By Kevin Lambert

People don’t really think about it, but traditional forms of communication (masquerades) are an important part of the glue that holds a society together. Anthropologists describe them as being instrumental in the mobilization of people toward self-actualization. Public entertainment through arts can also lead to group and national cohesiveness.

For outsiders, local folk art provides the opportunity to see raw excitement and naïve, unspoiled pleasure, which can be experienced as it is still practiced and believed. We don’t really have anything like this in more modern societies. This sort of interface leads to, and is led by, cultural tourism.

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The late British/African writer and composer Robert Kwami, among many others, visited Akwa Ibom and recorded area songs. At least 20 different scholars have published monographs to books on the songs of the Akwa Ibom region. They, in effect, were cultural tourists. Kwami said, "Intercultural musicality is something that can make human beings more human and humane."

Beti Ellerson, an arts lecturer at Washington’s Howard University, says, "The desire to travel, explore and exchange with other cultures, the basic concept of tourism, has always existed. All societies reveal their culture specificities through creative expression."

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The honorable Mrs. Asa Edet Ebieme, commissioner of Akwa Ibom’s ministry of culture, says, "In tourism, you can get to the place because of the culture. We have our original dances and songs and our own masquerades, so when somebody wants to come, even our way of life our habits, our food, our paintings, our crafts, are [all] there to see."

"Right now," says Umo Bassey of the ministry of tourism, "people come in for doing business or government. But by the end of this [Attah] administration, that should change, due to the facilities we are putting in."

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Akwa Ibom has 150 km–93.2 miles– of coastline, the longest in Nigeria, and an incredible tourism potential. But tourism in the state also has a cultural touch, using the culture itself to bring people in, to edify.