Adams Calls For Cultural Revival

National Coordinator of the Oodua People’s Congress, OPC and Chief Promoter, Olokun Festival Foundation, Otunba Gani Adams has called for a cultural revival among the Yoruba to transform the society into an orderly and peaceful nation.

Otunba Adams who made this call during the maiden celebration of the Aje (Wealth) Festival at the Oba’s Palace in Onigbongbo Lagos, said revival of our culture would lead to the promotion of those tendencies that would continue to bind us together as a people and nation.

“This task we assign to ourselves to instill and develop cultural consciousness in our lives so as to create an endurable environment which will promote economic development and also serve as a mechanism for sustainable partnership between us, as a people,” he stated.

The OPC national coordinator explained that the need to celebrate Odun Aje was informed by the need to effect a radical change in the institutional, social as well as popular attitudes, customs and beliefs.

“Our resolve to celebrate the wealth festival (Odun Aje) is to create a dimensional process that will involve reorganisation and reorientation of the entire social and economic system,” he explained further.

The OPC leader described wealth as the abundance of valuable resources or material possession or the control of such assets, adding that the celebration of wealth is as old as the world itself.

“In Africa, there are many countries that adopted cultural approach in solving internal chism. Many of these countries attach absolute consideration to the celebration of tradition to promote cultural values. The Mombasa Carnival in Kenya every November features parades and floats. The festival symbolises peace, unity, wealth and prosperity for the people.

“As stakeholders in the nation’s development, we are of the opinion that national integration could only be fostered through self directed values

“As a people and a nation bound with common language, cultures and norms, it is imperative, therefore, that we all have fundamental roles to play to ensure paradigm shift from Martian’s culture to indigenous and appreciable cultural identities,” Adams stated.

Present at the event were traditional rulers, government officials and members of the OPC.