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The Federal Government of Nigeria has thrown its weight behind the 2021 edition of the Idoma International Carnival.
Assistant Director, Festival and Carnival in the Ministry of Information and Culture, Festus Ojieh made the promise when a delegation of Idoma Carnival stakeholders paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja on Wednesday.
Ojieh, who highlighted the contributions of carnivals to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product, assured of the federal government’s support for a successful hosting of the festival.
Earlier in his remarks, the Vice President of Idoma International Carnival, Henry Ipole, said the carnival scheduled for December this year is an annual ritual targeted at promoting the rich cultural heritage of the Idoma tribe.
Ipole, who stood in for the President and founder of Idoma Carnival, Chief Edwin Ochai, recalled that the cultural showpiece was disrupted last year due to COVID-19 pandemic.
He added that the fiesta will feature among other events such as traditional wrestling, beauty contests and music concerts.
Addressing newsmen shortly after the meeting, Ipole said one of the aims of the Idoma Carnival is to discourage social vices among the youths by getting them busy.
He decried that many cultures of several tribes and ethnicities across the world have gone into extinction as a result of non-promotion of such cultures.
His words, “Well, it’s no longer news that culture is the way of life of people and so people without the culture are the people without history and identity.
Naturally, we are just living by ourselves, we are just trying to promote ourselves, we are just trying to promote who we are naturally.
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary, but we know that culture promotes a lot of things, it promotes some people, it promotes tourism, it promotes hospitality.
“Culture preserves yourself and your identity. So what we are doing at the carnival is to ensure that our culture is preserved, our identity is preserved.
“We are aware that several cultures of several tribes and ethnicities across the world have gone into extinction as a result of non-promotion of such cultures.
“We know that we do not continue to promote our own culture, we know that very soon it will go into extinction. And God forbid, that means I will cease to exist as an individual.
“So, we are just basically promoting who we are and also in the process uniting our people to let them know that we don’t have any choice but to promote ourselves. And we know that our culture is poor, stealing, and being a poor man of social vices.
“And what is going on in the country, kidnapping, banditry and all manner of armed robbery you see, the unfortunate thing going on around the country right now is because we have neglected our culture, we are borrowing a lot of things from different places.
“And that was why people can take the lives of other people without thinking twice
“So, what we are basically saying and doing is to look, let’s go back to the basics, who are we in the first place? What exactly are we here for in the first place? And that’s exactly why we are going back to the basics, going back to our roots, and say look, we have no choice, we have to do what is right and that’s why we are doing what we are doing.
“Social vices have been discouraged a lot in our places. You see a lot of young people who ordinarily have been doing all manner of things now they are engaged, they are busy, preparing because it’s January to December every year for the past eight years for hundreds of young people.”
