Branding Nigeria with “Owambe”

In the Southwest, life in itself is enough reason to party. There is a long list of reasons to throw parties and if you exhaust the list, you are most welcome to create fresh reasons.

Someone once told me that there is a party every weekend in Ijebu town and any weekend there wasn’t a party, a party was thrown to celebrate the fact that there wasn’t a party, phew!!

The first time I learned of “freedom party”, I was surprised at the reverse psychology; an apprentice graduates and rather than raise capital from friends and family for his business, he throws a party for them.

Amazing stuff!!

The importance laid on merriment making in the Southwest elevates the Owambe lifestyle to a place of sacrosanctity.

I will never forget something that happened years ago. At the time, we lived in a mini-estate of four duplexes. One day there was a fire outbreak in one of the duplexes. The occupants who were not at home when the fire started were contacted. Quite swiftly, they returned home and in a typical southwest lamentation style the woman of the house, holding her head with both hands, yelled “ye paripa! aso pati wa ti jo no” meaning, ” oh my God, our party wears are burnt!!” To be honest, I was completely confused…I couldn’t reconcile where she domiciled her pain.

But this gives one a fair idea of what merriment making means to people of the Southwestern extraction.

In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this intrinsic nature, if placed in the right context. In fact, it can be an advantage, an important tool for branding Nigeria. You do not need to preach to the average Westerner to throw a party, they would do everything possible including taking a loan to make such events memorable. As we put it in our local slang, they would go the extra mile to “close the road”. Literally!

Well, that was exactly what Chief Okoya Thomas (Eleganza) did on Lekki Express Road. He closed the express road.

“Baba ke”!!!

The bigger you are, the bigger the road you close! However, the traffic pandemonium occasioned by that event was enough reason to outlaw closing of roads for parties. One would have thought this law would kill the party spirit or at least curtail the appetite but it only made it bigger and better.

Parties moved to open fields and slowly but surely event centres emerged.

Commercial benefits

The Owambe spirit helps in driving multiple industries; textile, shoes, beverages, food, event centres, transportation, security, art (decoration), music and craft, filming and photography, even merchants of clean and lower denomination of Naira notes are not left out. With the recent display of Cubana and the gang, I won’t be surprised to see money management services (spraying, sweeping, counting and packing) emerging….trust me, the list of Owanbe support services is long.

On the statistics side of things, the Owambe industry is a multi-trilion Naira industry.

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We are not a statistics savvy nation but in 2013 the figure for Champaign alone was N31b (1.1million bottles sold), mostly party driven demand. We can then imagine what the overall figure will look like when we include that of event centres, food, other beverages photography, etc.

You will agree with me that the Owambe industry is huge. Today, the Nigeria wedding party is admired all over the world. This sets the stage for us to export the Owambe brand.

Now here’s the interesting thing, if you can’t sustain any tourism or brand idea locally, it is difficult to drive it internationally. The job of our image handlers is not to create themes but to discover and position them to deliver both tangible and intangible revenue.

So, how can the nation take advantage of this intrinsic human resource and value?

Eko Atlantic city is a good idea but I would have preferred Eko Owambe City. A city dedicated to events and parties equipped with facilities and infrastructure including an airstrip to host both local and international parties. A city where parking is not an issue, with three, four and five star hotels, multiple event centres as well as a floating hotel. A jetty for cruises. A city with healthy nightlife, just one huge party destination.

With our image on merrymaking at the moment, this kind of development will quickly place Nigeria on the map and creatively so too. Few nationals party like Nigerians and rather than trying to conform to the nature of others and in the process disconnect from what makes us authentic, we should stay true to who we are and what comes natural with us, place it in