Engr. Yinka Abioye, Chairman, Inspire Group and Festac Africa
adsFive decades after Lagos hosted the great Black and African cultural gathering of 1977, Engr. Yinka Abioye is trying to turn FESTAC from historic memory into a living Pan-African movement of culture, trade, tourism, inclusion and continental reconnection.
For many Nigerians, FESTAC ’77 survives as a majestic memory: the month in 1977 when Lagos became the capital of Black and African civilisation; when artists, musicians, writers, dancers, dramatists, intellectuals and cultural delegations from across Africa and the diaspora gathered under one historic roof.
It was not merely a festival. It was a statement of identity. It was Africa announcing itself to itself and to the world.
But nearly 50 years later, the more urgent question is no longer whether FESTAC ’77 was great. That has already been settled by history. The real question is whether Africa can recover the imagination that made it possible — and whether Nigeria can once again stand at the centre of that cultural and Pan-African conversation.
