By Solomon Obajusigbe

From the Ime Obi, the palace of the Obi of Onitsha, to the Archbishop C. J. Patterson International Hall, venue of the Miss Ofala Beauty Pageant and Music Concert, and the Dolly Hill Hotels, where the Royal Banquet was held in honour of the Agbogidi, the euphoria, ecstasy and jubilation were palpable as Onitsha sons and daughters came out in their colours to celebrate the 2017 Ofala Festival, powered by the foremost telecommunications company, Globacom.

The Onitsha people home and in the Diaspora who witnessed the colourful event were united in their prayers for the grandmasters of data, Globacom, for rebranding the festival. The telecommunication outfit has been the official sponsor of the festival for the past seven years, and in its characteristic way of doing things, it has raised the profile of the celebration.

Beginning from the year 2011, Globacom has been adding value, pomp and pageantry to Ofala, thus changing the face of the oldest festival in the East of the Niger. The company has shown that when it comes to promoting the essence of the Nigerian culture it does not spare resources. This is easily noticeable in the tenacious way it has promoted the annual Ojude Oba Festival, in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State for 11 good years, making the festival bigger every year.

So, when it indicated interest to sponsor the age-long Ofala Festival in Onitsha in August 2011, the company had just one major objective – to take the festival to enviable heights. Those who are familiar with the extent to which the indigenous company can go in promoting anything Nigerian had no doubt in their minds that Globacom would take the festival to the next level. The 2011 Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, was programmed to run for a period of three years, terminating in 2013.

By the time the MOU ran its full life span, the organisers of the festival, particularly, the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe (Agbogidi), and his Council of Chiefs, were unanimous in agreeing to renew it in 2014 for another three years. The relationship blossomed and seven years later, the Onitsha Palace and Globacom again put pen to paper and signed another three-year MOU thus making it seven unbroken years of relationship between the nation’s number one telecommunications outfit and the good people of Onitsha. It has remained unprecedented in the annals of the sponsorship of the festival.

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The partnership has been mutually rewarding to the two parties and nothing pertinently captures this more than the goodwill message of the Chairman of Globacom, Dr. Mike Adenuga Jr. to the 2017 celebrations of the festival, wherein he declared as follows:

“We are equally grateful that after the initial agreement of a three-year sponsorship deal ended in 2013, the partnership was  extended for another three years. At the expiration of that term again in 2016, His Majesty and the Council of Chiefs asked us to continue for another three years, beginning with the 2017 celebrations.

The year 2017 Ofala Festival celebration ran from October 10 to October16 and Globacom was at its best, deploying all the necessary human and material resources to make the celebrations a memorable one.

The Obi of Onitsha, while speaking in his expansive palace submitted that with what Globacom had made of the Ofala Festival, “I make bold to say that Globacom is a company to be proud of and we consider it a privilege that the company is identifying with this festival”

The revered monarch who elucidated on the significance of Ofala Festival to the Onitsha people, noted that in the last seven years, Globacom had given international impetus to the festival “and it is worthwhile to note that Globacom is fulfilling this in a grand style”,

In character and delivery, Globacom indeed deserves any encomium showered on it by the Agbogidi, a man  noted for his few but dignifying words. The company has brought uncommon razzmatazz to the festival by adding colourful frills and trappings to it to the envy of other festivals in the East of the Niger.