Oya Festival 2016: Why we celebrate Oya cultural – tourism festival —Otunba Gani Adams

It is another wonderful opportunity to acknowledge you all for your supports to our festivals.

Let me begin by welcoming you to another edition of the Oya Festival, one of our efforts to propagate and promote the Yoruba Cultural Heritage. This is the fourth edition of this programme, I want to say thank you to all of us, who started this journey together.

I also want to appreciate those who joined the train and have continued the journey with us.

More than ever, it is very important to appreciate your supports and contribution, especially, when we consider the harsh economic situation in the country.

Your invaluable time and resources have continued to propel us to this height.

During the last year celebration of the Oya Festival, the reality of the present economic situation was yet to fully dawn on us.

Things have become more difficult since then, but we have remained resolute and committed to promote the Yoruba culture.

The concept of Omoluabi is a Yoruba value that I cherish. We have continued to uphold the Omoluabi concept with our continuous gathering to promote the Yoruba deities, legends, spirits gods and heritage .

There is no gain saying that Oya remains a very important goddess of the Yoruba race.

Oya is a quintessential woman of virtue   as we continue to remember Sango, the role of Oya in the god of Thunder’s success cannot in anyway be over emphasised.

What usually comes to people’s  mind, when they hear Ira is Oya .

It is so because the heritage has added to the historical tourism.

To many people, Oya symbolises Ira, There is nothing too big to celebrate a heritage of this magnitude.

Among the virtues of Oya, which our women of nowadays should emulate is her supportive attribute History tells us of the support that Oya gave to Sango to ensure a successful reign.

It is a common saying that ‘To every successful man, there must be a woman.’

Oya was no doubt behind the heroic success of Sango.

Oya symbolises, what a good mother should be, not just to her children but to younger women around her.

Those of us, who have read a little about Sango can attest to the motherly role of Oya, even to Sango’s other wives.

She played the role of a mother to all members of the kingdom, where her husband reigned .

It is also noteworthy to note that apart from just being Sango’s wife like other wives, Oya was herself a very powerful woman.

That however did not stop her from being respectful to her husband and neither did that make her a demi god over other wives.

Oya in her days was humility personified, It takes humility to be very powerful and yet be submissive.

Only few women of today can hide their pride and ego in submission to their husbands, even when the husband is of a lower status and position to the wife.

Our years of gathering to promote the Yoruba culture and tradition will not be in vain; if only what we preach and advise are adhered to. We have continued to preach to Yoruba sons and daughters at home and in the Diaspora and we have not stopped advising our traditional rulers and heads of government on what to do.

Once again, I want to reiterate my call on the Federal Government to look inward and let us find a solution to our problems.

If the past governments had listened to our advice, I am quite sure that there won’t be any need for borrowing again.

I was very appalled, when I heard the desire of the Federal Government of Nigeria to borrow 30 billion dollars again; my inability to comprehend why we have not harnessed our rich cultural potentials necessitated the surprise.

We have said it times without number that we should begin to make money from tourism.

Developed countries like France, England, Brazil and even United Arab Emirate rely on tourism, as their source of revenue.

Other  African countries like, Kenya, South Africa and others have challenged us with the development of their tourism potentials, but Nigeria has focused its attention on oil.

The dwindling global price of oil should have served as an impetus to propel us to channel more energy to tourism development.

Every year, Saudi Arabia and Israel   make much money through religious tourism; we have the traditional religion in Nigeria. Why don’t we explore the potentials and begin to make foreign currencies from it.

Our cultural sites can compete favourably with well known sites all over the world, but we have not developed them.

We wait for others to come and develop the sites for us, these are sites that can generate foreign exchange at a time, when the exchange rate for dollar has gone exorbitantly high.

We at Olokun Festival Foundation will continue to strive towards ensuring that tourism development is achieved.

We will continue to proffer solutions to the challenges of tourism development in Nigeria.

More than ever, Nigeria needs to fully explore tourism potentials instead of wanting to borrow money, which may later become a burden on the country, whatever we realise from tourism can be added to the earnings from oil, which we have relied on, over the years.

I sincerely hope that the Federal Government of Nigeria, the various state governors, the local governments and corporate organisations will dedicate more efforts towards ensuring tourism development in Nigeria.”

Text of speech delivered by the chief promoter, Olokun Festival Foundation, Otunba (Dr) Gani Adams during the 2016 edition of the Oya Festival held today Friday 25th of November 2016.