C’River: 2nd Bakassi Fish Festival to hold in September
The second edition of Bakassi Fish Festival is scheduled to take place in September 2023
This was made known to the Journalists on Tuesday at the Ernest Etim Bassey Press Center Calabar when a delegation of the event organizers visited the chairman and other EXCO members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Cross River State Council in preparation for the festival, scheduled to take place on September 26-27, 2023.
The organizers of the event, led by Frank Edima, noted that the purpose of the visit was to get the media involved at this year’s launch for wider publicity.
Bakassi is the largest inland fishing community in Cross River State for sharing common sea with Cameron and the Gulf of Guinea. Hence, the need for the hosting.
More than 60 percent of jobs are expected to be created by the festival through fish exhibitions, sales and marketing of fish and related products, and ancillary services.
She said, “Last year, we were able to reach out to some political candidates during the peak of the campaigns, we also reached out to political stakeholders, religious stakeholders etc.
“We invited some governorship candidate as at that time and Prince Otu responded and sent in a representative, we appreciated that, and we are even more happy that the person who responded is our governor today.
“We will push this project to his face to see how he can deliver the dividend of democracy to the people of Bakassi.
“Last year, one of the questions we faced was how safe is Bakassi?, how do you guarantee the safety of people when they come to Bakassi?.
“We were not able to answer that question directly because we needed to go back to our drawing board to see how not to embarrass ourselves. We engaged the people and let them know that this project is theirs, if the community messes up this project, they have mess up all the opportunities to right the wrongs.
“At the end of the day, they were the ones that even secure the environment, we didn’t engage any government security agencies not because we were neglecting them but because instead of having the government security agencies too loud, we wanted our people to be louder. From the beginning to the end of that event we didn’t have any security threat”, she stressed.
With the theme, “Fishing, our heritage”, highlight of the two-day Bakassi International Fish Festival will include, capacity building, workshops to understand modern fishing business practices, drying, marketing and business skills development for fishermen as well as working in Bakassi’s trilateral area, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Nigeria borders within Cameroon and the Gulf of Guinea.
There will also be cultural events, beach wrestling, soccer, beauty pageants and gala dinner.
In a statement issued during the courtesy visit, the organizers said the purpose of the festival is to support large-scale fishing to ensure food security, promote solidarity and brotherhood among fishermen, address issues affecting the family lives of fishing communities, as well as to promote bilateral and multilateral cooperation between Nigerian fishing communities and their partners in Cameroon and the Gulf of Guinea.
The organizers used the chance to commend the sustained and consistent peace efforts of various stakeholders, including the federal government and the Cross River state government, especially with Governor Bassey Edet Otu’s first popular incantation.
In his response, the State NUJ chairman, Comrade Gill Nsa, thanked the organizers of the Bakassi Fish Festival for such a noble idea and advised them to strive harder for the task ahead, Noted that challenges are part of life.
He advised them to always reach out to the supporters of noble ideas within the state, various corporate organizations and government agencies to support the project and see how they can make it onto the state tourism calendar.
The chairman noted that media isn’t cheap because advertising is expensive, noting that “if you want radio/TV time or press space, you have to pay for it.”
However, the chairman used the event to reassured the organizers cordial working relationship between the local media and the fishing community during an event such as this, ensuring that the event will receive a wider publicity.
