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Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Abubakar
Sadiq Mohammed, spoke with journalists before the closing ceremony of the Abuja
Carnival held at Eagle Square on Tuesday, November 30. Mohammed discussed
issues surrounding the hosting of the 2010 fiesta tagged the Jubilee Carnival.

Funding the carnival

The Abuja Carnival is a government initiative initially funded
by government. It was based on the premise that when government creates
awareness about its benefits, the appropriate funding will come from the
organised private sector. For up to four years, government was able to fund it
though it was expected that a carnival of this nature should be fully funded by
the private sector. The private sector has a lot to gain if they can fund it in
two ways; as a brand and as a corporate social responsibility. We have tried to
show them over the years that it is a Nigerian brand they can leverage upon.

We have tried to market it to organisations we feel should key
into supporting Abuja Carnival. It has been supported for a while by some
corporate organisations in their own small ways but it needs more than that.
That is why government has been withdrawing funding because if you look at
carnivals all over the world, they are not government funded. Even local
carnivals in Nigeria have a lot of support from the private sector more than
the Abuja Carnival; the Calabar Carnival, the Port Harcourt Carnival. If we
improve on our marketing, we should be able to fund Abuja Carnival and even
earn from it. That’s our target.

Preparations

The committee was inaugurated early this year and going forward,
after this carnival, we intend to immediately sit down, x-ray it and kick start
the process for the next carnival. I can assure you that we have some ideas of
engaging the committee beyond just a mandate.

This is in order to ensure planning because for anything to
succeed you must plan properly and it is our belief this time around that we
have to plan early. Of course, you have to keep members of the committee beyond
just a carnival. In that direction, we will improve and you can be sure that
before the end of this year or early next year, this will be our objective.

The 2010 Carnival budget

Unfortunately, there are still releases. As for the expenditure,
I would probably say after the carnival because we are still spending from what
has been released. I don’t have it at my fingertips. At the end of the day, the
accounting officer will be able to tell the press through the appropriate
officer what has been expended on the carnival. From there, you will see the
real constraint and appreciate the position of the committee and the ministry
vis-a-vis what you have seen on ground in the carnival.

Selling off the carnival
as a product

For now, it will be very difficult. How do you coordinate the
participation of states if a private organisation is in charge? We are just
trying to be coordinators because government backing brings the participating
states and other nationalities. If that is not there, you may find it extremely
difficult for the private sector to organise and invite the states. I believe
private organisations can be involved and they are involved to the extent that
they are part of the management team. They can be involved to the extent that
they can buy into this product. If you give out the carnival to somebody, the
problem you may encounter is how to mobilise participating states.

NAFEST and Abuja Carnival

These are products in the arts and culture sector but they are
different products. We know certainly what a carnival is; carnival emphasises
more on creativity apart from just the culture aspect. And that is what we are
trying to do because the major challenge we had over this last period, though
things have improved tremendously, is that people seem to come to the carnival
the same way they go to NAFEST. That’s why people have the notion that carnival
and NAFEST are the same. They are not. The challenge we had this year of
hosting NAFEST close to the carnival was because of some communication problem
we had with the hosting state.

As for the financial challenges, I believe that each participating
state, aside from probably de-emphasising sponsorship from the corporate world,
has a budget. They should be able to focus that they have these two events in a
year. They are two distinct activities; you should make preparations to fund
them separately.

They are two different products; you in the critical sector
certainly know that they are different products. It’s for you to tell the
world, to tell Nigerians the differences and we will ensure we continue to
maintain the time interval we are supposed to maintain. NAFEST normally holds
in October; the first or second week of October, and we still will like hosting
states to make arrangements to host within that period while Abuja Carnival
continues where it is. We are now talking about in-bound tourism; NAFEST is not
a product we sell to the outside world as we sell the Abuja Carnival. They are
distinct products and in terms of content, they are supposed to be separate.
That’s what we are now trying to ensure, that the content reflects the true carnival
package.