Why we must revive FESTAC ’77 now — Abioye, festival chair

The Festival of Arts and Culture tagged FESTAC ’77 brought together thousands of participants from across Africa and the diaspora in one of the continent’s biggest cultural gatherings, aimed at promoting pan-African unity and Black civilisation, almost 50 years ago. Chairman of the FESTAC Africa Renaissance Festival, Yinka Abioye, speaks with WALE AKINSELURE on plans to revive the festival, which last held in 1977 FILE: Yinka Abioye

Why is it necessary to revive FESTAC now, almost 50 years after the event?

The first reason why there’s a need to bring it back is because of all the things we are seeing in the world today that are not going very well for the continent. FESTAC actually started in 1966 by Leopold Senghor (former President of Senegal) and our other leaders back then, as a tool to bring our people together, in terms of removing the colonial line that divides the countries, but more than anything else, removing colonialism from our minds. So, that was what FESTAC’77 was supposed to do. And it was supposed to be something that continued every two to four years subsequently, so that Africans can get to know one another and realise that the white mind just put the line there to divide us unnecessarily. As you probably know, the Biafran War started in 1967 and lasted for about three to four years, blocking Nigeria from doing the second one. So, the second one did not happen until 1977. The good thing was that Nigeria had money and power back then and had a lot of things going for itself. It was just a time when a lot of the African countries were getting freed, including the Angolans, the Mozambiques, but more than anything else, the Soweto in 1976. So, ‘77 was very big, was successful. You have the data on what happened in ‘77. But after ‘77, if we had been riding on the back of ‘77, Africa would have integrated a little bit more, but we lost that integration. So, we brought it back in 2022 – 45 years after 1977, and we have been doing it for the last four consecutive years, never to die again. We will do Senegal this year, to commemorate 60 years since 1966, but the big one is 1977, which will be 50 years in 1977 in Nigeria. Hopefully, we can use it to reignite pan-Africanism again. Look at what’s going on in the industry: Ghana doesn’t like Nigeria. Nigeria doesn’t like Ghana. South Africa doesn’t like Ghana. South Africa doesn’t like Nigeria. The continent is actually moving backwards. There’s no better time than to do something that brings all of us back again. So, that is the reason for FESTAC, and that’s why we continue to aggressively utilise it to bring our people together.

FESTAC ’77 aimed to promote African unity. What concrete impact do you expect FESTAC 2027 to have in that regard?

Why did FESTAC stop after 1977? Do you think African governments failed to sustain it?

There are two reasons people give. Some people believe that the colonial masters didn’t want us to ever come together like that again with that much power, which I don’t think we can blame them forever. Some people also believe that it is a lack of focus on our side. The 1960s and 70s, even into the 80s, saw a lot of coups d’état in Africa. So, African leaders were distracted a lot. Ethiopia was supposed to come after Nigeria, and they were fighting Eritrea. So, you can understand why they died. What is difficult to understand now is why it’s difficult to wake people up for them to jump and bring back yesterday. Our leaders in the 50s, in the 60s, and in the 70s have roads named after them in different countries. You don’t see that anymore. So, I think the commitment of One Africa is not there like it used to be anymore. We also need to raise our leaders’ awareness on that.

Given perceptions of instability across Africa, especially coups, what strengths should the continent be projecting instead?

They are the ones who are causing most of the coups. Practically almost every one of our coups is Western world-manufactured for their own benefit. So, we need to be smart enough not to be used against one another again. But, as a continent, we are the ones who fed the Western world for the last 200 to 300 years. Even China has been riding on our back for the last 50 years. We are the ones with the biggest space, land, and arable land. We are the ones with the youth. We are the ones with the minerals, the rare earth, as well as all the other precious minerals; we have everything. So we have no excuse. What we need are leaders who understand all of these and know how to extract those values. One of the things we try to do with FESTAC is to teach the African pride, not an empty pride, the pride that tells you who you are and your worth and how you spin that worth into something of value. We have the brains because our children are the ones leading a lot of organisations globally. So if we’re not smart, we wouldn’t have so many children in corporations in the West appointed to lead a lot of organisations. So we have everything working for us. We don’t have any excuses.

Which governments have made firm commitments to the FESTAC renaissance in recent years?

Yes, we had a big welcome in the island and the mainland of Tanzania. Tanzania Island has its own president who also reports to the overall president of the nation, who is on the mainland, Samia Hassan. Dr Hussein Mwinyi, who is the president of Zanzibar, was very supportive. He met with us. He gave us his support. He made some announcements, and we got some love from that angle. We also got some love from ex-leaders of Tanzania, like Jakayi Kikwete and other leaders like that, which is why we brought it into Arusha, Tanzania. The third one was in Kenya. We got great support from the late Raila Odinga. We got great support from the governor of the area, Prof Anyang Nyong’o, the father of Lupita Nyong’o, who is a big Hollywood actress. Her father was extremely supportive. So far, I would say I would put him as number one, and of course, Baba Olusegun Obasanjo and some other leaders outside of those countries. In Ghana, we had some support. It could have been better, but we had the minister’s support and some other organisations within the country, or maybe it’s because they have other things going on. With Nigeria, in 1977, it took three to five years to plan, 1977, and it’s the might of the project. Now the project is organised by a smaller group of people. But the good thing is that we have over a year now that we want to launch. So we are just in the process of writing letters to the presidency and writing letters to the ministry to ask them to get involved.

Are you concerned that the 2027 election politics could overshadow FESTAC?