For Survival of Calabar Carnival
The 2018 Calabar Carnival has come to a close and revelers have since returned to their respective places of origin reliving their various mixed experiences. While some who were at the event for the first time enjoyed it, some regulars believed it has lost some of its lustre and advising that some changes need to be made to restore it to its glorious past. Let us be clear here, this write-up is not a critique of the carnival. On the contrary, it is an appraisal of what has been done well and what else needs to be done to make it better. This clarification is necessary because of the penchant of some people to misconstrue and politicise such altruistic intentions to score cheap political points.
It has been 13 years since former governor Donald Duke established the Calabar Carnival. Duke’s intention was to make the state a prime destination of choice for fun-seeking Nigerians who often spent billions on foreign vacations annually.
Calabar Carnival was therefore integral to Duke’s overall tourism development plans whereas he developed a calendar alongside the various existing tourism attractions, cultural festivals as well as developed the bio-diversity assets in the State’s prime forest to market to global tourists.
Ultimately, his strategy worked and he successfully established the Calabar Carnival, Inaugurated the Obudu Mountain Race, Completed the Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort, developed the Leboku Festival, Drill Ranch, Cable Car and the Canopy Walkway.
Successive administrations after Duke have sustained the tourism tempo albeit some novel initiatives like the Obudu mountain race which attracted world-class athletes to the annual event which usually held in Obudu Cattle Ranch was scrapped. They also injected slight adjustments into the carnival procession extending the duration from Its initial one-day affair to about four days. Today, it has been expanded to incorporate different variants of cultural, children and adult carnivals.
The present administration has successfully unbundled and excised the bikers who formed part of the one-day carnival and opted to set out a distinct day for bikers’ carnival, ditto cultural carnival and street party.
After operating for 13 years, is the carnival making progress? Yes, the carnival is making progress as it continues to drive annual traffic with Calabar as the prime destination every December.
With the traffic comes economic boom, though temporarily for the local economy. Hotel occupancy rate is surpassed, shops witness unprecedented patronage, restaurateurs smile to the banks, transporters work 24 hours because suddenly the town never goes to bed.
On the reverse side however are complaints by revelers firstly, about the timing for the rollout of the carnival. In the last two events, the first band rolled out after 4pm . After the displays along the 12km route, the various bands’ members ended up in the stadium around 2a.m. feeling tired and completely exhausted which is against the spirit of the carnival.
While it is good to make changes, such changes must be programmed to fit the strategic thinking of the planners and deliver the overall objective of the carnival. For instance, under Duke, the rollout time from the starting point was between 9a.m. - 10a.m.
All the bands were arranged in sequences and co-ordinated to ensure there was synchronism and no time was wasted. The idea behind the early rollout was to get the bands out there before the sun rose so high, with such high spirit and energy, they bands could entertain by-standers who thronged to watch from both sides of the road.
The projection was that the first band will arrive the stadium from 4p.m. and do its final presentation followed by others all programmed to end on or before 10p.m. The reason for this was simple: the carnival is usually aired live by a television station of choice. These TV stations run on very strict programming schedules such that if you are allocated a time belt and eventually miss out on your allotted time, your event can no longer go live. You lose out.
The second issue is that of refuse that litter the route in the aftermath of the carnival. In the past, the Calabar Urban Development Agency (CUDA) was usually the last ‘band’ as it mopped up all the refuse littering the carnival route up to the stadium. Today, it is not the case and there do not seem to be an alternative either.
Lastly, is the issue of security. Initial carnivals were programmed to end before midnight so that law enforcement would be able to effectively provide a right of passage for revelers and protection from predators, pickpockets and hoodlums who usually loitered around event centres to steal and cause mayhem. Thus, the present timing makes the revelers vulnerable to attacks from criminals with law enforcement overstretched to effectively react to such attacks.
What is to be done? Without a doubt, the time has rightly come for the carnival commission to be incorporated into a limited liability company that would run independent of government to usher in a regime of transparency and accountability.
Up until this moment, no one knows for sure what it takes to host the carnival and how much is being raised from sponsors annually because there are no published audited accounts. Incorporating the carnival as a limited liability company would put it in a viable stead to determine the desirability or otherwise of some carnival activities too.
For instance, why do we need a cultural carnival where we invite over 300 foreigners from different countries to Calabar? What is the cost benefit of bringing these people and who picks the bill? Do the people of Cross River State also benefit or enjoy any form of reciprocity from these countries that we spend our hard earned money annually? Is it rather not better to promote our local culture and conserve money?