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Sidoarjo welcomes millions of NU followers in ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ event
Millions of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) followers from all over Indonesia gathered in Sidoarjo, East Java, to celebrate the Islamic organization’s centenary this week.
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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (center) addresses an event on Feb. 7 in Sidoarjo, East Java, to mark the centenary of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) through a series of activities, including a cultural carnival, religious rituals and a culinary bazaar. (NU Online/Saiful Amar)
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n a celebration that one Sidoarjo resident described as unlike anything they had ever seen before, millions of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) followers from all over Indonesia gathered in Sidoarjo, East Java, to celebrate the Islamic organization’s centennial earlier this week.
Sparing no expenses, the organizing committee planned a 24-hour series of events held in and around the Gelora Delta Stadium and underlined that the event would be open for all to partake.
While the NU previously projected that more than a million of its followers, called nahdliyin, would join in on the celebration, the numbers in attendance numbers ended up surpassing its predictions by leaps and bounds.
“[The committee] estimates that around 4 million people attended the event,” said the NU central executive board’s (PBNU) deputy secretary-general, Rahmat Hidayat, at a press conference on Wednesday.
Even before dawn, scores of NU followers had already set up camp on Jl. Pahlawan right in front of the stadium, which was closed to traffic during the event.
Widjijanto, 38, who runs a mobile phone store in Sidoarjo, said that while he expected a large number of people, the sheer magnitude of the crowd he saw on Tuesday greatly surprised him.
“When I saw the World Cup [on television] last year, I saw all these people coming to Qatar from around the world, and I think this is exactly like that”, Widjijanto told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
