Ogun State Governor, Ibikunle Amosun has made it clear that the just concluded Africa Drums Festival that was held in the state, has created a lot of income for both citizens in the state and the government.
While he was speaking to the state house correspondents, he said the festival would be still be going on because of the level of income it has created.
In a courtesy visit he paid to President Buhari on Tuesday, Mr. Amosun said the festival was not only a huge success for the state, but also for the country and Africa at large.
“To the Glory of God it was very successful. We were expecting that we will just have may be 10 participants form the international community; within the continent of Africa.
“We never expected that we are going to have participants from outside Africa and little did we know that we were going to end up with about 23 states within the nation and over 80 individual participants at the drum festival.
“All we were trying to do was to use the instrumentality of the drum as a vehicle or catalyst for socio-economic development as well as a boost for our tourism sector; and clearly we got more than what we expected,” Mr. Amosun said.
He also said all the expenses that were spent in order to plan for the festival have been realized and even more, profit have been made.
“It created so much wealth for our people. A lot of people got doing something and we leveraged on the value chain of the drum festival.
“Whatever money that we spent was realised and even surpassed and that’s why we hereby state that clearly and gradually the festival will be self driven because we got a lot of partners,” he said.
The governor, however, said that subsequent festivals would enhance on what was obtainable in the previous ones as the state government will carry out what was learnt from the experiences of authorities in literature like Wole Soyinka.
