Preparations for Argungu fishing festival hot up

Ten years after the Argungu International Fishing and Cultural Festival was rested for the inability of successive governments to sustain the socioeconomic and cultural festival of the Kebbi people, there is a ray of hope for a comeback as preparations for this year’s edition have started.

As part of the commitment to make the festival a mainstay for the state’s economy and to reclaim its space in the centre stage of Nigeria’s festival calendar, the Kebbi State government has inaugurated a 16-member committee for the 2020 edition.

Inaugurating the committee on behalf of the Kebbi State government, the deputy governor, Col. Samaila Yombe Dabai (retd), enjoined members of the committee to work hard to accomplish the task before them.

The committee has the deputy governor as the chairman; the permanent secretary, Ministry of Commerce as the acting secretary, while other members include secretary to the state government (SSG), the speaker of the House of Assembly, Commissioner of Police, representative of Argungu Emirate and commissioners of different ministries in the state.

Addressing committee members at their maiden sitting, the deputy governor said “We are all aware that the Argungu Fishing Festival is a unique international event that takes place in Kebbi State yearly, but for some circumstances, the event did not hold for the past few years.

“However, the Governor of Kebbi State, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, has summoned courage to see that this event takes place this year. We must thank him for that singular effort.”

In his remarks, the former director-general of Argungu Fishing Festival (AFF), Alhaji Abubakar C Ladan, who is also a commissioner-designate, informed the committee that before the festival ceased to hold regularly about 10 years ago, the government had stopped funding it because the festival independently didn’t generate enough revenue to sponsors itself.

Ladan, who listed strategies and plans to be adopted for the successful holding of the event, said that the state government and the Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Samaila Mohammad Mera, would have to visit President Muhammadu Buhari to personally invite him for the event as part of diplomatic tradition they employed in the previous editions of the festival.

Also, the director-general of the National Council of Arts and Culture (NCAC), Otunba Olusegun Runsewe, in his sustainable spirit threw his weight behind the resuscitation of the festival as he promised to give the event the maximum support needed to make it worthwhile.

“We will use Argungu to make a bold statement that indeed it is a festival that unites, and we will continue to support it henceforth because it is one of the first in the country with UNESCO endorsement,” he said.

Runsewe made this call recently when he received a delegation of the Emirate led by the Emir of Argungu, Alhaji Samaria Mohammed Mere. He said apart from his cultural mandate, he is emotionally connected to the festival which has a long history with a rich cultural content that remains unrivalled globally.