by Pamela Braide

Here is FREE advice to the Cross River State government: the Cross River at 50 is directionless hubris, highlighted by an ill thought out rebranding exercise that spells disaster. For everyone.

So, how should we celebrate Cross River at 50?

FIRST
Put the brand ‘Destination: Cross River’ cap back on and realise that, in the first the place, CR must look and feel like a DESTINATION to show off. Vibrant, full of life and worth spending time and money in.

SECOND
Understand that this can be FUNDED BY SPONSORS.

THIRD
It is not a one day, or one week red flag–hoisting (the new branding is red) logo-launching, money-wasting event.

Changing our State colours from blue to red and our slogan from the all-encompassing ‘Destination: Cross River, the people’s paradise’ to weak ‘Spirit of Enterprise’ is at the very least problematic, as the pushback from citizens has shown.

FOURTH
Such a milestone involves everyone in every LG, every sector and strata of society. Here are a few more ideas that might help to engage a few more people beyond just friends and family. Pay attention.

1. Make next year’s Christmas Festival a Cross River at 50 theme and leverage on the time people come home and SPONSORSHIP.
2. During the festival, make sure its star event, the Carnival has the “at 50” theme.
3. Make all festival events honour the same theme. Bring back the boat regatta… Engage school kids, artisans, everyone.
4. Spend ONE YEAR planning and getting sponsors for 2018. CR already has a deep roster of potential sponsors thanks to our Christmas Festival. By the way, CRSG needs to get its act together, coordinate its clashing SASs and SSAs, and get to WORK. Why does a tourist destination aim to spend money on an anniversary it can make money from? The Destination Cross River brand is beyond a logo. See how trying to kill it by replacing it with your new red bull logo killed creative thinking?
5. THEME EVERYTHING NEXT YEAR. Children’s day on 27 May etc. New Yam Festivals? Theme them!
5. Create CR at 50 online activities: competitions, online exhibitions, use online groups. Engage people. No be to shout digital Gov. while being analog.
6. Stop harassing the National Museum and do what CRSG normally does. COLLABORATE to create a year-long open exhibition on CRS at 50. Work with schools like Hope Waddell Training Institution. Can you imagine having old boys from a 127-year-old school come to CRS for a special day? The rooms, transport, food, souvenirs sold? Instead, the Governor is locked in battle building a private structure on their land without consent.
6. Clean Cross River state. Make it safe, pay staff salaries and entitlements, pay LG workers, and motivate people to work.
7. Abolish all the new taxes destroying the very businesses that make up the CRS economy. If there is no money to fund the states inexplicable 13 NEW ministries created in 2015 or pay nearly 3000 political appointees then please do not kill LOCAL businesses instead.

8. Everything is interconnected. We cannot celebrate anything as a crime-ridden, dirty location without water where businesses are stifled by one new official tax a day and workers are owed and not given even the most basic of running costs to work.

9. Boost our eco-tourism assets! Instead of chopping down forests, preserve them for visitors. National Geographic or The Discovery Channel might even film. CERCOPAN is shutting down and in this hostile environment, the Drill Ranch Pandrillus might soon go after 30 plus years! Fix our canopy walkway which was the longest in Africa.

FIFTH
Fix and upgrade instead of mowing down everything to build one super road that won’t interconnect our communities or major roads. Build rural roads. Bombard communities with renewable energy hubs. These can be achieved in mere months rather than a 10-year super highway pipe dream with no funds in sight.

LAST
Cross River State actually has a Tourism Bureau, a Carnival Commission. Everything, including HIV/AIDS prevention, has all tourism mainlined into their in operations. They have been effectively crippled with the appointment of duplicate SAs and SSAs running around, unable to create ONE yearly tourism calendar after TWO years.
We have altered and even dropped past events. Lost sponsors. Lost direction. Our tourism assets and officials are unable to maintain the most basic presence on social media.

The 10-year Obudu international mountain race that was once covered by SuperSport with corporate sponsors died in 2015. Boat regatta, gone. Children’s carnival, gone. Coordinated plans for showcasing pop culture, craftsmanship, cuisine? Gone, gone, gone…

Is this really rocket science? Seriously? I made it clear to a Cross River government event aide when I was a guest at a radio show in Calabar last year that they needed to #WAKEUP! Cross Riverians are shutting down and leaving the place in droves.

Dear SAs and SSAs and SSSAs and DGs feel free to copy and paste. I won’t charge you a kobo. I love my state too much and I am so heartbroken!

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Pamela Braide
Communications and strategy consultant, curator of fine goods, and musician