By Jeleel Olawale
A tourist, Mr Adedeji Ifeoluwa has bemoaned the government’s lack of support for the sector, even as he claimed that N60 billion of the N80 billion (75 per cent) budgetary allocation for the sector is used for recurrent expenditure.
He said the tourism industry, which was the worst hit in the country, has never benefitted from government interventions. He stressed that the sector has never recovered.
He said the sector did not receive the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s interventions to cushion the effect of the pandemic on the economy.
“Tourism is the private sector investment that has suffered the most. If we are making recoveries, what did the government do concerning our businesses? Most organisations, hotels, and travel agencies were shut down for one year.
“We were told by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele, that more than 3.5 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) was used for interventions during the pandemic. But the tourism sector did not feel it. We are telling the government to rethink its approach to tourism in Nigeria.
“The government makes a budget every year, check the last seven years, mostly N80 billion is made available as tourism budget and N60 billion is recurrent. We are saying that the government should re-profile the budget properly. Let us have more capital expenditure than recurrent expenditure to develop tourism,” he said.
Adedeji also lamented about the plan to merge parastatals under tourism, warning that such a move would cripple the sector.
“We are pleading with the Federal Government about the attempt to merge parastatals of tourism. They should not be merged; they should rather be funded; rejig their operational modalities to enable them to do much better than they are doing right now.
“The deadly pandemic reduced our jobs, a million jobs were lost in the tourism sector. We need to do more to create more jobs. In rethinking tourism, there is a whole lot of things we need to be looking at,” he said.
He said is there need to project the country on an international platform as the preferred destination for tourism, leisure and business in Africa.
Adedeji stressed that Nigeria, despite being a top tourism destination in Africa, has some untapped potential, which makes the country lose the revenue that should have been generated through the industry.
He said the tourism potential of Nigeria if well harnessed, would provide more funds for the nation as well as take millions of youths out of the labour market.
He said in the process of executing the project that would projectthe country’s tourism and cultural potential would be transported for exhibitions in developed countries.
He noted that the exhibition would also go a long way in attracting tourists to the country as well as boosting Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings.
Adedeji, therefore, called on government at all levels to invest heavily on tourism, art and culture to boost economy and reduce over reliance on oil.