By Philip Yatai
Manchok (Kaduna State) – The Asholio youths of Moro’a Chiefdom, Kaura Local Government Area of Kaduna State have resolved to use their cultural heritage to entrench love and unity for peaceful coexistence.
The youths made the resolution in Manchok during the 2019 edition of Native Cocktail, organised to revive and preserve some cultural practices that make the Asholio people unique for posterity.
The convener of the event, Mr Lucky Mamman explained at the event that modernity has disrupted the people’s unity, identity and dignity, replacing virtue with vice, love with hate, and peace with strife.
”It is unfortunate that we are too busy with what seems modern that we seem to lose sight of our tradition as a people.
”It is pitiful that the cultural heritage that bound us together is no longer there.
”What we practice today is a culture that set us against ourselves rather than unite us,” he said.
According to him, the challenge before the youths is how to revive those traditional and cultural aspect of the past and resurrect the love and unity that existed among the forefathers of the land.
Mamman said that the objective of the annual Native Cocktail was not only to revive the cultural heritage of the people, but also to return peace and unity to the Asholio land.
He said: ”The only way to address the social forces militating against the people’s cultural heritage, is to have avenues where we can interact and discuss issues of cultural significance.
”The Native Cocktail is, therefore, the ideal avenue for us to meet annually to talk, eat, drink and dance with a view to invigorate our cultural heritage for better days ahead.
”Tonight, we reconvened to re-unite and to rebuild our collective cultural heritage that are on the verge of becoming extinct.
”Tonight, we will recollect our cherished past through eating, drinking, talking and dancing in our native way.
”Tonight, we bring our bodies, minds and spirit together in an atmosphere of a past long gone but not forgotten.”
The Guess Speaker, Mr Alphonsus Lato of the Bible Society of Nigeria, Jos, said that the event provided an opportunity for the youths to look back to see what they have lost as a people.
According to him, knowing what make the Asholio people unique and preserving those cultural and traditional practices for future generation is a sure way of keeping the people’s culture from going into extinction.
Lato said: ”No matter how good your English, Hausa or Yoruba is, you will never be an English man, a Hausa man or a Yoruba man. Dressing and eating like a Yoruba man will never make you one of them.”
Also speaking, Dr Yusuf Mugu of University of Jos, commended the organisers of the event and encouraged them to continue to place their energy on what unite the Asholio people rather than what divide them.
Similarly, Mr Pius Yashim, a sociologist with Kaduna State University, Kaduna, described the effort as ‘laudable,’ stressing that celebration of cultural heritage would invoke the needed culturally consciousness in the mind of the younger generation.
(NAN)