Guardian

Dr. Samuel Dede is the Director General of the Rivers State Tourism Development Agency (RSTDA), the lead agency in charge of Port Harcourt Carnival otherwise known as CARNIRIV. He spoke with ANDREW IRO OKUNGBOWA during last year’s CARNIRIV celebration

What are the challenges of organising a huge festival like CARNIRIV?

IT comes with challenges, but they are not insurmountable. The first important thing that we wanted to do with the carnival was to impact on the economy of the host community, that is, Rivers State. We set out to employ data services company and they have been giving us reports and it has been positive. People are beginning to warm up to the carnival. We invited people to come out and own the carnival and they have really overwhelmed us with their participation. So, it is a good development.

What directions are those data pointing in terms of achieving the objectives of the carnival?

We are going to make the data available. We had visitors from Trinidad and Tobago and we had a hectic time getting places for them. The hotels were booked. We really had a hectic time getting things in place not because we did not plan for all these but we really did not envisage the huge turnout. It has been really enormous. It was overwhelming, but we are coping with it.

Our website is bursting and the transport system has been really overwhelmed by the number of people. I think that is what the aim of the carnival is about; people must begin to feel the impact of the carnival just the same way that we also expect them to come out as spectators or as volunteers. If you look around, you see over 500 volunteers and some of them have volunteered their services for free; some of them we are going to pay. We are really happy about that.

What was the carnival theme meant to achieve?

The theme for this year’s carnival is ‘Reminiscing our past, consolidating our future.’ It is not unconnected with the Port Harcourt’s 100 years celebration. I think that after 100 years, you should be able to sit down and look at your past and then seriously assure yourself that the future is going to be bright. So, that is what we’ve sat back to look at. If you recall, we had Professor. Wole Soyinka giving us a keynote address at the CARNIRIV colloquium and then we have looked at our culture in the last 100 years, we have looked at our economy. We have looked at the struggle of our people in the last 100 years and I think for sure we are assuring ourselves that the future can only get better.

What is the future of the carnival?

Well, we have a five-year development plan for CARNIRIV and this year is the first year of the development plan, that is why we call it a roadmap for the carnival. The idea is that in the next five years we would have a brand that is recognisable in every part of the world.

From five bands last year (2011), we have 10 because the existing bands that we have are bursting with applications. So, what we have is five new bands, two were created by individuals and we have created another two and one other official band. The membership of these bands is enormous but for purposes of control and administration, we are trying to restrict each to about 450. in some bands, they have registered over 1000. So, we threw out an invitation to our people and they responded in a way that we are even overwhelmed.