IT is abnormal for one to come down from one’s hotel room in a three-star hotel to the restaurant for a four thousand naira breakfast only to meet a long queue. More so when the hotel is about two kilometres from the city. That was what one had to cope with at the Lakeside Hotel Tinapa on the morning of December 27, last year.
The crowd at the restaurant came from every part of the country for the Carnival Calabar that holds every December 27. It has become so popular as a leisure and relaxation spectacle during the yuletide that many affluent Nigerians who hitherto would go on Christmas vacation outside the country now prefer to come down to Calabar. And many people this reporter talked to are not first-time visitors.
When tourism experts talk about the long gestation period for investors to reap the benefits of investment in tourism, this is what is unfolding in Calabar. The investment in building Carnival Calabar as a brand is gradually paying off with the influx of visitors.
Having seen most of the top festivals in Nigeria, including the Osun Osogbo, Argungu Fishing Festival, Durtbar, Nwonyo, Abuja Carival and so on, the biggest problem of most of them is that after attending just one edition, boredom sets in because one could easily write about what would have taken place without attending the event again and one would not be wrong. That is what differentiates the Carnival Calabar brand and the others. It is absolutely impossible to predict the texture and complexion of each edition. The depth of creativity is so high. This year’s edition was not only a success, it tried to raise the performance bar.
There are five official bands at the carnival, the Masta Blasta, Passion Four, Freedom Band, Seagull and Bayside. One could always predict that the Seagull Band led by Senator Florence Ita-Giwa would come out with bright coloured costume with provocatively attired beautiful ladies and course backed by a constellation of Nollywood stars that made the crowd go wild.
However, the essence of Carnival Calabar that has made and sustained the brand is the depth of creativity both in interpretation of given theme and costuming.
This year’s theme was “Ain’t No Stopping Us’ focusing on the ability of man and the human spirit to triumph over challenges. In this year’s carnival, the competition was fierce. It was very obvious that a high level of efforts and the bars have been raised further.
The 16-kilometre journey was flagged off at the Millennium Park by the Cross River State Governor Liyel Imoke. The music was pulsating. And twist and wriggling of heaps by young girls and boys then began.
After close to 10 hours on the road, the bands arrived at the J.T. Esuene Stadium looking tired, but never gave up until after one last performance for the crowd at the stadium. Talking about the crowd of tourists and locals, after watching them perform for more than eight hours on the street, they still followed them down to the stadium for the last performance.
It is this excitement and desire to enjoy life that make both local and international tourists troop from all over the world to watch the carnival.
This year, Passion Four’s grasp of the story line was quite lucid and easy to follow. So also was their usage of past and present historical personalities to pass across their message. Their costuming was neither as flashy as the Seagull and their performing did not have the tightness of Masta Blasta’s choreography and, of course, the wow effect that they conjured using the Houdini style effect.
It was no surprising that the Masta Blasta Band retained the crown they won last year.
Speaking on the carnival performance this year,
a satisfied Governor Liyel Imoke in his military camouflage costume described the carnival as a huge success and promised that the state would continue to put facilities in place to expand its tourist influx. He said what the carnival tries to do was “to produce an excellent product .”
Answering questions on what the state had been able to do to attract both local and in-bound tourists, Imoke said: “Our emphasis should be not just on the local market, but on the sub- regional market in terms of attendance. When I say domestic, I am looking at the domestic expatriate community, as well as our own people who want to have a good time. They all come to Calabar for that.”
He emphasized the fact that the Cross River’s development as a destination is not just for the annual month-long festival.
He said: “The key thing for us is that we are not just trying to develop a one-month event calendar, we are introducing a number of key things. We have the Jazz Festival, Mountain Race, and we are trying to introduce one or two things into our calendar, but beyond what we have in our calendar, we are trying to focus on our domestic market. In that regard, Calabar is the third in the country, behind Lagos and Abuja . We think we would overtake Abuja once our international conference centre is completed.”
Asked whether the appreciable number of tourists currently trooping annually to the carnival was what he envisaged, former Governor of Cross River State, Mr. Donald Duke, said: “It is a game of traffic .You know Calabar is the end of Nigeria.From here, you are in Cameroon, so it is not Benin or Onitsha where people pass through. If it were Benin or Onitsha, put a few things, people will pass through and spend money and all that. Except you have business here, you don’t have cause to come. So, what we were trying to do is to create it as a destination. It is not a novel idea. That is what Las Vegas is all about; that is what London is even all about. If you take out the traffic, London is dead, right? So, you need to have pivotal that attracts people to come.
“Tinapa is one of them, Obudu cattle is another. When eventually, I hope soon, Tinapa is fully functional, we expect to have about three million people visiting in the cause of a year. You envisage it, if three million people come here in the cause of a year and each one spends one hundred thousand naira, that is three hundred billion naira, and when you add the multiplier effects, it is over a trillion naira that would fuel the economy.
“You know, I grieve when people say it is white elephant, such people don’t think outside the box. When we were here, we had to look at Cross River State and ask: if we were a county, what would we do? We can’t depend on the federation account; let us try and develop an economy; we are in the Niger Delta.
“There is a lot of money in the Niger Delta, but we are not part of the money produced in the Niger Delta. So, how do we create an environment where all that money in the Niger Delta or a good chunk of it comes to Cross River? And this is it: this is a free zone, in other words, anything other than dangerous weaponry is free to come in here. So, what would take Nigerians to Dubai to London and all that , ordinarily, you should be able to find it here. That is the catchment, that is why people should come here.
“I hope with the AMCON take over, they will get it right. I saw the advert for new management and all that. I spoke to their management and I think they came to interview me on what was my original concept and I spoke to them. If they could actualize it, this will be one of the most sought- after destinations in all of Nigeria.
“So, the traffic that you see here in December, which is in isolation, just for the Christmas period will become a normal thing. So, throughout the year, you will have traffic, the hoteliers will make a lot of money, the restaurateurs will make a lot of money, transporters will make a lot of money. You just open a shop, something will happen because you have people coming in to buy. That is what it is all about. It is not a novel thing. It is a very simple idea .If Dubai did it, Las Vega has done it. Las Vegas is in the middle of nowhere.
“And when Bugsy (Siegel), the guy who started Las Vegas, he was a mafia guy, started it ,it was in the era of prohibition, everything was prohibited: alcohol and so on. He went to the governor of Nevada and said I wanted to start the Sin City.You should give me a legislation, one mile, that was what they called the strip, one mile where all the prohibitions would take place. You could gamble, the sex trade and so on, everything you could do it here. The governor said as long as it didn’t cost us money, fine. He got the money from the mafia and told them in five years they would get their money back. Unfortunately it did not happen that way, so the mafia killed him. That was the story of La Vegas.
“And take out Las Vegas from Nevada, the economy will collapse. Dubai did the same thing; Atlantic City is about the same thing; just create an avenue where people can come. So, here we have casinos, shops that you will not find anywhere in Nigeria or West Africa because most of the goods are prohibited because you know you can’t legally import clothes into Nigeria, you can bring in any of these things, and because t is duty free, it will be cheaper than even finding it in the United Kingdom because in the United Kingdom you are paying the taxes, the VATs and all that, here everything is duty free, so it makes more sense to come here and shop. People will say oh God! If it is shopping, this is where to be.
“This is what we are trying to do. It is not easy, people just think that when you put up a building, you’ve done it all. No, you’ve got to get the management, you’ve got to get the commitment, you’ve got to get the passion. This is the work of passion, this cost 500 million dollars. Cross River State didn’t have 500 million dollars; what made this work was the passion and I had to get passion to be infectious. I had to infect Obasanjo with the passion; I had to infect his government with the passion and they all saw what we were trying to do and supported it.
“Every state must have its economy and that is what forms the national economy. So, every state must identify something that it has a comparative advantage in. It may not be this; it may be agriculture; it may be something. It may even be cement production .
“Take a state like Cross River, we could say we want to make cement our number one thing because we have 20 billion tones of limestone, that is the estimate. That can support 10 huge cement factories and we could be cement producers for all of Nigeria. Every state must find its own niche. I went to Kebbi State the other day, Kebbi can produce all the mangoes this country needs. Mangoes just grow wild there. I think the responsibility of every governor is to find the niche of his state and enhance it. That is the only way we can grow.
“Once again, Cross River State has put up a terrific spectacle that left every visitor satisfied and asking for more. It could only lead one thing: a steady increase in number of visitors to Calabar and Destination Cross River will be the best for it. “