Gani Adams Rolls Out Drums For Olokun Festival

BEING THE TEXT OF SPEECH DELIVERED BY OTUNBA (DR) GANI ADAMS, CHIEF PROMOTER, OLOKUN FESTIVAL FOUNDATION, AT THE 2014, PRESS CONFERENCE TO MARK THE EDITION OF OLOKUN FESTIVAL, IN WHITE HOTEL, IKEJA ON 5TH OCTORBER 2014.

Members of Olokun Festival Foundation,
Members of Oodua People’s Congress,
Members of press,
Fourth Members of the Realm,
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

I welcome you all to the press conference to signal the commencement of the 2014 edition of Olokun festival.

But let me begin by saying a big thank you to all of you for standing by us all these years. I and the entire leadership of Olokun Festival Foundation say a big thank you to all of you.

You are here because of the love you have for our organization and our effort to promote the culture and tradition of Yoruba race.

You are all aware that we are gathered here today to announce to the world the programmes for the 2014 edition of Olokun Festival. When the festival started in 2002, it was like a mustard seed, with a small beginning.

But over a decade down the line, I am happy to tell the world that the mustard seed that we sow about eleven years ago has germinated and grown into a big tree with shades proving cover for several people all over the world.

This year’s edition of Olokun Festival kicked off with fanfare last Thursday, October 2, with prayer to almighty at the Oworonshoki playing ground.

And today, we are moving further with the other programmes, with the grand finale billed for October 24, at the Suntan Beach in Badagry.

We have carefully selected beautiful programmes for this edition of the festival.

These are indeed festivals that will confirm our organization as one of the best custodian of our culture and tradition.

As part of our effort to enrich the study and research into Yoruba culture, history and tradition, this year’s festival lecture will hold at the airport Hotel, Lagos, on Thursday, October 16.

And in our tradition, we have secured the service of a university lecturer to do justice to the topic of the lecture.

In the same vein, we are continuing with our tradition of teaching the young ones about our culture and tradition.

In that direction, the Olokun Quiz competition will hold on October 14. Aside from the beautiful prizes lined up for the winning schools, Olokun Festival Foundation is doing its best that the completion will begin to attract the best schools across the country.

I think the time has come for all of us to begin to understand the logic behind the celebration of the Olokun goddess. Many people have described the worship of these goddesses as fetish practice, but nothing can be farther from the truth than this.

Such people need to ask themselves what they know about the importance of water to the existence of man.

Wherever you find water, you find life, The use of water are simply too numerous to list.

Aside from drinking, washing and cooking, water is an integral part of man’s survival.

We travel from one country to another on water, eat sea foods that do our bodies a great deal of goodness, yet some people still don’t appreciate the greatness of the sea.

God, in His wisdom, created all these things for our use.
The book of Psalm, chapter 24; verses 1-2, says: “The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

“For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.”

You cannot claim to love God if you don’t love His creations. All over the world, I have not seen any country that condemns God’s creations like we do in Nigeria. Rather, what other countries do is to promote them and use them for the benefit of their country.

For example, the Table Mountain in South Africa is known to generate funds for that country. Same can be done here if we are willing to do what is right.

What is our government doing to promote Oke-idanre, Oke-Ibadan, Olumo rock, Zuma rock, and other important heritage to make tourism attraction in our country.

Instead of that Nigerian continue demonize our heritage because of foreign religion, which does not happen in any develop country in the world and this does not happen in country of the colonial master or missionary that this religion came from, I think it is high time for Nigeria to shine their eyes about this issue.

At this juncture, I would like send this appeal to our Obas all over Yoruba land.

They should see themselves as the custodians of our culture and tradition. Therefore, let the Obas begin to promote the cultural festivals of their people.

In doing this, their sons and daughters would be encouraged to come back home to contribute to the development of their fatherland.

And this would go a long way into contributing to the economic development of their towns.
The same appeal would go to Yoruba in the Diaspora, It is time that they begin to promote the culture and tradition of Yoruba land anywhere they are.

They can start this by making sure that they wear Yoruba traditional attire every Sunday.

In doing this, they will not only be promoting Yoruba culture, they will also be making a statement about their identity to the entire world.
Meanwhile, I want to call on the state and local government authorities across the south west.

Let them begin to provide funds for the monarchs to celebrate the cultural festivals of their people.

This will not only engender peace and unity among the people of the state, it will also go a long way improve the economic development of these communities, as the festivals would begin to attract both local and foreign tourists who would come to spend money to help the local economy.

Olokun Festival Foundation have decided to acquire some land beside the badagry beach lagos state, that will be permanent site for the festival and will be one of the popular tourist destination in Africa, and we have made an arrangement to partner with Chinese investor on this project, and we are appealing to Lagos state government to fast track the process of the document of the land so that the project can commence next year,
The project will cost not less than 50 million dollars.

This will help to enhance the promotion of the festival, as it has grown to a status that can rival any other festival anywhere in the world.

We also call for the recognition of Olokun Festival by UNESCO, the same way it has recognized Osun and Ifa.

We make this case for Olokun because of its global relevance. Olokun controls all the big oceans of the world.

So, its recognition by UNESCO would help to put this great goddess in the right place.

I promise you all that these new pageants will add colour and fun that our involvement in pageantry has been known for.

Thank you very much everybody.

Otunba Dr Gani Adams,
Chief Promoter,
Olokun Festival Foundation