The Diaspora Door of Return ceremony constitutes the ideological crux of the Badagry Diaspora Door of Return festival. The ceremony celebrates a symbolic reversed trajectory against what the POINT of NO RETURN notion of the dark era of slavery epitomizes. The Door of Return speaks against the old notion that the enslaved Africans and their offspring, no matter the length of time, will never return to Africa. The Door of Return ceremony is therefore a symbolic re-union in which African descents (our brothers and sisters) in the diaspora shall be welcome back to Africa, Nigeria in particular, through the symbolic Door of Return ceremony like kings and queens with crowns on their heads as against the inhuman, forceful journey of their progenitors as chattels to the plantations in the Americas and Europe. The Door is designed to be opened for them by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or his representative in a symbolic return celebration from the ancient Badagry slave port at Gberefu (The Point of No Return) across the Badagry Lagoon in a cruise-boat decorated in Nigerian national colour, flanked by a number of flamboyantly decorated boat regattas with pomp and pageantry.
The returnees are welcome in festival like reception with pomp and pageantry into the hands of government officials, traditional rulers, foreign diplomats and the host community.
The Door of Return is an iconic tourist attraction standing tall above the land surface. A symbol of triumph of good over evil…the intrinsic resilient spirit of Africans to survive under any condition anywhere on the surface of the earth. It is the first of its kind in Africa. Apart from its unique aesthetic status, it is invented to instigate nostalgia and a sense of homecoming in the African descents in the Diaspora to return to their ancestral roots. It serves as concrete impression that Africa, particularly Nigeria, is receptive to their homecoming and their eventual reintegration and engagement into the African society.