Rubbish? Total rubbish! Nonsense? Outright nonsense? Walai talai, this is the highest display of idleness! Of all the functions and objectives of NIHOTOUR, the only agenda that this tourism parastatal could think of is the celebration of how to prepare food perfectly and enhance service to lure tourists. Is that why the young, vibrant man was appointed as the DG of NIHOTOUR? An apparent showcase of a person who is not only daft but has run out of viable and better ideas? Huuuun. Huuuuuuu…
My fellow Nigerians, this guy called Nura Kangiwa, the Director-General of the National Institute of Hotel and Tourism, is something else: A joker of a sort? Huuuun…
One of the problems we have in the tourism sector is that most of us are hypocrites, vainglorious and empty-headed. Some of us are cheap cowards and never-do-wells who are in constant fear and always afraid to tell the truth when it matters most. ‌Some of us, the practitioners or stakeholders or whatever nomenclature you can stamp us with, are always tongue-tied whenever we should come out frontally to be blunt, factual, candid, and expressly say it as it ought to be. Not just because of the sore fact that some of us are beneficiaries of the wobbly system but because we are afraid of the stature and status of the dominant figures and Lords of the sector, particularly of those appointed by the government to administer the industry for productivity but daily wreaking and destroying its fundamentals.
Though the very rare ones who dare all to address issues that border on probity, diligence, and ethical process of the sector are stigmatised and called unprinted names by the sector rats, parasites, cockroaches, ants, and rodents.
We always hail those we should stoutly condemn and stone for maladministration. We honour and give bogus awards to those who wreak havoc in the sector. We decorate those who should be slapped and imprisoned for truncating the advancement of the tourism sector. We arrogate undue accomplishments to those who raise cosmetic and unsustainable undertakings. We shower cheap credits upon undeserving elements for doing nothing. When someone out of us is blessed with a Midas touch of thinking out of the box and adding the value of uniqueness, it brings out the best in an event. We jolly conspire to destroy, unnerve, denigrate, and cast aspersion and kill the rising morale of the fellow.
We sinisterly conspired to pull him down or surreptitiously work against the project, program, and schemes. Thus when I think of the Gastronomic Festival being prompted, promoted, and powered by Alhaji Nura Kangiwa, DG, NIHOTOUR, my mind wonders how China consciously, with gradual aggression, branded its foods, packaged its culinary potentialities for global acceptance, my mind points to the extraordinary effort with which Indonesia impressed the world with its over 109 exciting foods out of 5340 recipes which lured millions of tourists scrambling to the city every year.
I see in it a well-choreographed and conscious stride at marketing Nigerian foods into the global market. I see well-thought-out steps to injecting professionalism in preparing Nigerian foods for the international market. I see a deliberate and calculated effort to raise Nigerians’ consciousness of the powerful economic potency of Nigerian foods, first for Nigerians and then for the world. I see premeditated cooking as a national rebirth of a part of our culture through food tourism. I see the promotion of national unity, harmony, and appreciation of ethnic values via food. I see the need not to stay back in Usi Ekiti, Ekiti State, but risk it all via road to join, participate and witness the 3rd Gastronomy Festival, behind packaged, powered, organized, and branded by the National Institute of Hospitality and Tourism, NIHOTOUR, at the sprawling Abuja International Conference Centre, on June 16 and June 17, 2023.
Let us rid ourselves of that dirty and unproductive stuff. Let’s join the effort to grow Nigeria’s food tourism.
Be in Abuja tomorrow and witness the
2023 Gastronomic Festival.
Good for Nigeria.
God bless Nigeria
God bless Nigeria Tourism
God bless NIHOTOUR.
*Ojo-Lanre from Usi- Ekiti, Ekiti State, sent in this piece.
