The Southeast Is Not Emerging — It Has Always Been Here Jasmine Chinaza Onyia

There is a particular kind of builder that does not wait for permission. The kind that looks at a gap, feels it personally, and then spends years quietly — and sometimes loudly — filling it. Jasmine Chinaza Onyia is that kind of builder.

Born and rooted in southeastern Nigeria, Jasmine has spent the better part of a decade doing something that many in her position chose not to do — she stayed. She stayed when the industry logic said leave. She stayed when opportunities moved slower than her ambition. She stayed and she built, and what she has built is quietly becoming one of the most compelling creative stories in Nigeria today.

She is the Founder and Managing Director of NAZMINE360, an integrated marketing communications and experiential events company whose flagship production — the Food Meets Fashion Festival — has grown into a cultural institution that has redefined what premium, large-scale creative experiences look like in the Southeast. Nine years in, the festival is not just an event. It is a statement.

But NAZMINE360 is only part of the story. Jasmine is also the founder of CRIB — the Creative and Digital Business ecosystem — a bold, three-pronged platform built to give African creatives the infrastructure, community, and opportunity they deserve. With the inaugural CRIB Summit set for May 2027 and expected to draw over 3,500 attendees, CRIB is fast becoming a nationally significant movement. She sits on the Board of Trustees of the Southeast Creative Space. She was appointed Deputy Festival Director of the Things Fall Apart Festival in 2026 — one of the most culturally significant appointments in the region in recent years. And she is currently building Southeast Trends, a media platform designed to be the definitive publication for the people, culture, and enterprise of southeastern Nigeria.

She is also a TEDx speaker. A strategist. A voice that has grown louder not because she sought the spotlight, but because the work kept demanding a bigger stage.

When we sat down with Jasmine Chinaza Onyia, we wanted to understand the woman behind the portfolio. What drives someone to build this much, this deliberately, in a region the rest of the country is only now beginning to pay attention to? What does she see that others have missed? And what does she want — not just for her brands, but for the place she has chosen, again and again, to call home?

Her answers were as clear as her conviction.

You’ve made a bold declaration — that the Southeast is not emerging, it has always been here. Where did that conviction come from, and was there a specific moment that crystallized it for you?

Honestly, it came from frustration before it came from confidence. I kept hearing the word “emerging” used to describe us and it bothered me deeply — as if we were just waking up, like we hadn’t been producing excellence long before anyone decided to pay attention. The Southeast gave the world Chinua Achebe. We have one of the most commercially active populations in Africa. Emerging? No. What’s emerging is the willingness of the rest of the world to finally look our way. Those are two very different things. The conviction has always been in me — I grew up here, I watched brilliance happen here in rooms that were never documented, never amplified. That’s what drives everything I do. I’m not introducing the Southeast to the world. I’m making sure the world can no longer pretend it doesn’t see us.

Many creatives from the Southeast have historically relocated to Lagos or Abuja to be taken seriously. You chose to build here. What was that decision like, and do you have any regrets?

It was a decision I made with my eyes open and I’ll be honest — there were moments it felt lonely. When you stay and build in a place that the industry hasn’t fully validated yet, you carry a weight that people who left don’t always have to carry. There were times things moved slower than they should have, opportunities that would have come faster if I were Lagos-based. But I never once regretted it. Because everything I’m building — NAZMINE360, CRIB, Southeast Trends — it only makes sense starting from here to the rest of the world. The whole point is to prove that you don’t have to leave to matter. If I had left, I would have been one more data point proving that the Southeast can produce talent but cannot retain it. I refused to be that. And the truth is, staying has given me something Lagos couldn’t — a story that’s entirely my own, built on ground that actually needs what I’m building.

When you look at the Southeast’s creative and cultural landscape ten years ago versus today, what has genuinely changed — and what remains frustratingly the same?

What’s changed is awareness. People here now believe that culture is an industry. Ten years ago, if you said you were an event producer or a creative entrepreneur in Enugu, people looked at you sideways. Now there’s real energy — young people are building seriously, there’s more investment in aesthetics and experience. That’s real progress and I don’t want to dismiss it. But what remains frustratingly the same is the infrastructure gap and the documentation problem. We still don’t have enough professional venues, enough media platforms telling our stories with the depth they deserve, enough institutional support for creatives who aren’t in music or Nollywood. And we keep doing incredible things that disappear because nobody captured them properly. Events happen, conversations happen, ideas get generated — and then nothing. No archive, no record, no narrative. That gap is what Southeast Trends is my answer to. We cannot keep building without documenting.

The Food Meets Fashion Festival has become a cultural landmark in the region. Did you always believe the Southeast audience was ready for that kind of experience, or did you have to create the appetite yourself?

Both — and I think that’s the honest answer for any pioneer. The appetite was always there, it just hadn’t been given the right container. Southeast people are deeply cultured. We love beauty, we love food, we love celebration — that’s not something I invented. But the specific experience of a curated festival that brought all of that together in a structured, premium way? That required creating a new expectation. Nine years ago, I had to show people what it could look like before they knew to want it. And once they saw it, there was no going back. That’s the thing about this audience — they don’t need convincing once you show them quality. They just need someone to go first. I went first.

You were appointed Deputy Festival Director of the Things Fall Apart Festival — an event tied to Chinua Achebe’s legacy. What does it mean personally to be a custodian of that kind of cultural heritage?

It’s weight. Good weight, but weight. Chinua Achebe is not a small name — he’s the man who told Africa’s story back to the world on Africa’s own terms. To be connected to a festival that carries his legacy is something I don’t take lightly, even for a day. What it means to me personally is responsibility. Responsibility to make sure that the conversations we platform, the experiences we create, the people we bring into that space are worthy of the name attached to it. It also means something for what I represent as a Southeast woman in that role. I think about the young girls in this region who will see that and understand that cultural leadership belongs to them too. That matters to me as much as the work itself.

CRIB is built on the belief that African creatives deserve world-class infrastructure. In your honest assessment, how far is the Southeast from having that infrastructure fully in place?

Very far — and I’ll say that without shame, because acknowledging the gap is part of closing it. We don’t yet have enough co-working spaces designed specifically for creatives, not enough recording studios, production houses, or creative hubs that are properly equipped and accessible. The Southeast Creative Space is doing important work, and CRIB is trying to do its part — but we’re still building the foundation while also trying to run programmes on it. It’s like constructing a building and running events in it at the same time. You can imagine the state of that. What gives me hope is that the conversation has shifted. Ten years ago nobody was talking about creative infrastructure in this region. Seven years ago, my team and I held the First Southeast Business Mixer — a networking event for creatives — and we lost the momentum somewhere along the line. But now the pressure is at an all-time high from all corners. The CRIB Initiative exists precisely to accelerate that conversation and to connect the creatives who are building with the investors, policymakers, and institutions that need to be part of the solution. We’re not there yet. But we know what we’re building toward — and we’re not stopping.

Southeast Trends is your answer to the media gap in the region. What stories do you feel have been most consistently ignored or undertold about the Southeast?

So many. But if I had to name the ones that hurt most, it’s the everyday excellence. The entrepreneur in Nnewi quietly running a business that employs fifty people. The fashion designer in Enugu whose work is being worn internationally but has never had a proper feature. The cultural festivals in Igbo communities that have happened for generations and never once made a national headline. We have a tendency in Nigerian media to treat the Southeast as a political story — security, elections, separatist tension — and almost never as a culture story, a business story, a lifestyle story. Southeast Trends is specifically about correcting that. We are more than our political headlines, and it’s time we told that story ourselves, with the depth and quality it deserves.

You wear many hats — founder, festival director, board trustee, media visionary, TEDx speaker. What does Jasmine Onyia look like on a quiet Tuesday morning when nobody is watching?

Slower than people expect. I think people imagine I wake up and immediately run at the world — but honestly, I need quiet before I can do anything meaningful. I’m intentional about my mornings. I pray, I go on walks, I think, I try not to touch my phone before I’ve sat with myself for a minute. I care about what I eat. I’m quite particular about my skincare. I like things around me to be clean and ordered because my mind is often running in ten directions at once. The stillness is how I stay grounded. And then yes, eventually I open the laptop and there’s a brief to write, a strategy to build, or an email that needed to go out yesterday. But the quiet Tuesday version of me is someone who is very aware that the work means nothing if the person doing it is running on empty. I protect my peace probably more fiercely than most people know.

What is the single biggest misconception that people — including Nigerians from other regions — hold about the Southeast and its creative potential?

That we need validation from Lagos to be legitimate. That’s the one that frustrates me most. There’s this assumption — sometimes subtle, sometimes not — that things only count when they’ve been co-signed by the Lagos creative machine. That if your event, your brand, your idea hasn’t been picked up by a Lagos-based media outlet or hasn’t attracted Lagos-based talent, it somehow doesn’t fully exist. That is a lie we have to stop accepting. The Southeast has its own audience, its own economy, its own cultural authority. We don’t need to be a satellite of Lagos. We need to be recognised as a parallel centre — because that’s what we actually are.

If the Southeast has always been here — what is the one thing that needs to happen in the next five years to make sure the rest of the world finally, undeniably, sees it?

We need to own our own narrative infrastructure. Full stop. We need our own media platforms, our own documentation systems, our own festival circuits, our own investment networks that are specifically rooted here and accountable to this region. Because the world will never tell our story as well as we can — and even when they try, they’ll centre the wrong things. The Southeast has produced remarkable people, remarkable culture, remarkable commerce for decades. But so much of it has existed without a proper record, without a platform, without the kind of consistent, quality storytelling that makes the rest of the world pay attention. That’s the work. And I’m doing my part of it. But it takes more than one person — it takes everyone who loves this place deciding that we will no longer build in silence.