Building-Up Nigerian Tourism

Building-up Nigerian Tourism

The particular amplification of this article was prompted by the recent journey to Nigeria in the quest for the establishment of a viable tourism consultancy within the country. It was also inspired by my erstwhile students of Travel and Tourism who complained that there is trivial or no academic journal or information about tourism development and management in Nigeria.

These are arguable questions and the thoughts of my critics will be welcomed on these matters. The questions were addressed not as a research question, but as an article that promotes the benefit of establishing a consultancy in the country. We have heard about the promotion of tourism in Nigeria, most especially on cultural tourism. The country is highly endowed with this niche tourism, but as an indigenous of the country, I believe that tourism is more than the cultural aspect to look forward to. We have also heard about the work of the Federal government on tourism. Most especially the contribution to the development of tourism by President Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Ebere Jonathan.

Gathering information to substantiate the tourism development and management from Tourism Development and Promotion Division (TDPD) is a harlequin task. The TDPD deals with tourism planning, tourism facilitation, tourism legislation, travel help and incentive policies, basic data travel-related statistics compilation and computation, tourism information, documentation, market studies for domestic tourism organizations, planning coordination and evaluation, teaching and preparation, and budget and inventive funds. In other words, they have done all the work, but no accountability.

Ace tends to marvel if the tourism department is a whitewash department with figureheads that holds no sense of what tourism is all more or less. The perception is that it is all politically mundane.

Does tourism stand as an industrial sector in Nigeria?

Let us first understand the nature of tourism and its element of tourism consumption. World Tourism Organization (2004) has defined tourism as “the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and another purpose not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited”. This definition is telling us that tourism is about travelling to some other location or environment, more different from where you live and where you experience different social interactions possible with the local community. This different location is consumed (spent by tourists) and experienced (product and services).

On the understanding of the nature of tourism, we can confidently state that tourism is an industrial sector of a country’s economic system. It is demanded (holiday packages) and supplied (tourism destinations).

Nigeria in its own context arguably recognizes this but does not consider it as an important industry because of the shroud consciousness of the petroleum industry. Tourism is highly marginalised as a business entity even in the budget proposals. The erstwhile research conducted in Nigeria at www.bglgroupng.com is worth reading in this respect. It compounded my views that after the development of the master plan for tourism in Nigeria in 2003, little has changed to reflect any future development or management of tourism in the state. From the article of bgl research, Nigeria recognises that the tourism sector is an important sector. Nevertheless, focus on its development is a cause for concern as the country is losing on generating commercial venture and investment coupled with the increased benefit of rural development as a result of tourism.

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