The Prospect and Challenges of Sustaining the Traditional Adire Fabric Production During COVID-19 in Abeokuta, Ogun State

Pandemic is a situation in which healthy living becomes risky through unprecedented spread of diseases. After the effect of flu pandemic of first world war in 1949, despite the acclaimed scientific breakthrough, in 2019 the breakout and ravaging of COVID-19 in the 4th quarter became noticeable to the extent that it affected the entire system of humanity and overturned the whole universe adversely till date. It later came with different variants that seemed more deadly than the original pandemic. From the outset, the after effect of the pandemic has affected many art productions. Those in performing and visual arts panicked to come together to shoot film or make any art product because of fear of the way the spread of COVID-19 was heralded in the media. Adire is an aspect of textile under visual art and this has become the stable profession of practice in Abeokuta, Ogun State. The art has been thriving for decades, has served as mean for international exchange and means to empower many people economically in the state. It has been observed that the advent of COVID-19 has become a challenge thereby slowed down the thriving trend in Adire production and patronage enjoyed over the time in the trade. This paper is therefore looking at prospect, challenges of production and merchandise of Adire since the breakout of COVID-19 in 2019 and now. The article employed Elena Aguilar’s Theory of Action in which hypothesis about what will happen when a set of strategy is implemented through a critical judgement to resolve an extant problem. It concludes with suggestion to improve the production and merchandise of Adire in Abeokuta.