ABOUT PROJECT ALIMOSHO HERITAGES

Mission Statement

To explore the value of history as a source of wealth for the locals through conscious realignment of their economic sense to the prized value of the culture of their ancient pasts in contemporary modern era. It is also as much a reserved opportunity for all Alimosho residents too, irrespective of tribe or origin.

Vision Statement

That the Culture of a People shall stand in evergreen of their forebears’ life time and footprints of doer personages of all acts of humanity cause pursed in the altruistic interest of the people magnified to the enthusiasm of their future generations. 

The Origin, Purpose and Products

Project Alimosho Heritages (PAH) evolves as an initiative of Barlade Image Communications (B.I.C), a Lagos based business organisation. It was originally conceived with interest in processing the historical heritages and culture of the Awori people, which Alimosho natives are, into an economic product for the Federal Government's policy of One Local Government, One Product (OLGOP). For clarity, OLGOP is a policy intended to identify one economic product with every local government. The product's economic value and the value-chain shall then be developed for national consumption and export potential.

It was in response to this that B.I.C. decided to pick the gauntlet for Alimosho's involvement. It began by conducting a relevant feasibility studies for a universal product with which to include the Local Government. Unfortunately, Alimosho has settled on the fast lane in converting arable lands to human settlement. The agricultural lands have gone into extinct. No natural resources deposit has yet been found to exist in commercial value.

            Concerned about these unfortunate results and with a strong intuitive resolve to get Alimosho involved, B.I.C. decided for a research into feasible alternative products that could be derived from the disadvantages above. Pronto, an opportunity was found in the fast growing commerce and hospitality industry in the Local Government. Gracefully enough, the unquestionable fact about this finding is that the potential complementary product directly related to this for development is tourism and culture, both in tangible goods and services.

            When B.I.C. eventually conducted a feasibility studies on the potential of culture and tourism as a product, it was found that the numerous ancient communities that have grown and coalesced to become Alimosho today were once important memorabilia corridors in the origin and evolution of Eko Akete -- the traditional name for Lagos State from Origin. It is the myths, artifacts and monuments connected with this history of Lagos but peculiar to the original settlers domiciled in Alimosho that B.I.C. has packaged into a prospect of book entitled Coming to Alimosho; the Economy, Politics and Cultural Origin of the County.

The book is structured into four-volume of four subject matters -- Culture, Politics, Economy and Religion – as they were found to be interdependent in their influential impacts on the collective journey of Alimosho to this modernity.

The fifth volume is the complete Streets Map of Alimosho, which tries to constrict the entire geographical space of Alimosho into a compact size that is fit for the perm of hand to make it a mobile community and applicable as a compass to navigate its entire landmass in just a few minutes.

As an essential note that may be valuable for stakeholders’ deeper understanding and appreciation of what to encounter in the book and in latter phases of the whole project as originally conceived, we find it imperative to give an insight to the basic master plan for the PAH, which eventually produced this book’s framework. By the basic plan, the project has been structured into three implementation phases.

Phase 1: The Making of Book on History of Alimosho: This entails Collation of the respective history of the ancient time communities within the geographical space of Alimosho, which have grown to becoming the different kingdoms that make up the conurbations of today’s Alimosho Federal Constituency. In the events, the information gathered about their, myths, beliefs and monuments are processed into a book of the Alimosho’s History. This is the origin and what makes the content source of the said book: Coming to Alimosho: the Economy, Politics and Cultural Origin of the County.

Phase 2: Translate the Collated Heritages into Work of Arts and Crafts: The collated heritages are to be recreated into works of art in sculptor and painting. And in the perfect vision from which the project was conceived, the sculptural works will include statues created out of the myths and beliefs or a recreation of an identified prominent physical monument, artifacts and antiquities found to be peculiar to every kingdom in Alimosho. Such statue shall then be erected at the strategic centre of the town, such as the Bacchus Park at the Isheri Olofin Roundabout in the case of Isheri Olofin’s Agbo D’ere symbol of the Kingdom.

Phase 3: Build Alimosho Crafts, Arts and Monuments Place (ACAMP): This is to create a central place where all the major and subsidiary works of art so created in phase 2 are warehoused and designated for Alimosho Arts Gallery. It will also host the photo gallery Alimosho heroes.

It should therefore be discernible from here that the formal public presentation of the consequential five-volume book is a statement of completion of a phase in the project.

            In the language of its general value, nevertheless, the totality of the book has been designed as information warehouse on Alimosho. It is a compass for business navigation as much a guide to life and living in the Local Government. The unique feature that make this so is the Volume 5, which makes the book’s content of Alimosho Streets Map (ASM). The overall outlook of ASM is as already described above.

           Pursuant to the vision statement, Project Alimosho Heritages also recognizes that there is history to come from the future as much as we have the past for history. Therefore, if the collation endeavour is as much about the personages of the past founder generation and historical events, the process of evolution of Alimosho to modernity today, particularly from the early years of the 20^th century to this era of 21^st century, must also have its own sets of rewardable personages of events.

            The question then is how will the future see their footprints on the sands of their times today? This is the question PAH tries to answer with the incorporation of Alimosho Hall of Fame (AHF).

           

Reviewing the Tourism Economy of Alimosho as Prospected By PAH

As a previous knowledge, culture is about food, dressing, dance, language and historical pedigree by way of the people’s ancestral origin. Through the volume segment of the book on tourism guide, which the ASM also serves, PAH dwells extensively into all these factors of culture in a way that engages the reader in a course of journey to real world of the events at the ancient time in comprehensive tale of graphic animation.

            In matters of food for instance, PAH gathered that elegede and woorowo vegetable (efo elegede) served with pounded yam is a peculiar delicacy of the natives of Ipaja natives that originated from Egbado. It was established that the mushroom vegetable as the core ingredient of the soup is a veritable material that links the ancient settlements of the Egbado clan in Ipaja to the Dahome war against the Yewa people, according to Tatalo Alamu, the Page 3 columnist of The Nation on Sunday. And so PAH queries: why would the contemporary Ipaja natives rather wish to allow their Yewa origin as symbolised by this delicacy go to extinct or be confined to a dead dogma? In other words, why should there not be Ose Elegede Woorowo celebrated annually?

However, projecting Alimosho for tourism potential is not about cultural opportunities derivable from Alimosho alone. According to the scope of the project, it extends to tapping into the collateral advantages in the LGA’s vintage geographical position as a potential important corridor in transit of tourists to the place of emerging tourism hob for which the Badagry axis is being developed by the State Government.

By the prescience that gave the PAH team a strong motivation for strict commitment to its implementation, Badagry will obviously emerge as a world-class tourism hob before the turn of two decades ahead.

The veracity of this projection exists in both the long term plan of the State Government and our personal survey conducted for this project. The latter revealed that beneath the polity of Badagry region, there is a huge deposit of cultures to be explored and developed for tourism. The empirical evidence would later be provided by Wale Adeniran that those “hidden cultures are of non-yoruba speaking people located in Badagry”. And as he put it: “Linguistically, they are Egun and Awori”. Thus curiously, PAH sees the gainful nexus of Alimosho as Awori Land to this opportunity in Badagry Division.

Adeniran went further to list the hidden cultures to include Uton, Ajalatopa, Zangbeto, Zangbolu, Atinga, Sapata, etc, etc. Analysing the traditional context of the cultures, he was able to give the feasibilities of gainful packaging of the cultures into timeline festivals of events for tourism activities.

Analysing the traditional context of the cultures, Adeniran was able to give the feasibilities of gainful packaging of the cultures into a timeline festivals of events for tourism activities. According to him, Uton is about snake dance. A festival of event branded on this mantra is bound to stand out. A festival of Musiwu Dance in which video coverage is strictly forbidden is bound to raise curiosity on which tourism thrives.

And going further to harp on their component curiosity that drives tourism economy, he raised these posers: Why should Zangbeto and Zangbolu be festivals of dance on sands only, which makes seaside more of their comfort one? What is the myth about the magical activities involved in the Zangbolu, which makes it more sophisticated than Zangbetto? How does Atinga Dance connect Lagos to Cotonou? And how does Atinga Dance invoke spirit of detecting crimes of adultery and witchcraft?

These are potential tourism festivals that are sure to emerge from the kitty of Lagos State tourism development plan in Badagry Division. The potential economic advantages of this are too enormous for Lagos State to jettison the required commitment to it.

Developing tourism around these hidden cultures is a big important source of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) as Adeniran and other relevant stakeholders did note. “Badagry lies between Nigeria and other West African sub-region. People transitting could spend one or two nights to watch some interesting cultural performances” (Adeniran (2016).

It is on this same principle of ‘transit camp advantage that the expanded scope of this Project Alimosho Heritages is conceived on the matter of tourism...