Speech by The Executive Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola

The Executive Governor of the State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola,
His Royal Majesty, Oba Abdurasheed Ayotunde Olabomi, the Aragbiji of Iragbijiland,
His Royal Majesty, Oba Sikiru Adeseun Ibiloye, the Oluresi of Iresiland
The Secretary to the State of Osun, Alhaji Moshood Adeoti
Guests of Honour, Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are pleased to welcome you to the first edition of the event planned to, with your support, become Annual Iresi Socio-Cultural and Economic Festival.
This first edition of the Festival is being staged to launch the facilitating Foundation – the Oyeladeniran Foundation for Community Development (OFCOD). The foundation is being established in memory of late Mrs Oyeladun and Mr. Adeniran Awoniyi. Both of them in their own small way contributed to socio-economic development of different people that came in contact with them and communities where they lived while their sojourn on earth lasted. The Foundation aims at re-awakening the socio-cultural heritage of the Adeniran family, Iresi Community as well as that of the Yoruba Nation that made our forebears utilize the values of self-worth to engage in self-help to become self-reliant, self-sustaining and self-sufficient without resorting to fraudulent practices and corruption that seem to control the sensibility of the contemporary people.
The Festival, which will incorporate the following sub-events:
• Colloquium – where intellectual exploration into, stock-taking and gains of the potentialities of our people and community would be made and updated;
• Inter-Lineal Cultural Display Competition and Variety show – where different lineage and groups within the Community would exhibit their interests, knowledge, talents and skills in different aspects of our cultural heritage, including dressing, music, dance, drama, poetry, speechmaking, trade, foods, arts, crafts, games and sports etc;
• Traditional Night-Out – where Iresi people and their visitors would appear in traditional regalia at a social get-together that will herald the New Year.
The event is slated to take place on 31st of December because it signaled a dawn of new beginning where participants, drawing from the gains of the festival, would be encouraged to set new workable targets for themselves. It is also a compromised date between the date our mother died, December 24 and May 10 when our father died. We have converted a section of the house the couple lived to Museum and Gallery to preserve images of past Iresi heroes, art works, traditional work tools and other monuments for future information and reference. We urge Iresi people to donate such materials and artifacts.
We welcome the Executive Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola without any hesitation or prevarication agreed to personally be Special Guest of Honour. We equally welcome the Aragbiji of Iragbijiland, His Royal Majesty Oba Abdulrasheed Ayo Olabomi, Odundun IV and the Oluresi of Iresiland His Royal Majesty Oba Sikiru Adeseun Ibiloye, Odumirin II who both agreed to be the Royal Father of the Day and Royal Host respectively without giving us any cause to ask them for the second time. We especially welcome other dignitaries who, out of their busy schedule find time to be in attendance at this event.
We count on the Executive Governor of the state of Osun to assist Iresi in all aspects of its development and ensure the Foundation lacks no moral and material support. We therefore urge you all to give us financial and other material assistance to make the dream of the Foundation a reality. This is because the Festival, beyond preserving the heritage of the immediate family and the Iresi community, also has the potentialities of improving the tourism and thus, economic situation of the state. We want to increase the competitive event to include street carnival, mountain climbing, marathon race and many more.
We urge you please find time to attend all aspects the fun-filled year-end activity.
Thanking you for your attention.

Ogbeni Debo Adeniran
Festival Coordinator, www.deboadeniran.com