Argungu, March 13, 2020 The Federal Government says it will facilitate investments from African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) for the development of infrastructure around the Argungu international fishing and cultural festival to attract tourists.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed disclosed this in Argungu after the traditional wrestling, boxing, tug of war competitions which are parts of the events staged for the festival.
Afreximbank, is a pan-African multilateral trade finance institution created in 1993 under the auspices of the Aftican Development Bank, with the headquarter in Cairo, Egypt.
The Minister underscored the need to build infrastructure around the festival to take care of the thousands of participants, spectators and tourists locally and internationally.
He said the government was specifically encouraged to take the step because of the unprecedented crowd at the 2020 festival even after over ten years hiatus.
Mohammed said the infrastructure would take care of the regular challenges associated with the festival including crowd control, audience measurement attract ing nvestors locally and international.
“Hopefully by next month, we will be in Cairo to make a strong case for making available funds for investment in tourism infrastructure such as modern arena, purposefully built conference Hall and amphi-theatre
“You can imagine what 50,000 capacity arena would have done to Argungu festival today because I am sure that we have more than 50,000 people around that wanted to come in.
“As a matter of fact, we have more people outside the arena of this programme that wanted to come into the arena.
“Because there is a market now, we can make a strong case for investments on infrastructure on the festival,” he said.
The Minister said that the Argungu fishing festival already have a deep , elaborate and sellable contents with audience.
He said participants at the competitions are not just from Argungu and Kebbi, but cut across states in the country while contestants also participated from neighbouring countries like Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
“What struck me most is the popularity of these sports and as they cut across the entire community, young old women girls boys and the participants are not just from Kebbi state some came from as far as Niger, Cameroon to compete.
This will help to build Unity and regional integration and cooperations in addressing our common challenges like insecurity.
“Yes I know that people complained that it could have been better organised and the crowd control could have been better managed.
“I agreed with the criticism, but the positive side of these is that we have a festival that is already popular, we have a content that is popular among the audience
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“What we need to do now is to build the infrastructure around that product and that is exactly what we are trying to do,” he said.
The Minister noted that tourism generally is local at it’s formative stage before it will develop globally.
“We have very strong local tourism that will attract international tourists and I am also impressed that after almost 11 years of hiatus,the event came back with a bang.
People are very enthusiastic and passionate and what we can see now is that despite many years it stopped we have not lost audience,” he said.
Mohammed said the organisers must engage in aggressive marketing adding that investors too must not shy but understand that the creative industry and tourism are gradually becoming the frontiers of the economy.
The Minister thanked President Muhammadu Buhari who declared the festival open and participated in the agriculture show and other events.
He said the show witnessed by the President was agricultural aspect of tourism and it was meant to showcase the result of federal government investment and commitment to agriculture.
“We saw the rice pyramids which is of about 45000 bags of paddy of 100kg and the farmers have been able to assure us that they can be able to supply all our rice Mills with paddy.
The rice Mills also confirm that they are expanding their capacity.
Overall what we saw is the result of backward integration in agriculture and the processing of arious new products made from rice groundnuts, sorghum and other agricultural produce.
The Minister stressed that the shows was a testimony to the fact that Nigeria is onl agricultural revolution .
He assured that the federal government would continue to provide infrastructure such as roads, airports, railway security as well as deliberate policies to boost tourism.
Mohammed therefore charged the state and local governments, who are the custodians of the heritage to invest more on creative industry and see it as an area where they can build their legacies, generate fund and create jobs.
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