Tourism is a major employer of labour — Ogunmola

By Jeleel Olawale

There is far more to tourism than many people think about. It is an elastic and versatile industry that government and other relevant bodies ought to take very seriously.

Here is a sector that is, for instance, said to make about eight trillion dollars annually. Of the huge sum, however, only about 10 per cent comes to Africa, with Kenya, Egypt and South Africa taking the lion’s share of this. That Nigeria is not among the lead earners on the continent shows that it gets two little from the sector.

Speaking on the sidelines on state of tourism in Nigeria, Mr Ogunmola Dada noted that, globally, tourism was getting bigger by the day and Nigeria could not but boldly face the reality.

Ogunmola, who is the Curator, Ife Museum said, government at all levels need to invest in tourism and cultural industry to increase the internally generated revenue of the government and rejuvenate the sector.

Among other urgent steps required, Coker noted, was the need to change the country’s tourism law which, according to him, is 40 years old. Saying that all aspects of corporate governance and regulations ought to be sorted, he stressed the need for all stakeholders to address demands of human capital, infrastructure and branding.

He said, “If you build a five-star hotel today, you will require about 1,000 staff to run it effectively. Where are you going to get that, in terms of getting well trained ones? If you don’t create events around the facility, back to back, you find out that many of the rooms will remain empty. And if you don’t know how to create a hybrid of funding, you can’t survive it. These are things prerequisite to building these facilities.

“There are specific structures that we have in Nigeria that are good for tourism. We have the population and we have the land and many tourist resources that, however, need to be developed. An average Nigerian child needs a clean place and sight to behold for pleasure. Most of our heritage and cultural locations don’t have those kinds of facilities.

“The creation and maintenance of all of these facilities are income and employment-generating. Also, souvenir shops in these locations promote our culture. That is why we are encouraging owners of these assets, like the states and local government councils, to invest more so as to get more revenues. The ownership of assets needs be looked at also and most natural things like waterfalls are good for tourism.

“This is an industry that we have to focus on because if you don’t invest in yourself, nobody will invest in you. So, it is a win-win matter if we deliberately open up the industry. We can take a step the same way we said we needed digital telephone. Tourism can do what GSM did when it came into use. And that is what we need to do with the tourism industry.”

According to Coker, tourism is not the only largest employer of labour, it also employs strategically, with women and youths being in the highest percentage. This is in agreement with Nigeria’s demographics that flaunt far more youths than adults.

“We need to take timely strategic decisions. We need to tell ourselves: This industry is the one we want to focus on. Because it is global and localised, it has some resistance to international shock. For example, Kenya has a tourism scale of a sort that people go to.

The same with Egypt. Even if the international terrain shuts up for a year, they won’t feel it because it is their people that are pushing it. So, we have to clean up everywhere so that we can be patronised and we can be promoted.”