Carnival Calabar Leads In Africa As Freedom Band, Passion 4 Emerge Joint Winners
THE Carnival Calabar has received documentations being listed in the carnival calenders of the world as the first in the whole of Africa and the fourth in the world.
The chairman of the Carnival Calabar Commission, Mr Gabe Onah, disclosed this while announcing the results for the best competing bands for the 2019 Carnival.
Freedom Band and Passion 4 emerged joint winners of the 2019 Carnival Calabar as the best participating bands.
The two competing bands emerged joint winners with 1648 points each in the keen contest at the just concluded carnival in Calabar. The chairman of the Carnival Calabar Commission stated that the carnival bands recorded a tie some four years ago.
In the results announced by Onah, Seagul Band came second with a toan tal of 1581 points, followed by Bayside Band with 1453 points as third position and Mastablasta with 1466 points as the fourth position.
In other categories, Seagul Band emerged the best king of the road with 1173 points and best theme with 1161 points while the best decorated truck and best costume band went to Passion 4.
In the Local Government participation, the first position went to Calabar Municipality, Odukpani Local Councils took the second position, while the third position went to Akpabuyo Local Council.
For the states Category, Anambra State came first followed by Lagos State in second position and Enugu state in third position.
In the words of Onah: “In the last five years, we have seen challenging themes, critical themes, cerebral and mostly intellectual in content. You saw the Carnival, which is God’s gift to Cross River state and Cross River
State gift to the world. His Excellency, Professor Ben Ayade has energised the bands and added excitements and that is what drives tourism to a destination and it happens.”
He continued: “For the first time, we are urging everyone here to see the new look carnival-marking scheme called the high low; we have trained our adjudicators in Trinidad and Tobago. It was this same Governor that renewed our patent as a registered trademark four weeks ago.
“We received documentations being listed in the carnival calendars of the world, listed as number four in the world and the first in the whole of Africa. We have observers from Trinidad and Tobago, in the persons of Mr David Lopez and Patricia D.
Dureni, they found Carnival Calabar worthy, four weeks ago after two years of trials, they came here as mystery visitors and gave us the go ahead and we thought they should come here to see what they saw online.”