REFLECTIONS ON WORLD TOURISM DAY By Chuks Akamadu (Published on page 41 of Blueprint Newspaper yesterday) As the global community marked World Tourism Day (WTD) on Saturday, September 27, 2014, I recalled how I received the news of the retirement of my good friend, Alhaji Munzali Dantata, as director general of Nigerian Institute of Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), after doing the maximum two terms of four years each in office. My mind had impulsively raced to some of the heated debates we had as postgraduate students of the institute under his stewardship. Having been exposed, in the course of learning, to the vast opportunities in the service/tourism industry and the giant leap being taken by other ambitious and ironically less-endowed countries to harness their tourism resources for maximum economic benefit, we had seized every opportunity to analyze and/or evaluate the performance of Nigeria’s tourism sub-sector. It had been recurrent sessions of endless debates. In broad terms, we looked at the history and evolution of the tourism industry from two distinctive perspectives: pre-Nigeria Tourism Development Master-plan (2005) and the post master-plan eras. There is no doubt that the 2005 master-plan was a fantastic job. Ambitious, research-based and knowledge oriented. That document is a brilliant handbook for rapid transformation of what I call the nation’s sleeping cash-cow. But like most things Nigerian, the master-plan breathes mainly on paper; the ability to translate the spirit and letters of the document into measurable successes has yet to appear on the nation’s tourism horizon. For us at NIHOTOUR, things could be done differently. And better, too. A bird’s eye view of the entire Nigerian tourism landscape however revealed that NIHOTOUR’s sister agencies namely: Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC); National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC); National Gallery of Arts (NGA) and National Arts Theatre among others were no less afflicted. What we seemed to have in abundance were beautiful platforms that regrettably lacked, in gross, the capacity to drive the master-plan. Sure, there was a definite policy direction and a robust implementation framework in place, but the human element which ought to galvanize available resources for optimal synergistic outcomes did not possess the needed foresight, creativity and zeal. Now as an alumnus of NIHOTOUR and a tourism practitioner, my worries have grown in perhaps the same proportion as the worries of the industry. There is still a conspicuous disconnect between policy makers and stakeholders. Some parastatals under the Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation have continued to refrain from collaborating with private tourism practitioners for the promotion of industry growth, with flagrant disregard for government’s subsisting policy of public-private partnership (PPP). Private sector involvement in tourism business is still being perceived in error as an encroachment on mandate or downright usurpation of the powers of relevant agencies. In all, the industry totters. Take for instance, the Abuja Carnival. Unlike wine, time has not helped it to mature. For starters, there was nothing wrong with the idea being built around government funding at inception – to the extent that it was designed to serve as an economic stimulus and rather primarily as a catalyst within the tourism community, but its continued existence on same public coffers after several years of huge financial investment by government tells a story of poor salesmanship. Elsewhere I had advocated for the expansion of the scope of private sector participation to include having a say in the content of the annual fiesta. I hasten to re-state that the private sector should be made to co-own the carnival by means of effective involvement in the designing, planning, marketing and execution. Giving the private sector fraternity peripheral roles is counter-productive. As government’s funding of the carnival continues to drop sharply, tourism authorities do have a duty, I think, to rethink Abuja Carnival’s design and structure. They should accept the fact that in today’s world, it will take the private sector, with an eye on profit, to run the carnival efficiently and profitably; and that the argument for public-private sector synergy in this regard can hardly be vacated by any illogic invented in the best of laboratories. Put succinctly, if the idea is to sell our cultural resources, tourism potentials, provide jobs and enhance our corporate image as a nation then, the time has come for government to yield its dominant role to the private sector and take a tangential seat. That way, room would have been created for private practitioners to, among others, quickly mainstream the Gbagyi (ordinarily host community of the carnival) and integrate the respective estates that now constitute a major population bloc within the Centre of Unity into the fiesta. The carnival should be re-conceptualized to reflect its inherent profitability and sold as an efficacious product worth the price tag on it – as against its present perception, by the public, as an annual ritual designed to line private pockets of public servants. For the difficulty in successfully selling the carnival borders, in the main, on the absence of the public buy-in. Another sad commentary on our quest for tourism prosperity is National War Museum Umuahia (NWMU). I recall making a strong case for its inclusion on the list of national monuments to be upgraded as part of our centennial celebrations, in the course of our assignment as members Federal Government Centenary Celebrations Planning Committee. I had advocated for a tripartite collaboration involving the museum authorities, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the private sector that would make it mandatory for corps members to visit the museum as a prerequisite for passing out, to enable them witness, first hand, the havoc war wrecks on a people, so they could, consistent with the core essence of the scheme, live and function afterwards as informed promoters of unity and peaceful co-existence in the country. I had further suggested the attachment of an institute for peace studies to that monopolistic tourism facility, where the due-for-passing-out corps members could do 2-week crash certificate programmes in peace building and harmonious co-habitation. That proposal envisaged making all parties winners within the precincts of mutual profit. Unfortunately, no dice till date! There is however a consolation: if we get our act together in the tourism industry today, the probability is still high that Nigeria would suddenly wake up to grab the illusive magic wand for its youth unemployment crisis as well as significantly reduce the pressure on her petro-dollar. What then are we waiting for? Happy World Tourism Day to all my compatriots! Chuks Akamadu Esq., FNIPM, MNIPR Managing Director of Afrocultour Limited, Abuja and an Alumnus of NIHOTOUR
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 07:36:05 +0000
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