The Igbo community in the midwestern state of Michigan, USA, will hold its Igbo Day and the first New Yam Festival in Detroit City on Saturday, August 17.
The festival will feature “authentic Igbo cuisines, masquerades, cultural music, and a cultural competition,” according to the president of the Igbo Cultural Festival of Michigan (ICAM), Gabriel Ugwu.
Sponsored by Mabel Hotel in Asaba, headquarters of Nigeria’s Delta State, the 2024 ICAM will be held at the northwestern campus of the Wayne County Community College, West Detroit.
“We are lucky to have as our special guest, Professor Bart Nnaji, the chairman of the Geometric Power group and former Minister of Power,” observed Ugwu.
“Nnaji, who has also been the Minister of Science and Technology, was officially named a Distinguished Professor of Industrial Engineering in the United States, the first Black person to be so honoured in American history.
“Since he left the United States in 2004 to set up the Aba Independent Power Project at the request of the then President of the World Bank, James Wolfosohn, and the then Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is now the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to enable Aba to realise its full potential as the headquarters of indigenous technology, we could not have thought of a better person to serve as our special guest on this occasion than the globally respected industrial engineering professor who has already arrived from Nigeria.”
According to sources in Geometric Power, Nnaji accepted the invitation because Detroit is synonymous with industrial engineering, his core area of expertise.
“Detroit is the headquarters of General Motors, Ford Motors, and Stellantis, the three leading American auto manufacturers,” said the sources who revealed that Nnaji is impressed that the organisers of the Igbo New Yam Festival in Michigan want Nigerians in the United States and those at home to fuse technology and culture.
According to the sources who asked for anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media on the issue, Nnaji himself is fascinated by how the love of the arts by Steve Jobs, co-founder and chairman of the Apple Corporation, resulted in the development of Apple products.
Jobs studied calligraphy for six months at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and this reflected in the great and unique aesthetics of Apple’s first computer in the late 1980s, conferring a huge competitive edge on Macintosh.
Jobs’ fascination with music gave rise to iTunes, which changed technology and the music industry worldwide.
“One important lesson Nigerians need to learn from the 2024 ICAM is that culture, technology, and entrepreneurship must go together,” declared Ugwu.
