By Godwin Adindu
The spotlights are on Akwete fabrics and the great women of Akwete, endowed with the craft of weaving the special fabric. My interest is that the First Lady of Nigeria, Oluremi Tinubu, said she invited herself to Abia to see the Akwete women in action with their craft. She had seen them on an NTA programme and became interested in their magic.
Thus, Akwete fabric has become, for Abia, a great cultural brand, and the First Lady raised the bar yesterday, confirming that a fabric could be a mental representation of a people.
Brands and Marketing scholars must rewrite or add to the many definitions of Brand. I know brand as a stamp, a signature, a logo, a symbol, colour, an idea, an identity, a type-face, and many others. We must add fabric as a brand. Akwete fabric is now a high-value symbol and identity of Abia State, serving as a positive mental representation of the people, particularly the Abia women.
Akwete fabric, as an old, ancient cultural identity, now speaks of a people of wonderful ingenuity and creativity, people of a rare craft and original power. It projects Abia as a bastion of rare talent, a breeding home for raw imagination. It has placed the Abia woman on a higher pedestal, exalting her as the last breed of an ancient species.
Brands create perception. The Akwete fabric creates the perception of a resilient, creative, and resourceful people. It creates the perception of great thinkers with transcendental intuition and inspiration.
It creates a perception of an Abia woman; a species with an undying spirit of innovation and conquest. It creates a positive image of an energetic and innovative gender and, somehow, resonates with the old history of the brave Aba women who shook the world in the riot of 1929.
Akwete fabric has now transformed into a concrete perception in the mind. This perception now lives in the national and global consciousness, defining Abia, qualifying Abia women, creating a mental construct of Abia, and serving as a mirror reflection of her people.
The world now sees Abia through the lenses of the resilient Akwete woman who sits all day, creating her craft and translating ideas into beautiful designs of fabrics. This reflection is positive and beams the light of the New Abia under Governor Alex Otti.
- Adindu writes from Akwete in Ndoki.
