WE'LL MAKE CALABAR CARNIVAL FIRST IN AFRICA –GOV IMOKE

•Street parade
At the just concluded Calabar Carnival in Cross Rivers State, thousands of tourists from within and outside Nigeria trooped to the venue to be part of the yearly ritual.As usual, the carnival gave incredible fun to all, including children, youths and families.

One of the major attractions of the carnival was the Durbar, which saw three children of the Governor of Central Bank, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi riding horses for close to 10 hours. The young princes exuded with joy, while acknowledging cheers from hundreds of participants and admirers.

Dressed in their full Emirate regalias, with the upper and lower parts of their faces covered with white velvet, the three princes became stars at the historic event, just as they added colour to the carnival during daytime and later in the evening that the carnival lasted.

But the Durbar was one of the many attractions which drew both the old and the young to the carnival. Aside the colourful floats mounted by the five bands-Passion Four,Seagul, Freedom, Bayside and Master Blasta, thee were als masquerade displays, as well as bands by such corporate participants like First Bank and Oceanic Bank.

Many of the bands demonstrated their ingenuity in the cfreative interpretation of the theme of the carnival.They reminded the Nigerian people about their culture, history as well as their social and economic potentials. They equally highlighted the country's experience during the slavery, colonial and post colonial eras.

Shortly after the carnival, Governor Lylel Imoke of Cross River State relived the passion of his administration in making the carnival the biggest on the African continent. According to him, government has strated reaping the social and economic gains of the programme since a number of corporate bodies have started identifying with it. Also people have started buiding the culture of attaching the carnival with industrial status. He added that many Nigerians and foreigners now look forward to the carnival withe the hope of realising their touristic and business objectives.

Imoke spoke on a number of issues, noting that each year, the carnival grows witha significant feature or item:

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC GAINS
In fact, one beautiful thing is that there is a huge industry that has come out of it.That is why we now have people selling food, listening to music while selling drinks all through the period. So people don't get bored.

In some areas, people just put up canopies and they would start selling. That's all part of the carnival, while some want to watch but we don't want the carnival to be only about the parade, we want it to be a carnival; everybody is in town having fun.

MAINTAINING SECURITY
Over the years. Calabar has become a tourist destination. You can only achieve this if the people are part of it so you must inculcate that into the people, that you have these people and you have to be enormously respectful of them otherwise they won't return.

Because of this, we send normally send messages out to everyone, that we have so many people coming into the city to have a good time and we want them to have a good time and we don't want any incidences. So we always end up not having any incidences.

Outside of a few reckless people who would get drunk and maybe have an accident or two but in terms of crime rate and so on, we have had to police the areas significantly. As soon as the stadium activities are going on we have the OP-MESA and the police patrolling the streets. We don't have road blocks and checkpoints in Calabar but we have patrol and communication.

ATTRACTING MORE FOREIGNERS AND INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISTS

We like doing things one step at a time. We had a product which we thought was very good. We hadn't gotten it to the stage where we thought it was internationally competitive, but we've gotten it there now. We also had a product which was being produced in a particular part of Nigeria that is called the Niger Delta.

So trying to sell that product beyond our shores was about getting the extra audience. But for us, as a policy, we believe that we should focus first and foremost on the 150million Nigerians. When you focus on the 150million Nigerians, and can bring one percent of them to calabar for the carnival that's 1.5million people, why do we need another foreign audience? They can watch it on TV. So aside seeing it as a concept just for expatriates, this is a show for us and our mission is to show that we can do it and do it as good as anyone else.

In terms of the media, we've always had Channel O,nd a few others here. As we improve on the quality of the product, more of them will come and I believe that gradually we'll get to where we want to get to in this carnival. I think we are making good progress.

BRINGING DURBAR TO THE CARNIVAL
It's just one of the gains of the popularity of the carnival. The unique thing about the carnival is that people always say they've been here for the first time, second and third time or fourth time. It's a good place to come to with the family. You have some dignitaries who have their children come here because the children don't want to hear anything else about where they are going to spend Christmas.

I always tell people that this just speaks so much about the potential for our country.

The Calabar festival started as a Christmas festival, then it became so big and I said since it happens in December, let's just call it a festival. There are things that are Christmas-related and there are things that are not Christmas-related in the festival but the beauty of it is that it's great fun for everybody. '

So, the Calabar festival just has everybody coming from all parts of the country and when I saw the Durbar, I told the CBN governor that I am sure he's never had a Durbar at night but look at how colourful the durbar was at night. The children were all over the place, he had his children, among whom is a four-year-old son riding a horse at the Durbar.

So, that's how much fun it was for everyone. We tried to make it relatively an inexpensive fun so that people can afford to come and enjoy themselves. Whether you are from the north, the south, east or the west, you can come to Calabar, feel free and truly enjoy yourself. And I think to that extent we didn't have any special invitation. I had someone who said to me that their children, they had come last year so they said listen let's go to America for a change, and the children said no way. We want to go to Calabar.

ECONOMIC ADVANTAGES
We have started to realize the benefits from the carnival. One of the things that is extremely beneficial is the fact that because we have a product that has some values, we are now getting sponsors. People are paying big money. So you have First Bank, Oceanic Bank and several other sponsors who are paying big money to have their brands on our product and that's very good. Right now we are even negotiating for title sponsors. There are people who want to rename the carnival as title sponsors. And that's very positive from own side.

But I think the most important thing is the value we create in the economy and we've seen that improve and the people are able to now understand the value.During the first few years of the carnival, nobody would bring out a canopy and set up some chairs and bring some pepper soup for people. Today, people make hundreds of thousands or more, selling their products during the carnival. That's happening. For us as government, the benefit we derive is in the taxes that those who make the money pay.

So, we need to be more efficient in our tax collection and that's what we're trying to do. We've introduced some tourism levies and this is the tax from the consumer not from the hotel owner or the restaurant owner. If you are a visitor to Cross River, you pay a tourism levy of five per cent on whatever it is that you consume and what we've done for the tourism development levy, we now put that aside as revenue generated and use it purely to develop tourism in the state.

Also of course, we have a team of consultants who are doing an economic impact assessment for us. They've gone through the numbers, they've done all the survey, at the end of this we'll know the total visitor strength. But we had people who were pulling out their hair because they couldn't get on the flight. All the flights to Calabar for the last four weeks have been fully booked into Calabar.

The airlines put up extra flights that came in late at night, they were all full. People drove into town. If you look at the stadium, it was full to capacity so there are hundreds of thousands of people in the city. Somebody said to me, I walked round and there were more than a million people watching the events. So for us, I think by next month we should get the results of the economic impact and we'll be able to give people some more concrete numbers in terms of visitors to the city in December.