Southern Kaduna Festival: A bastion for unity and development

The maiden edition of the Southern Kaduna Festival (SKFest) was held from the 28th to the 30th of December, 2023 at the Kafanchan Township Stadium. Kudos to the initiators, organizers, and participants.

The colorful event was multifaceted and multipurpose: football competition, marathon race, traditional wrestling, archery, beauty pageantry, fashion parade, musical concert, cultural display, paper presentations, award presentations, etc. It attracted the attendance of highly placed dignitaries across Nigeria.

When I was drafted by the Solomon Musa-led SOKAPU as a member of the Constitution Amendment Committee sometime in 2017, I ensured that most of what SKFest is doing now was captured as recommendations in the report of the Committee. I am glad that some of these recommendations are beginning to come to fruition.

Southern Kaduna people have a diverse but intertwined cultural heritage that has not yet been harnessed for the collective benefit of the zone. The zone is yet to appreciate and utilize its economic potential; it is divided along political lines with no clear-cut implementable political and socio-economic work plan; it has seasoned and consummate politicians but without political leadership; it has many chiefdoms without cultural and ethnic cohesion; proliferation of annual cultural days and festivals by the heterogeneous ethnic nationalities and groups in the zone has become boring; tribal and dialectical differences remain a bane despite sharing substantially the same ethnicity; intra-faith denominational differences and prejudices still hold sway; and worse, inter-faith intolerance has held the zone backward for years. As a result of all these, the zone is witnessing retrogressive development.

Therefore, the whole idea of this SKFest is to ensure that the people of Southern Kaduna extraction are united on many fronts, something that has eluded the zone for a long time.

The Festival will allow the indigenes of the zone to come together every year not only to showcase and share their cultural heritage and participate in other events but to also discuss issues of common, collective, and communal interest geared towards the socio-economic, political and cultural development of the zone.

Given the rich natural and agricultural resources and tourist attractions of the zone, SKFest will afford local and foreign investors and other corporate business concerns to invest in the zone, thereby boosting its economic potential and creating jobs and employment for the youth.

The Festival should be upgraded and expanded to include the participation of people from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds and nationalities outside the zone as is being done with the annual Calabar Festival in Cross River State and Argungu Fishing Festival in Sokoto State. To achieve this, SKFest should be registered with the Federal Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and National Orientation as a Nigerian annual festival so that it can acquire both national and international status and recognition.

The presentation of awards to specially recognised and deserving sons, daughters, and other friends and well-wishers of the zone who have distinguishedly contributed to its development will encourage others to do more towards achieving that goal. The criteria for the awards should be based on realistic and stringent metrics so that the awardees will be seen to have justifiably earned them. The considerations for the awards should be merit-based and not political.

The annual awards should be inclusively categorised to cover those who are outstanding in their contributions to the zone in the following areas: public service, academia, military, political representation, traditional institutions, religious institutions, youth, and women. Each area should have one awardee only to make it competitive. An award should be dedicated to one person who is not from the zone but has contributed immensely to its development.

This edition was held in Kafanchan, Jema’a LGA. It should be rotated annually within all the LGAs comprising the zone so that each ethnic nationality or group will have a direct feel of it and a sense of belonging. Therefore, the next edition should be held in another LGA within the zone.

This maiden edition might have witnessed some challenges in terms of funding and other logistics necessary for its smooth sail, but that should not discourage the initiators and organizers. Instead, they should be encouraged to put more effort and work harder towards improving on it next time. It can only get better. A bird does not change its feathers because the weather is bad. And, beating a gold makes it shine brighter.

It is my prayer that SKFest will become the platform for Southern Kaduna people to get it right.