Stakeholders have been advised to push for establishing a National Policy on Tourism to strategically build a fulcrum for developing and promoting a sustainable tourism sector that will grow the Nigerian economy.
The keynote speaker, Professor Michael Ikupolati, who delivered a paper on ‘Budgeting and Funding: Effective Tools for Sustainable Tourism at the just-concluded Nigeria Tourism Investors Forum and Exhibition (NTIFE), disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday.
Prof. Ikupolati explained that for tourism to drive the economy, the tourism industry in Nigeria must be strategically planned so that priorities based on strategies for planning, developing, and marketing Nigeria as a tourist destination will be developed.
He said the strategic plan must include the 7Ps of Tourism: product, price, place promotion, process, physical evidence, and people. He added that improving the security situation and creating an enabling environment for rapid growth and development of tourism in Nigeria require government policies that are explicitly targeted at tourism development in Nigeria.
To make this practical bid worthwhile, Prof Ikupolati said “Federation of Tourism Association of Nigeria (FTAN) must set up a Tourism Action Plan Committee for engaging, empowering and enabling tourism stakeholders in Nigeria toward reinventing the wheels of tourism development in Nigeria.
According to him “The Committee will develop a framework for tourism development through effective budgeting and funding of tourism activities and templates for tourism stakeholders in Nigeria as well as develop a capacity building template for tourism budgeting and funding.”
He identifies budgeting and funding as one of the most important financial habits the industry can adopt to improve its currently dismaying performance. He adds that they will help the industry achieve its financial goals, prevent it from becoming financially overwhelmed, and even help it avoid or get out of debt.
Ikupolati reemphasized that culture and tourism can contribute significantly to Nigeria’s economic development if the government provides a platform and enabling environment for their promotion and development.
“Also, building collaboration with the private sector (PPP arrangements) to promote culture and tourism in Nigeria, the government should, therefore, increase funding for tourism agencies and rejig their operations to increase their contributions to national development.
“Nigeria has great potential in the tourism sector and the time to take positive steps in the right direction is now. All of the above can only be done if we good leaders in Government and in the various organizations operating within the Culture and Tourism sector of the Nigerian economy.”
Giving an overview of the government budget for tourism, the keynote speaker said, “Nigeria recorded a total of five million tourists in 2021, ranking 35th in the world in absolute terms. The fact that larger countries regularly perform better than the absolute number of guests is evident.
“By putting the tourist numbers in relation to the population of Nigeria, the result is much more comparable picture; with 0.025 tourists per resident, Nigeria ranked 164th in the world. In Western Africa, it ranked 8th.
“Nigeria generated around $321.00 million in the tourism sector alone; this corresponds to 0.073 per cent of it’s the gross domestic product and approximately 34 per cent of all international tourism receipts in Western Africa.
“Government budget on tourism in Nigeria has been very low in the last decade, compared to countries like Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and even The Gambia.
“As a result, tourism contributed about two per cent on the average to DGP during this period. 75 per cent of Nigeria’s Government budget for Tourism is spent on recurrent expenditures. About 3.5 per cent of DGP that went to government intervention did not come to private tourism.”
Ikupolati, who was not happy with the tourism budgetary scenario, said that the situation at hand cannot be the ultimate potential of Nigeria in Tourism and urged the government to increase funding to tourism agencies and rejig their operations, viz-a-viz, investing in tourism brand development and digital tourism in Nigeria.
He called on the government to strategically align with tourism’s economic and social impacts to build a sustainable industry and scale up the economy successfully. He said,”When these impacts are netted off, the tourism process is sustainable at any particular destination, and Nigeria can’t be an exemption.
“Nigeria simply needs to go back to the tourism drawing board and redesign our tourism promotion and development model, ” Ikupolati added.
The panelists for the forum include the Chairman/CEO of La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort, Otunba Wanle Akinboboye, President, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Nigeria, Mr Alex Nwuba, Former Director, FTC Tourism Department, Abuja, Dr Uchechukwu Agbanusi and the Principal Partner, Sustainable Eco6tem, Mr Chibuikem Diala as the moderator.
Otunba Akinboboye asserted that tourism is the primary means of celebrating Nigeria’s rich cultural potential. To do that effectively, Nigeria must develop the entire tourism ecosystem around the country’s diverse culture.
He said the private and public sectors must accept that tourism promotion and development are processes and that those processes must be given relevance.
“Tourism is a process and you must follow that process to get to the next stage. Every stage you get to, you must follow the process to the logical conclusion before going to the next one. When you jump a stage there will always be a problem.”
Akinboboye agreed that the government plays a pivotal role in tourism development but said that if the government refuses to cooperate for tourism to work as expected, the stakeholders who are the industry’s drivers must do their best to stimulate activities and position the industry to attract the relevant government agencies if they are serious about their obligations.
In his submission, President of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Nigeria, Mr Nwuba, said that FTAN and other organisations can become advocates in engaging the government. Just as you have come to Abuja, FTAN should sit with the FTC Minister and tell him that our finding is that you are not supporting the industry the way you ought. We demand that we see a certain percentage of the budget going into this sector because we can show the derivable.
“One of the things we are forgetting is that tourism is also an income earner. You put money into it and will get money from; if you refuse to invest in tourism, you will not get the inflow most big countries earn.
“So what we need to do is essentially engage the government. So we as FTAN and other engagement association in the industry need to engage government and say we expect an ‘x’ percentage of the budget across the board to be applied to the tourism sector because we can demonstrate the impact on the economy giving the information available in the number of localities.”
Nwuba said Dubai may be too extreme considering the kind of result and approach the government has use to get to the present state. So we can look at the Gambia, Ghana and Benin Republic which are not too far from us.
“So we can start from a progressive level by saying we expect ‘x’ per cent on a progression level, we don’t need to ask you to put 20 per cent budget today; but put five per cent in the first year and in the second year, you can make it seven per cent so that in five years, we can see 20 per cent of your budget going into tourism.
In his contribution, the Former Director, FTC Tourism Department, Abuja, Dr Uchechukwu Agbanusi said, “Human capacity is the most important resource you need to develop tourism, and this I did during my stint in my place of assignment by embarking on training and building capacity backed up by practical field work, which I deliberately mandated for the trainees every week.
In the same vein as others who call for a stand-alone tourism ministry so that tourism has a voice in the scheme of things, Agbanusi also called for the revival of tourism boards in the FCT to stimulate the needed tourism activities so that tourism can practically contribute its quota to the economy.
He said that the structure of tourism in Nigeria is wrong and with such situation there is nothing anyone can do to make things right. So he called for a statutory structure with ministry and board in place with the right peg in the right hole backed by good budgeting and funding.
Speaking earlier, the president of FTAN, Mr Nkereuwem Onung, welcomed the audience of all tourism-allied business and core stakeholders, experts, and professional bodies to the NTIFE 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the hosting of NTIFE, and we are happy to meet members and stakeholders again at the 6th edition of the investment forum.
“NTIFE is designed to offer B2B opportunities among member associations and showcase the industry’s products/services.
“This encourages the association members to run vibrant businesses and take advantage of the collaboration and synergy that NTIFE provides.
“This informs the Federation’s position of not registering associations who perform the same task or do similar businesses within the sector.
“NTIFE also have the mandate of assessing/encouraging/promoting private and public sector investments.
“The private sector has continued to make huge investments into the sector while the government in the last 15 years has made little or no investment. We can therefore sate the sector has not grown at the expected pace, which has affected her contribution to GDP of the national economy.
“Whilst the private sector is poised to make more investment using technology into areas such as
Examples include Online Travel Services, cruising, hotels, mega resorts, and casinos. The public sector budgets are primarily used to fund recurrent expenditures.
“Another key objective of NTIFE is to stimulate the activities of Public Private Partnership (PPP) since there is hardly any well-defined structure/ procedure for doing so.
“We see some parastatals make minimal efforts to key into some private sector businesses/ events and the impact is also minimal.
“We, therefore, use this opportunity to call for a structured Public Private Partnership (PPP) between governments and the private sector. We need strong partnership for the development of the sector.
“I believe that our most valued resource persons will do justice to the subject and proffer ways and means to fund tourism in Nigeria, especially from the private sector’s perspective.”
In his remarks, the Chairman of the FTAN Board of Trusty, Chief Samuel Alabi, thanked the executives of FTAN, led by the president, Mr Nkereuwem Onung, for his innovations and consolidation of his predecessors’ progress in taking the federation to a dignified level.
“He thanked Mr Onung for still keeping alive the NTIFE which he established during his leadership as the president of FTAN and pray for more strength and innovation to make the MICE event bigger than what it is today as it hosted the sixth edition.
The distance between my tenure as president and yours is immense, yet I must acknowledge that you have exceeded my expectations, and I extend my congratulations on this significant achievement.
