By Nosakhare Agbonigiarhuoyi
The Governor of Edo State, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has said that the desire to make Edo State globally competitive, attract leg traffic to the State and boost tourism receipts and ultimately scale up the revenue profile of the State, informed the conceptualization of the Edo Museum of West African Art.
Obaseki said this during a stakeholders’ engagement on the development of the Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) which was held at the John Odigie Oyegun Public Service Academy, Benin City on Thursday, July 21, 2022.
Situating the context for the session, the Governor said: “Since we got into office, the focus has been what we can do to make Edo State globally and nationally competitive.
“Everybody in the world today is doing the same thing. They are planning their cities; they are building infrastructure. There are very few places in the world that have something special and distinct.
“So when you look at Africa today, let’s look back 500 or 700 years ago, who has something from that era that can show the world today? Because this is very rare. So in Africa you can count not more than three to four places – the Zimbabwean ruins, the Pyramids in Egypt, and what else, Benin.
“But over the last 40-50 years, somehow it’s not an area we have focused on; principally because the invasion of 1897 shocked our system, and it is taking us over a hundred years to recover from that shock.”
Obaseki emphasized that, “As a democratically elected government, we owe our people and posterity that responsibility to first explain who we are and be proud of who we are and what we have, and to show what we are to the rest of the world, and tidy up our systems so that the world can come and see what we have.
“For us it was important to begin to do things; first to identify this unique opportunity we have, to extol it, polish it and then begin to exhibit it to the world; so that the world can come and see.”
He added: “That creative instinct is still in us. It is still in the young people of Edo today. We need to use that God-given opportunity in our DNA to recreate a new generation of people who can conquer the world the way our forebears have conquered the world. That’s why it’s important to have this infrastructure located here and to make it available to a whole new generation of Edo people.”
Earlier, the commissioner for Arts, Culture, Tourism and Diaspora Affairs, Prince Dele Obaitan, described the EMOWAA project as renaissance in the State, and added that he was proud to associate with it.
Executive Chairman of EMOWAA Trust, Phillip Ihenacho, said the focus of the museum and allied projects is to create opportunities for contemporary artists to showcase their talent while the facility would serve as an exhibition ground for prized West African creatives.
He maintained that several partnerships have been secured for the project from Oxford University, Digital Benin, the Edo State Government, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) the German government amongst others, and urged stakeholders to support the project.
The engagement session had in attendance government functionaries and other stakeholders.
