The Deputy Greater Accra Regional Director of the Centre for National Culture, Eric Ohene-Larbi, has urged celebrants of this year’s Homowo festivities to use the occasion to promote peace and Ghanaian cultural diversity.

He said festivals were solemn occasions during which various indigenous people, and for that matter Ghanaians demonstrate their unique cultural identity to showcase their rich cultural heritage.

Mr Ohene-Larbi who gave the advice in an interview with the Ghana News Agency during the Homowo celebration at Sowutuom in Accra said, “A nation that undermines its true cultural values and unique identity was bound to disintegrate with time.”

The festival was organised by Nii Osabu Akwei I, the Chief of Sowutuom, in collaboration with the Ga Central Municipal Assembly and the National Commission on Culture.

Ohene-Larbi called on all Ga indigenes to use the occasion to re-unite with one another by settling differences among them, saying; “Homowo is a time to extend a hand of friendship to all persons devoid of ethnic, religious or political differences.”

He indicated that, if festivals were celebrated with this foreknowledge, it would serve to tighten the social bonds that existed among the people and the nation at large and would make development meaningful, adding “peaceful co-existence is critical to national development.”

The Director urged the people in the Ga communities to revisit development issues and chart the way forward, while taking stock of successes and challenges over the period.

There was an exhibition of Ghanaian local foods, traditional wears, artifacts, handicrafts as side attraction and free health screening.