Tourism and Nigeria- The way forward

We complain of unemployment and better living conditions but the way forward is right in front of us. How does tourism help in growth and development?

Tourism and Nigeria

Every year, our various universities graduate thousands of young people. Among these people are many who studied a course known and Tourism and Hospitality Management (HMT) in short form. Unfortunately many of these graduates will end up working in places that has nothing to do with Tourism or Hospitality making the 4 years plus 1 year Youth service program a total waste of time and resources. 

When the subject matter tourism and hospitality is mentioned, what comes to your mind?. Well this is just a brief definition of what they mean according to google search. Tourism is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes. Whereas hospitality is the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.

From the above definition we can see that tourism entails people moving from one country to another for the purpose of either busiess or professional reason. The trousim sector is one that can generate a whole lot of income if properly invested in. Before going further I will like to enumarate different types of tourism.

Eco tourism: tourism for the purpose of visiting protected sites

Medical tourism: based on medical reasons alone

Cultural tourism: tourism for cultural purposes

Sports tourism: tourism for sporting events such as world cup, winter olympics, summer olympics etc

War tourism, space tourists, dark tourism and so on. 

All these types of tourism in their own way are a huge source of income for an economy. Example is the world cup. When the next world cup starts millions of people will move into the host country to watch the games. Note all these people moving into the host country are moving their to spend money, everyone will pay for their hotel resident, for food, for sorvenioers, for tickets, etc. You will see that before the end of the world cup the GDP of the host country will skyrocket due to the massive influx of people. You will also note that due to the increase of moving more hotels will need more staffs thereby creating jobs, good road networks will need to estblished for easy movement of poeple, electriciity supply will need to be increased as torusit will not stay in darkness, more consumer markers will need to be created to meet up with the demands of the tourist, all these improvements are bringing growth to the development of the host country.   

You talk about medical tourism, when people flood into a country for medical treatment the medical standard of the host country needs to be at high level to meet up with the needs of the medical tourist. This improvement in higher medical standard will not only benefit the medical tourist but also the host community. 

The  question now is where is my beloved Nigeria in all these. It is a shame to hear that our politicians are taking our money and spending it in foreign hospitals as medical tourism rather than improving the standard of our local hospitals so that foreigners can come here and spend their money. I am sure that if Nigeria can boast of being a centre for medical tourism we will not only create jobs but improve the standard of healthcare delivery to ourselves. Not only that we will experience a high rate in the growth of our GDP. This is a huge income generating scheme that is overlooked in Nigeria. 

If you talk about sport tourism it is also a shame that my beloved Nigeria can not come out to confortable say they can host a sporting activity like the world cup, I doubt if we have the capacity to even host the African cup of Nations. Our so called sporting sector is in such a sorry state that it nothing to write home about. Our stadiums are in a deplorable state due to lack of maintenance, our local football competition (NPFL) is like an inter house sport event not worthy of public exposure. Why is Nigeria not part of the country fighting to host the world cup?. This is a very big shame on Nigeria and i am sorry to announce that this is another income generating scheme that is also overlooked in Nigeria. 

If you talk about Educational troursim I begin to weep when I see our politicians and big men taking their children abroad to school when we have schools over here. Why can we be a centre for educaional tourism? Why cant foreigners come to spend their money here for educational reasons? Why do we abandon our schools to be in ruin and spend millions sending our children abroad to school. Go around you community and see the state of our secondary schools,you would weep. I don't even want to talk about the universities because they are nothing to talk about. Build your schools, equipe your schools, and watch as foreigners will come here to spend their money just to learn thereby increases our GDP. 

Many of you will want to talk about the obudu cattle ranch, the cultural canirive hosted every December and other tourism activities. But to be honest with you if I am giving the contract to market those events to foreigners I will tell them to run for their lives. Yes! I will, because our beloved Nigeria is not a safe place. Everyday we hear of kidnappings and killing, the question now is how can you assure them of their safety? No one wants to die just because of tourism. Forget about security, can we boast of good road networks? What of good electricity? It is a big shame on Nigeria. If we want to develop and grow our economy, then we should look into improving the tourism sector. Turn our country into a hub of medical tourism or sports tourism or any other form of tourism and watch as we not only grow but develop economically. 

 


Victor Anthony

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