Every December the same thing happens. Flights into Lagos fill up, hotel rates triple, and a season of concerts, festivals and parties runs almost continuously for a month. It has a name now, and it moves real money.

Look at the Events section on here and you can see the shape of it — concerts, listening parties, festivals, comedy shows, fashion fiestas, stacked into a few weeks and concentrated in a few postcodes.

What the South East actually has

More than people credit. The New Yam Festival is a genuine cultural event with centuries behind it. IMOIFF at Imo State University is a real film festival. There are yam festivals in Enugu, drum festivals in Port Harcourt, and a diaspora that comes home for Christmas whether or not anyone programmes anything for them.

What is missing is not culture. It is calendar — a published, reliable schedule people can book flights against six months out.

My argument

Lagos did not become the December destination because it had better culture. It became it because it had better information. Everybody knew what was happening, when, and where to buy a ticket. That is a solvable problem, and it is mostly a listing problem.

If every promoter in Imo, Anambra, Enugu and Abia put their date up in one place by September, the diaspora could plan around it. That is the whole trick. It is not glamorous and it does not need a grant.

Argue with me

• Where are you spending December this year, and why there?
• What South East event deserves to be nationally known and is not?
• If you are a promoter: what actually stops you from announcing dates early?

Opinion piece. Events referenced are listed in the Events section of this platform with their published dates.