Emeka Nweze
The Nativeland concert was held last night and without mincing words it was an absolute catastrophe. What was supposed to be one of the biggest celebrations of music as an art-form this December went completely wrong all thanks to poor organisation and planning. The mammoth crowd was uncontrollable, security was poor, sound was abysmal and all anticipation and expectations were dashed.
These are all the things that went wrong at Nativeland 2019
Venue
The venue was wrong for several reasons. First of all there were no arrangements for parking and people had to spend hours trying to navigate the area in search of parking space. Secondly the venue was just too small for the kind of crowd that came. Maybe they weren’t expecting that many people or they were too cheap to get a bigger venue, nevertheless the venue didn’t make any sense.
Security
Even though they had bouncers, Mopol, soldiers, etc. providing security, the crowd was just too much to handle as they were unable to control the chaos that soon ensued. Soldiers were seen beating up civilians, something that should never happen at an event like that or anywhere at all.
Sound
It was quite unfortunate that the most important part of the concert was that poor. Fireboy struggled to finish his performance due to bad sound. Joe boy’s music did not come on at all and Tems also left the stage because of sound and music issues.
VIP section collapse
This is one of the most dangerous things that happened at the concert. In the midst of the ongoing chaos with the huge crowd and security, the raised scaffold at the VIP section caved in and collapsed leading to injuries. How this happened will forever remain a mystery because, did they not do stress tests to confirm load? Shame.
No medical emergency
NativeLand announced that their online tickets were sold out before the event so this should have given them an idea of the potential number of people that were going to be present. Therefore, proper arrangement for medical emergencies could have been made in case of stampede and other injuries since it would have been too late to change the venue. However, no visible arrangements were made for emergency situations. In that crowd, a lot could have gone wrong and having medical centers/mobile trucks should have been a given. But we did not see those. At a point, I saw a lady who broke her leg and there wasn’t even first aid. Her friends were trying to take her out, but because of the crowd at the gate, they couldn’t. And that leads us to the next point …
One entry and exit
Imagine a crowd of such magnitude having to make use of just one gate for both entry and exit, chaos was definitely going to ensue. On the nativeland website they promised to make separate entrance for the VIP section but the story was different at the venue. This led to pushing and shoving and confrontations between concert goers and security personnel. At the height of it, the crowd pushed down the gate and the ensuing stampede led to many injuries.
Poor crowd control
Despite the presence of law enforcement and bouncers, it was impossible to control that much crowd, and this goes back to the fact that the choice of venue was poor and the number of security personnel was inadequate. The crowd control was so poor that at some point the gate of the only entrance was pulled down, leading to several injuries.
Organisation
It seemed like not much planning went into the Naitveland event. Organisers were probably more excited about the potential proceeds from the event than delivering a quality show. Despite the amount of time they must have had for planning, the show felt rushed and they ignored the basic necessities, underestimated the crowd and were too greedy to care about the safety of the attendees.
This was such a terrible event, and while other event planners learn from it, the authorities should ensure one like it doesn’t happen again. Ever.
