‘Tourism will generate income which can only be imagined’

Daily Trust: We have many tourism potentials in Nigeria. Why do policy makers and practitioners keep saying they can make the country a tourism hub without achieving it? Alhaji Rabo Saleh Kareem: The problem has to do with those that are charged with the responsibility of managing tourism itself. Most of the time, the people […]

Daily Trust: We have many tourism potentials in Nigeria. Why do policy makers and practitioners keep saying they can make the country a tourism hub without achieving it?

Alhaji Rabo Saleh Kareem: The problem has to do with those that are charged with the responsibility of managing tourism itself. Most of the time, the people at the helm of affairs are not actually tourism professionals. They bring people who specialise in other areas but have investment in tourism to manage the sector. Unfortunately, they lack that basic background of what tourism is. We are always having rhetoric and talking but when it comes to actual implementation, it becomes difficult. 

Nigeria has everything it takes to make a very good tourism destination. Therefore, we need to harness all these and package them so that we can sell them to ourselves and then to the outside world. 

I always say “charity begins at home.” If we want to sell Nigeria to the outside world as a tourism destination, then we must promote the domestic aspect of it because we have the population and the resources. So, when people begin to move from the North to the West and the East to the South and West to the North; these movements alone will generate a lot of activities which in turn will boost domestic tourism. 

Therefore, by the time you develop and boost that and people from outside notice that Nigeria is stable and people are moving, that is when we will begin to attract them to enjoy those things that we have.

DT: How do you intend to promote domestic tourism?

Kareem: What FTAN tries to do in order to promote domestic tourism is to sensitise Nigerians about the importance of tourism. There is the need to visit our own country and localities because by the time we do that alone, we will be able to appreciate and understand one another. If there are good domestic tourist destinations, all these recent agitations will be reduced to the barest minimum. In fact, by the time we know one another’s ways of life, there won’t be much problem.

We are trying to create a lot of advocacy so that we will encourage people to take holidays in Nigeria. We are also encouraging government and organisations to help in the development of tourism resorts and sites so that if you have good facilities, and at reasonable prices, it will encourage people to visit these places. 

So FTAN came up with committees to take each aspect of tourism and see how it could be improved on to achieve our objectives.

DT: Tourism does not operate in isolation. Are you in partnership with any government or organisation to further develop the sector in Nigeria?

Kareem: We are doing that. Nigeria has a large population; coupled with those in the Diaspora, and lots of friends, especially in the United Kingdom, and the United States, which has a large black population, we are partnering with such countries. Some blacks in the US will want to come to Africa, especially Nigeria, to see their roots. It is only when you come and see things that you tend to understand and appreciate what the people have.

DT: What are you working on with the Federal Government to further develop tourism?

Kareem: Like you know, FTAN is the private sector arm of tourism. We collaborate with the Nigeria National Tourism Corporation and the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture. There are programmes and projects we do together. Government provides the enabling environment, while the private sector runs it. Of recent, government tried to soft pedal on the issue of visa on arrival.  So, FTAN is working with the Nigeria Immigration Service to see to the implementation of this policy. 

Government has also come up with the policy of ease of doing business. We are trying to key in into such government policies so that they can help us bring in the private sector to develop tourism.

DT: What are your major plans as the new national President of FTAN?

Kareem: One of our major plans is to reposition the association which we have already started. When we came in, FTAN didn’t have a national secretariat. Now we have one and it’s a conducive environment to work in. We have created and empowered zonal offices because we know all the activities and tourism resources based in the zones. 

Therefore, we created zonal vice presidents and empowered them so that they could harness their potentials, and we at the centre will always come and see how we can help them with the development. 

We are talking with the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNTWO). We got some assistance from them to aid tourism development. We are also talking with the Bank of Industry to see how they can come in and assist in the financing of tourism projects. 

We have advised our members to form clusters in the various zones. When we have these clusters, we will come up with programmes and things we want to achieve. When we look at it, we will link them with those that will assist us achieve our dreams.

DT: What about the development of professional manpower?

Kareem: According to our constitution, we have working committees, and among them is the Manpower Training and Development Committee. We also have an investment and promotion programme. Annually, we bring state governments and organisations to show them the activities and sites, and we bring investors to look at possibilities to invest in those sites.

Recently, we visited the Minister of Foreign Affairs and bestowed on him the ‘Tourism Ambassador of Nigeria’ award. We are working together to bring in materials that will be displayed in about 115 Nigerian missions which will help us in selling and promoting the country. These are some of the activities that FTAN has embarked on. 

Besides these, FTAN is appealing to the Federal Government to create a separate ministry for tourism because bringing the sector under information is not helping the industry. A stand-alone tourism ministry can develop the sector for the benefit of the country. Tourism is supposed to be more than oil. If we develop the tourism sector, the kind of income it will generate can only be imagined.