrently sharing and shaping their common destiny. IT IS A 'WE-WIN PLATFORM'.

2. Since culture is identity, and creativity quarries our inner and outer identity-resources for profitable re-creation of our challenges into productive opportunities, thereby making living our oyster, where this transformative self-knowledge-and-expression flowers in an individual and his/her community, the principle of recognizing and appreciating the same flowering in other persons/visitors/tourists from other societies becomes a way of life that fosters understanding-in-depth, cooperation and growth between and across cultures and societies. This objective is the social innovation content-catalyst for our 'Creativity Industrial Complex and Tourism Cosmopolis' ideals.

ACTIQC MODALITIES

1. To facilitate the form and conduct of this monthly state-wide project, all tiers, arms and agencies of our democratic governance and business-industrial community shall give it required production, legislative and executive support.

2. Each monthly Laboratory-factory, which will span the last full week [Monday-Friday] of every month, shall culminate in a sellable 60-minute performance/product/valuable artefact or end-product the Saturday of that week, officially the environmental sanitation day in the state. It shall hold simultaneously in all resource-based reaches of the state. All details of work form and content shall be in agreement with UNWTO global tourism best practices. PERFECTION MUST BE OUR STATUS QUO.

3. Somewhere between the 6th-month and before 7th-month editions of this melting-pot awakenings, an inter-product-destination cross-local-government One-Day Exchange of performances-artefacts-end-products shall hold to sharpen the import of our 'Industrial Complex/Tourism Cosmopolis' objective.

4. Appropriate DMOs, one central state-level entity and apt number local government resource-based units, comprising all stakeholders-facilitators in 1 above, shall be set up for initiating, coordinating and managing the day-to-day activities and liaisons of ACTIQC. A DMO's organization structure shall provide for Operations, Creative Content and Knowledge Contribution, and Management.

OVERVIEW OF ACTIQC

Aside from generating sustainable income for the workforce of otherwise socioeconomically invisible local traditional intelligentsia and schooled but jobless practitioners in the over-surplus army of restive youths, the net benefits of ACTIQC, which cannot be quantified in currency terms, will have solvent multiplier effects on the productivity, self-worth, and zest for life of the citizenry, which intangible values are indices of an affluent and sane society. Even in this preparatory gambit or rehearsal to address the Rifai-Senghor plenipotential challenge aforesaid, big business in company with Ogun State Government can productively innovate the 'good society' with this drawbridge of a 'pilot'.   

THE POINT

If a sneak, minute, indirect preview as given by ACTIQC of our 'CREATIVITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and STATELY TOURISM COSMOPOLIS' objective can be this personably demanding and rewarding as projected, then our definitive wager must be something of a 'royal road'!

Fúnmi Odǔṣolú, CEO of World Drum Festival, was Consultant Artistic-Director to Ogun State Government of Nigeria between January 1987 and November 1988. In that capacity he -

a. Initiated and concluded arrangements for a Cultural Exchange Programme between Ogun State of Nigeria and the State of California, U.S.A., in May 1987. These arrangements involved the holding of public-relations meetings in major cities of California such as San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, Novato, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Riverside, and Santa Barbara; all funded by generous friends and well-wishers in those welcome places. Finally, two distinct offices had to be set up for the California axis of the Exchange, with a Sole Administrator, California Council, in Los Angeles, and a Northern California Coordinator in Oakland, California; leaving Ogun State Government to complete the circuit of exchange.

b. Created and nurtured the nucleus of Ogun State Cultural Troupe between September 1987 and November 1988.

c. Directed and managed the State troupe at its two National Day Celebration performances at Abuja in October 1987 and October 1988.

d. Organised, created, directed and managed overall Ogun State  participation, which included (among other entries) stage productions and two video productions, (one of which won a bronze gong) at the 7^th National Festival of Arts and Culture held in Lagos, April 1988.

e. Created, produced and directed the State Command Performance titled SUURU BABA IWA (PATIENCE), in honour of the then President of Nigeria, General Ibrahim Babangida, on his official visit to Ogun State on November 10, 1988.

f. The appreciative President Babangida, as a result, declared publicly at a State Banquet in his honour, November 11, 1988, that he was donating the building of a State Cultural Centre (now June 12 Cultural Centre) to Ogun State on account of his appraisement of SUURU BABA IWA.

As with S.T. Coleridge,

"In Xanadu, Kubla Khan a stately dome did build …"

So with Odu Ifa Ejiogbe,

"This begets that, diviner of worlds without end,

Rockets do joist rockets, diviner of the heavens,

Mighty wisdom with a monumental head;

All reveal the Word of God for Orunmila

When he set out for the world of the living. …"

IT IS TIME, DOUBTLESS, TO BUILD EL DORADO.