Speeches

Opening Ceremony Of The Third Black Heritage Festival

Apr 3, 2010 - I bid you welcome to the Third Lagos Black Heritage Festival.

This year's festival is titled "Memory, and Performance in the return to the Source," and to all three dimensions; the restless memories and ghosts of our Diaspora, the historic matrices of our collective performance, and the geographical locus of this new found source, we must add a fourth dimension, "Eko, The city of a thousand masks".

Over the next week, we will attempt through art, through dance, through play, through film, through poetry, through prose, through drama, indeed through a boundless, timeless and jubilant, celebration of our shared African ancestry, to identify and appease the ancestral spirits and masquerade behind each of those masks. We will try, I say, because like Lagos, we know, it is near impossible to fathom in a thousand days, let alone a week ... but try we must.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let us start quite appropriately from "the source."

The Lagos State Government in partnership with UNESCO some years ago identified Badagry as a source-one of many sources¬ of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. That abhorrent trade that saw tens of millions of our own flesh and blood, our own brothers, and sisters sold like commodities, with the active participation by and profit to their own brethren, remains a blot in our collective consciousness. Nevertheless, time heals all wounds.

The ports and beaches of Badagry staring bleakly into the unknown vastness of the, Atlantic Ocean, was a few centuries ago, the point of no return for far too many of our brothers and sisters. However, today, because of The Black Heritage Festival, it has been rechristened as the port of the triumphant return of our long gone relatives from the Caribbean and the Americas.

The Black Heritage Festival in the words of our own Wole Soyinka is "a Festival that seeks to enshrine the place of Memory in the history of peoples, and to celebrate survival and the resilience of the human will." With this, we appease the masks of survival, forgiveness, and redemption, even though we will never forget.

As I stated in my address at the African Forum Luncheon organized of the International Bar Association held in Madrid, Spain on the 8th of October, 2009:

The current global perception of Africa overlooks the fact that it was the resilience of Africans to brutal and debasing practices that helped shape and deliver justice for most oppressed peoples and minorities across the globe.

The African story for me continues to remain an unfolding story. A story of pride rather than shame, for the human race.

Whereas so many races have suffered all forms of deprivations, but I stand to be corrected that only the African race has endured and survived captivity and" from there risen to leadership. These have been the challenges of Africa.

It is a story still unfolding that shows the limitless capacity of this race, a story that requires those who disparaged her to stand back and away and take another look.

As the world economic, environmental and political leadership enters a new age of transformation, I venture to predict that so much of our planet's future and its survival will depend on Africa's blessings: her sun for renewable energy, her rain forests for medicine G1nd protection of the eco-system, her natural extractive resources of oil, gas and solid minerals, but most importantly, on her people.

The performances you will see will demonstrate and dramatize that seemingly limitless resourcefulness of our race.

The variety of performances that will carry this festival through one week of joyous celebrations will be, breathtaking. As befitting the city of "aquatic splendour," there will be boat regatta on our lagoon and waterways starting from this afternoon and on land there will be the exuberant dancing and colorful costumes and masquerades of the Lagos Carnival that promises to turn the streets of Lagos into one long gyrating movable feast, on Monday the 5th of April 2010.

We have deliberately combined these events, the Heritage Festival, the Boat Regatta and the Lagos Carnival into a week long activity that signals the emergence of Lagos on the International tourist calendar in the season of Easter, which is a global holiday period. We intend to do everything to sustain and amplify what we hope will be next big annual tourist event in this continent.

In the Boat Regatta, we see the playful and benign enactment of the outbound journey of the middle passage, sailing into the wide blue yonder. Conversely, through the Carnival, in the pulsating and primordial polyrhythm of the African drums, the call and response of drummer and dancer, we see the return to the source of the musical spirits and energy of our brothers and sisters from the Caribbean and the Americas.

We welcome you all back home. With this, we appease the masks of reconnection, revaluation, and re-vindication.

We have a lot of experiences to draw upon. The 2nd Edition of the World Festival of Arts & Culture, better known as FESTAC, was held in Lagos in 1977.

The Lagos of today is a different place from the Lagos that hosted FESTAC 77. Some of the physical monuments of that time remain, notably the National Theatre and Festac town, but in almost all other measurements, it is a different City-State.

The population has grown in many folds from barely 2.5million people in 1977 to 18 million. Lagos has lost its position as the Federal Capital but remains the commercial capital and contributes a full third of Nigeria's GDP in any year.

Many other great events have held here, the most recent being the MNET Face of Africa that re-affirms my view that Lagos is Africa's fashion capital.

In its own right, Lagos is one of the five biggest economies in sub-Saharan Africa, bigger than most African countries. It is therefore, in addition to that elusive thing that makes Lagos, "Lagos," the rightful ancestral space that welcomes n0t just our fellow Nigerians from every state of; the federation, but our fellow Africans as well as indeed the rest of the world.

In these uncertain times and against the backdrop of our Jubilee year, when Nigeria turns 50 (Fifty), this festival starting today within the safe habour of Lagos, signals to the rest of the country that the celebrations have begun.

I want thank all those who have contributed in various ways to make this festival happen. (Expression of gratitude to key people)

It is perhaps important for me to emphasize that we are not yet a finished article. On the contrary, we are a work in progress, building on a solid and illustrious foundation. We find the courage to test our endeavors because we are confident of their sustainability. As you traverse our City-State, you will see testimonies of rebuilding that re-affirm our commitment to regeneration. Ladies and gentlemen in closing, just as I added an extra fourth dimension to' this festival's title, I would like to add another word to its theme of reconnection, revaluation, and re-vindication. This forth dimension is "Rejuvenation."

I hope that this festivities will be a much needed respite from the daily challenges of life in the big city-State as well as a richly deserved tonic that helps prepare you for your next encounter with this remarkable City-State of ours called Lagos. With this, we appease the masks of enjoyment and "ariya."

I thank you all.

Eko o ni baje o!

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State