Toke Benson Awoyinka
Mrs Toke Benson Awoyinka is the Lagos State Commissioner for Arts and Culture.
Recently she featured on “Morning Show” on Arise Television monitored in Lagos.
She speaks on the popular Fanti Carnival holding in Lagos, just as she addressed other activities of the Ministry intended to make Lagos a choice destination for tourists. Excerpts
Why is a heritage festival like the Fanti Festival important to the Lagos State government at this time?
Well, our culture, our heritage is fast dying. And the only way we can bring it back is to make sure that we hand it over to the next generation.
We’ve had a break in a while, and last year we thought we need to bring it back the same way we brought back the Boat Regatta, which is known and synonymous to the Riverine people of Ilaje. Lagos is largely a fishing community.
However, sometime in the 19th century, a group of Afro-Brazilian returnees, mainly of Yoruba descent, returned back to Lagos Island. They brought back rich culture, blend of music, Catholic religion, infusion of dance, culture, food and that gave birth to the Fridjon on Good Friday as well.
The same group of people that we call Aguda, that is, the Catholics, came back with so much richness of culture and heritage. It’s isolated to Lagos Island, but it’s a very big demography of the people of Lagos Island as well.
As you know, in Lagos Island, we’ve intermarried as well. So a lot of people are interested. And the best way for us is to ensure and actually hand over that heritage and make sure it doesn’t die, like a lot of our culture, and values that have been eroded by westernization.
Lagos State government thought this year, we need to bring it back, calendarise it and make sure that every year we celebrate it and hand it over to our children as well.
Now, in terms of reaching out to the communities, how active have they been?
The festival didn’t actually stopped. It was just held in a silo. Okay. Last year we thought we were going to have a unity carnival, bring everybody together. So it’s a group of indigenous people, Afro-Brazilian indigenous people from Campos, Lafaiji, Okepopo, Epetedo and others called the Brazilian Descendants Association.
So, we’re working closely with them to make sure that we bring them all together to have a large procession of people.
So, this year, everybody’s coming out on Sunday to witness the richness of the culture of the people that is fast eroding and which we need to bring back to the fore.
What should we expect on Sunday, what would the procession be like, where’s the starting point?
I will start off with how the procession is going to be like. It will involve a lot of communities and we really don’t want to take it away from the respective communities where the parade will kick off .
They will file out in their colourful codes. Each community has its colour; red, yellow, green and so on. They will go all the to the Arcade where we expect visitors and foreigners we’ve invited the diplomatic corps.
The carnival will be colourful to showcase Lagos Island music; the high life music from the olden days.
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