•Marketing Consultant, JIDE FOWODE Reveals
In the next few days, the 2022 Ojude Oba Festival will hold in Ijebu-Igbo. That will be the first Ojude Oba that the new Orimolusi of Ijebu-Igbo, Oba Lawrence Jaiyeoba Adebajo will be hosting. For several years, all the Age Grade groups have been holding their annual Ojude Oba, but this year’s festival promises to be Grand and more colourful, as the various Regberegbe groups will pay homage to the Orimolusi, 3 days after Ileya. To ensure that this year’s Ojude Oba will be hugely successful, the planning committee has given the marketing aspects to Babajide Fowode, Special Adviser, Media, Publicity & Strategy to the Orimolusi of Ijebu-Igbo. He is the Marketing Consultant for the Ojude Oba Orimolusi Festival. He has an enviable track record that has prepared him for the job he has been saddled with. He is a seasoned Media & Marketing guru. Last week, this brilliant guy spoke to City People Magazine about the plans for this year’s Ojude Oba Festival in Ijebu-Igbo.
What are we to expect at this year’s Ojude Oba in Ijebu-Igbo, we asked him? “What will make this year’s edition special is that this will be the 1st time the new Orimolusi will be sitting down in his capacity as the royal father of the Ijebu-Igbo Kingdom for the people to come and pay homage to him. Many people know that in the last 28 years, we have not had an Orimolusi.
So, this time around, it is very important this Ojude Oba be celebrated in a very big way with pomp and pageantry. So, that is what makes this year’s edition special.
Because of the huge success of the coronation of the Orimolusi, which we had recently and because of the success and large turn out, there is a lot of enthusiasm. People are really anxious to witness the presence of Orimolusi for the very 1st time after the coronation, because a lot of people didn’t have the opportunity of witnessing the coronation due to space and security measures. But this time around, we are having the Ojude Oba Festival of Orimolusi in a very large space, at the Orimolusi Palace grounds in Ijebu-Igbo.
Even though our old palace is undergoing a major renovation, we still feel the best thing is for us to do it at the place, so that we can use it to welcome the new Orimolusi back to his royal place.
We have a line up of activities we intend, starting with a road show, some days before Ileya, we will go round the entire Ijebu-Igbo Community and every evening, before Ojude Oba, there is going to be an Entertainment Village where everybody will come later in the evening to come and enjoy from like 4 pm to 8 pm. There will be music, there will be DJs. There will be trade fairs by indigenes, business owners in the town, and other corporate organisations, that will come and exhibit their wares. That will happen every evening, from the 8th of July, that’s a Friday and on the Ojude Oba day, there will be the main parade of Regberegbes, the Age Grade groups, and there will be the horse riding display. That will start by 2 pm.
Later in the evening, there is going to be a concert that will run all night, on that Ojude Oba day. That is the line of activities that have been mapped out to welcome the new Orimolusi to his royal stool.
We are already speaking to a lot of major brands, and who are in top discussions with us towards having a very befitting and grand Ojude Oba Festival for Ijebu. Igbo.”
How are the Age Grades preparing? “They are fully prepared. They do this annually. They have their uniform that they wear. What they do is, immediately after one Ojude Oba, they are preparing for the next one.
The catch that is in this one is that for a very long time, this is the 1st time that Orimolusi will be on seat for the Ojude Oba Festival. The past Ojude Oba had always been administered by the 5 Quarter Obas of Ijebu-Igbo. Now, the Orimolusi is on seat and you can imagine how grand it will be.
Everybody is ready to be part of this because of Orimolusi. The Regberegbes are prepared. Every age-grade group will come and parade themselves in front of the Orimolusi and pay homage, then the Iyalojas, Babalojas, all of them will come and parade themselves and pay homage to the Orimolusi. It is always a 2 to 3 hours programme, after which everybody goes back into their different homes and reception areas. But what we do in Ijebu-Igbo is that immediately after the main Ojude Oba parade festival, it goes into the different Regberegbes entertaining everybody, music playing, then later in the evening, we go into life concert overnight”.
He was involved in the planning of the coronation of the Orimolusi. How did it go? “In my capacity as a Special Adviser to Kabiyesi on Media & Strategy, I was opportune to be part of the coronation ceremony. I was also a Vice Chairman of the Media & Publicity Committee. Because of my position with the Kabiyesi, I was also, very, very pivotal to a lot of the other committees that had the coronation events put together. I was able to put my experience to play and by God’s grace, we had a very successful event.
Also, this very one, we are putting all the logistics in place, like Security, Traffic Management, Entertainment, Health, Safety and Environmental issues. We are also trying to create enough awareness so that we would be able to have the presence of people both at home and abroad. We are getting a lot of very big feedback from that”.
There are those who will want to know the significance of Ojude Oba. What is it all about? “Well, let me put it this way. Ojude Oba is an event that is celebrated globally by the Ijebu people, on the 3rd day of Ileya. It is basically a day where age-grade groups, Iyalojas & Babalojas pay their homage & elegance to the Kabiyesi on the throne. It is a day for people to socialise and relate with themselves. It is seen in Ijebu as a convergence of people annually, to have fun and pay homage to our Kabiyesi and also do family visits and stuff like that”.
How different will this be from other Ojude Obas around Ijebu? “Almost all the towns in Ijebu organise their Ojude Festival. What most towns do is because of the fact that the majority of individuals in almost all the Ijebu towns belong to some Regberegbe in Ijebu-Ode, because Regberegbes in Ijebu-Ode are almost for the Akile Ijebu (meaning everybody from Ijebu will always belong to their age-grade group. It is not compulsory. It is something you do of your own free volition. So what most Ijebu towns do is they do theirs in the afternoon.
Ijebu-Ode’s own happens, early in the morning between 7 am and 10 am. After that, everybody goes back to their various towns to be part of their own Ojude Oba. So, most Ijebu towns start their own by 1 pm”.
So, what is his message to companies & individuals who want to support this forthcoming Ojude Oba in Ijebu-Igbo? “Yes, we are looking forward to support from brands in the area of sponsorship, product support, in the area of coming to exhibit their wares, at the Trade Fair which will happen for like 5 days, every day from 2 pm to 8 pm. And it is going to start with a roadshow. So, we are calling on brands, product owners and individuals to come in and leverage on the fact, that Ijebu-Igbo is putting up a platform with enough crowd that they can use to convert with their Consumers”.
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