Nigeria Commissions the Lagos Black Heritage Festival 2012
Governor Tunde Fashola
GOVERNOR Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State yesterday commissioned an ultra modern art gallery and Exhibition Centre at the Freedom Park, Lagos Island and named it after Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, in recognition of his role in preserving African cultural heritage.
Fashola, also declared the 2012 Lagos Black Heritage Festival (LBHF) open at the Freedom Park…
He said the 2012 festival with theme, “The Black in the Mediterranean Blues” will feature a host of activities that will endear tourists to the country.
The festival will feature parade of masquerades from across states in Nigeria, while other social events such as music, contemporary dance, painting and photo exposition, drama, design and fashion display and cultural explorations will take centre stage in the seven-day event.
According to the festival consultant, Soyinka, who established the theme of the festival, the LBHF 2012 will be launched in series with a cultural exploration of the African – Italian connection.
Soyinka said the choice of Italy was informed by the country’s black connection and her exploits in Eritrea and Ethiopia and the way the Italian government returned some of the stolen African artifacts in its collection, saying that next year edition will be Portugal followed by Brazil.
On the thrust of the festival, he said: “In its effort to broaden and deepen the knowledge of Africa of herself, both historically and contemporaneously, always within the context of Recall and Celebration, the LBHF has embarked on no less a concept than the mapping out of the Black African presence in the Mediterranean under the theme Black Mediterranean.”