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Stakeholders have been advised to push for the establishment of a National Policy on Tourism as a fulcrum for the development and promotion of 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) made the call in Abuja on Tuesday.
Prof Ikupolati explained that for tourism to drive the economy, there must be strategic planning of the industry in Nigeria in a way that there will be a development of priorities based on strategies for planning developing and marketing of Nigeria as a tourist destination.
He said the strategic plan must include the 7Ps of tourism, which include product, price, place, promotion, process, physical evidence, people, adding that there must be improvement in security situation and the creation of an enabling environment for rapid growth and development of tourism in Nigeria, as well as government policies specifically targeted to tourism development.
Ikupolati said “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.
“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 identified budgeting and funding as one of the most important financial habits the industry can adopt, to improve its current dismal performance, adding that it would help the industry to achieve its financial goals, keep practitioners from getting financially overwhelmed, and even helping them avoid or get out of debt.
Ikupolati re-emphasized that culture and tourism can contribute significantly to the economic development of Nigeria if government can provide the right platform and enabling environment for the promotion and development of culture and tourism in Nigeria.
“Also, government should build collaboration with the private sector (PPP arrangements) to promote culture and tourism in Nigeria, increase funding to tourism agencies and rejig their operations, so as to increase their contributions to national development.
“Nigeria has a great potential in the tourism sector and the time to take positive steps in the right direction is now. All of these can be done if we have good leaders in government and in the various organizations operating within the culture and tourism sector.”
Giving an overview of government budget on 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 in a comparison of the absolute number of guests is obvious.
“By putting the tourist numbers in relation to the population of Nigeria, the result is much more comparable; with 0.025 tourists per resident, Nigeria rank 164th in the world. In Western Africa, it ranked 8th.
“Nigeria generates around $321.00 million in the tourism sector alone. This corresponds to 0.073 per cent of its the Gross Domestic Product and approximately 34 percent of all international tourism receipts in Western Africa.
“Government budget on tourism in Nigeria has been at a very low level in the last decade, compared to countries like Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and even The Gambia.
“As a result, tourism contribute about two percent on the average to DGP during this period. 75 percent of government budget to tourism in Nigeria is spent on recurrent expenditures. About 3.5 percent of DGP that went to government intervention did not come to private tourism.”
Ikupolati, who expressed dissatisfaction with the tourism budgetary scenario, said that the situation at hand cannot be the ultimate potential of Nigeria in tourism.
He called on the government to strategically align with the economic and social impacts of tourism to successfully build a sustainable industry to scale up the economy.
According to him “When these impacts are netted off, 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 model of tourism promotion and development,” Ikupolati added.
The panelists for the forum included 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.
Taking the first shot, Otunba Akinboboye explained that the only way to celebrate the rich cultural potentialities that abound in Nigeria is mainly through tourism, adding that to do that effectively, Nigeria must weave the entire tourism ecosystem around the diverse culture of the country.
He said the private and public sectors must come to terms with the fact that tourism promotion and development is a process and that process 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 government play a pivotal role in tourism development but said that if the government refuses to do what it takes for tourism to work as expected, the stakeholders who are the drivers of the industry must do their best to stimulate activities to position the industry to attract the relevant government agencies if they are serious about their obligations.
In his submission, president, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Nigeria, Mr Nwuba, said that FTAN and other organisation can become advocates in engaging government.
“Just as you have come to Abuja, FTAN should be sitting with the FTC minister and telling him that our finding is that you are not support the industry the way you ought to and we are demanding that we see a certain percentage of the budget going into this sector because we can show the derivable,” he added.
“One of the things we are forgetting is that tourism is also an income earner. It is something that you put money into that you will get money from. If refuse to invest in tourism, you will not get the inflow most those big countries in tourism earn.
“So, what we need to do is to essentially engage the government
We, as FTAN and other engagement associations 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 given the information available in the number of localities.”
Nwuba said Dubai may be too extreme considering the kind of result and approach the government had used to get to the present state, but we can look at The Gambia, Ghana and Benin Republic which are not too far from us.
“We can start from a progressive level by saying we expect ‘x’ percent on a progression level; we don’t need to ask you to put 20 percent budget today; but put five percent in the first year and in the second year, you can make it seven percent so that in five years, we can see 20 percent 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 resources 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, while others called for a stand-alone tourism ministry for tourism. Agbanusi also called for the revival of tourism boards in the FTC to stimulate the needed tourism activities to 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, who welcomed the audience that cut across all tourism and allied businesses as well as core stakeholders, experts and professional bodies to the NTIFE 2022, said 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 opportunity among member associations and showcase the products/service of the industry.
“NTIFE also has 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 into the sector.
“We can therefore say the sector has not grown at the pace expected, and this has affected its contribution to GDP of the national economy.”
e sector is poised to make more investment using technology into areas such as
Online Travel Services, cruising, Hotels, Mega Resorts, and Casinos among others. the public sector budgets are largely 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 opportunities 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 perspective of the private sector.”
In his remarks, the Chairman, FTAN Board of Trusty, Chief Samuel Alabi thanked the executives of FTAN lead by the president Mr Nkereuwem Onung for his innovations and consolidation on the progress of his predecessors in taking the federation to a dignify 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 gap that is between when I was the president and your time was like a gap between heaven and earth but I must tell you that you have raised the bar beyond expectation and I have to congratulate you on this milestone.
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