We Are Using Adire To Promote Nigerian Economic, Tourism Potential In Austria

Mr Oluyemi Ogundele is the coordinator of the Nigerian Cultural Festival. He speaks on the preparatory about the Adire Festival, taking place in Vienna on July 4, 2020.

What is the Nigeria Cultural Festival and Adire Carnival in Vienna is all about?

The idea came in 2013 of having a Nigerian cultural festival and to have a carnival. We came up with the idea of bringing in our own textile to show them that we also have our own fabrics. I am the coordinator of the Nigeria Cultural Festival and Adire Carnival in Vienna. It is a bi-annual event organised by the Egbe Omo Oduduwa, Austria in collaboration with the Nigerian Embassy in Austria. The event is to foster a friendly relationship with our host country, Austria. It is also to promote the Nigerian cultural heritage and tourism. Above all, the Adire Carnival in Vienna is also to help the Nigerian economy by supporting the small and medium-scale industries, especially the weak textile industry. We export over 1000 bundles of adire fabrics to Austria every year.

What is the link between the Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the Adire Cultural Festival?

It is the Egbe Omo Oduduwa that actually started the Nigerian Carnival with adire. Although there are also other cultural organisations but this Adire Carnival is sponsored and powered by Egbe Omo Oduduwa. The adire that we are exporting is purely a Nigerian fabric. We do come to Nigeria to buy and take it to Austria. We sow them into different styles and we jumped into the streets in a carnival in Vienna in 2013. We were happy with the way the Austrians received it.

Since then, we have been having the carnival every two years. Actually, we wanted to make it a yearly event but for financial constraints as there was no budget from anybody; we were funding ourselves from our pockets. We have had it three times and we are going to hold the fourth one by July 4, 2020. It has gone far more than the Adire Carnival alone. This year, we are going to have a Nigerian/Austrian business forum, where we will have interactions to discuss business. We are going to have the Nigerian Cultural Festival where every ethnic group from Nigeria, including Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Edo, Fulani and others would be dancing on the streets, wearing adire and holding the Nigerian National Flag.

In essence, we want to use the Adire Carnival and the Nigerian Cultural Festival to promote tourism in Nigeria.
Apart from tourism and cultural promotion, you talked about helping the Nigerian economy…
That was what we just did Thursday, last week, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital for the unveiling of the 2020 Carnival Fabric. Whenever we are doing this carnival, we do come to Nigeria to buy adire in bundles. This last visit, we just purchased 500 pieces, produced in Abeokuta. For the production, I don’t how many people would have been involved in the process of tying and dyeing, drying, ironing and packaging them for the people who sold them. But if you look at 500 pieces, that is about N2 million pumped into the adire tying and dyeing industry in Ogun State and a lot of people will benefit from that singular effort.

So, it is not about tourism and cultural promotion alone. It is also about helping the local business to grow. That is why we used the Conference Hall of the Abeokuta Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ABEOCCCIMA) for the unveiling of the 2020 Carnival Fabric. This is to let the people of Austria and other parts of the world know that the adire is not being bought in China or elsewhere. We come to the source here to pick it up.

If we can pick 500 pieces of Adire for use in Austria, with about 10,000 of Nigerian population, in Germany, if they hold a carnival and can have more than 500 pieces and Nigerians in Italy do same thing, they will be helping the Nigerian economy in a great way. If we can come up with about 5,000 pieces of adire, that is going to generate more than N50 million to the Nigerian economy. This is something, apart from the remittances we normally do, but unfortunately, people are only concentrating on the remittances that we are doing. But by our action in promoting the Adire Carnival, we are also helping the small and middle-scale industry.

How supportive has the government been, both at the federal and state levels?

At the federal level, there is nothing; it is a total zero. We wrote them but nothing is coming up. But at the state level, some of them have been very helpful in terms of moral support.
The Ogun State government, each time, sends its officials and it has been supporting with some small amount of money, but, at least, that is a good gesture, even if at all the money will be used to buy costumes for the carnival. We also have the support of the Osun State government during the time of Governor Rauf Aregbesola. He personally attended the third carnival when he came to visit the museum of Adunni Olorisha, the late Austrian who lived, became the priest of the Osun Osogbo shrine and died in the State. We also invited Lagos State and the government sent a delegation to attend the carnival. So, the moral support has been there at the state level, but nothing is coming from the Federal Government.

The Special Adviser to the President on Diaspora, Honourable Abike –Erewa was with you during one of the events. Is there any commitment from her, either personally or officially?

She normally attends our event. The photo you saw was when she was in the House of Representatives as the chairman, House Committee on Diaspora. Now that she has become the Chief Executive Officer of the Diaspora Commission, she has promised to continue to give us the moral support. But it is a one-man show, even as she has promised to be at the forthcoming coming event in July.

Where do you hope to see your organisation as regards Nigerian/Austrian relationship, in the next few years given the present negative image of the country in some parts of the world?

We are not expecting so much from the Nigerian government. In fact, we are trying to give back to Nigeria some of what we have benefitted; some of us have studied abroad. We are not expecting anything from the Nigerian government except the moral support. Austria is well organised. I have been here for quite a long time. Austria is not a country like Lebanon or South Africa. We are a bit more organised and we have very functioning associations, both NIDOE Austria and the Nigerian Community and, of course, all the other Nigerian ethnic nationalities here as well and we have a very functioning embassy. So, we see ourselves as one. So, we are not having much expectation from the Nigerian government per see.

We believe sincerely that some of the problems we are having with our host-countries are due to the way we do things. When you are in a foreign country and you get involved in some activities that are against the laws of that country, like financial fraud and all that, the image of Nigeria all over the world is not very good. But we believe that what we are doing in Austria is another way to showcase Nigeria in a very good light. At least, there are some areas we can use to let our host-countries be more receptive to us. This is better than to have issues of Nigerian taking drugs or being here for prostitution or financial fraud. We see our activities to change.