The Need To revive Our Cultural Heritage In The Lake Chad Region -By Adeyemo Fadeelah Adeyemo

The Lake Chad region, which was ranked as Africa’s largest freshwater lake, has also been occupied by some areas with seasonal surfaces from year to year. It is located in west-central Africa and comprises Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon. It is noteworthy for important archaeological discoveries, its role in trans-Saharan trade, and its connection with historical African kingdoms and ancient cultural heritage.

Conservatively, the featured countries under the territory were enveloped with erudite, historical, bread-and-butter cultural heritage that served as a plausible means of growing those lands and kingdoms’ sentiments of amusing people. Meanwhile, there are some other cultural heritage firms which were either artificially created by our forefathers or naturally formed and rearranged to maintain the cultural values of the areas of the Lake Chad region.

Inside a few of Nigeria’s Lake Chad regions, particularly Yobe, Borno, and Bauchi states, several amazing cultural heritages have been preserved as historical sites for the sake of tourism and to honour the younger generations. In ancient times, the region was enriched by various sources of fishing, farming, and rearing of animals; irrigation; how its water sustains people; and other economic activities.

The region has developed and generated enormously in maintaining and expanding the value of that vital cultural heritage, but the areas continuously experience challenges of losing massive attention from people who are likely being customized by irrelevant cultures, while the majority live with no knowledge of those interesting cultural heritage practices and places. It should be important to give people the full story of how rich in cultural heritage the Lake Chad region was and to reimagine ways to entice them to participate in supporting those cultures.

The need to revive cultural heritage in the Lake Chad region is important because such places are meant as historical backdrops that are keyed to maintaining the image of people living in areas of the region. It easily generates income from tourism management and helps gain knowledge of history.

Specifically, some states, such as Borno, Yobe, and Bauchi, have an enthralling cultural heritage that has a wide origin from the lives of forefathers and that closely brings effective development for the regions, their government, and society at large. For instance, in Yobe state, there are numerous places which were naturally and artificially grounded to empower the cultural standard of the Lake Chad region. However, in the local areas of Yobe state, most commonly in the emirate palace, cultural heritage was highly valued and practised into a series of annual or basic features. The cultural heritage places and occasions in Yobe state are Daura Old Settlement, Bade fishing and Cultural Festival, Old Daniski Settlement, Bakarau Festival, Birnin Ngazargamu, Dokshi Spring Water, Dagona Birds Sanctuary, Dufuna Canoe and Tulo-Tulowa, “The Desert Land of Hope.”

Hence, Yobe state has a crucial cultural heritage of ‘Dufuna Canoe’, which was discovered near the region of the River Yobe. The canoe was discovered by a Fulani herdsman in May 1987 around Dufuna village while digging a well. The canoe is almost black wood ‘and is said to be Africa’s mahogany, as entirely an organic material According to research conducted by universities in Europe, the canoe belongs to archaeological terms, which were about 8,500 years old, thus making it the oldest African boat.

Similarly, Borno State was not left exceptional as it involves different forms of cultural heritage and they kept reorganizing the status of those settlements and practices to attract people over the importance of engaging to increase the possibility of centering towards building a sound society with the cultures inside the region. The examples of cultural heritage firms around Borno state are as follows: Shehu of Borno Palace, Sanda Kyarimi Park Zoo, Rabe’s Fort in Dikwa, Lake Chad Game Sanctuary, Lake Tilla, Jarry Falls, and Borno State Museum.

Among the other most valuable and important places and cultural heritage occasions, some of that cultural heritage is being downgraded because of poor maintenance and the government’s inability to pay much attention to those areas for proper reshuffling and development to call out the minds of tourists for excessive investment.

Therefore, the government should approve the restructuring of those places in a way that people will find them more attractive than how they currently look (dilapidated). The government can make necessary changes to gain sources of income in the sectors of tourism and cultural development. It will also draw people’s attention to the importance of preserving cultural heritage

From Adeyemo Fadeelah Adeyemo, a student of University of Maiduguri, Mass Communication Department.