In 2006, when he first came into our tourism world, a sector battered, direction less but with huge expenditure in lip service and grandeur workshops, Matthew Olusegun Runsewe did not pretend to love our self-deceit and seminary tourism engagements.
I recall his first public engagement with the organised private sector at Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, filled to brim with the Janes and James of the sector, some clutching voluminous tourism textbooks and proposals. Others came dressed up in their Sunday best, hired drummers and singers to herald their presence and arrival. It was the way we used to roll, it was electrifying and the paparazzi had a swell day.
I knew this “Newman” at Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) then would disappoint the Jews in tourism. He would ambush their dances and long merriment and ritualistic lip service offerings to the Nigerian gods of tourism ineptitude and deception.
We waited and he spoke. It was the end of banal tourism talk, end of workshops and the burial of impractical proposals, shutdown of tourism funds-draining fancies and portfolio practitioners out of business. Mr. Practical Tourism Business had come.
He made enemies but engaged Nigerians, policymakers and even insiders of the government that appointed him on the need for strategic reorientation of the gains and values of tourism to the Nigerian economy.
Do you still remember his slogans? “Tourism is Life.” What about “Oil is Good, But Tourism Better”? Like the biblical John the Baptist, Otunba Segun Runsewe took to the streets, homes and states in Nigeria, forcefully sharing his practical tourism message, telling us to embrace cultural tourism in its fullness, reminding us that the oil economy is at its wits end.
He rebuilt our tourism image, catapulted and caterpillared the dumpsite at the Area 1 office of NTDC and turned it into a mini Nigerian exhibition ground of representative cultural tourism and hospitality diversity. It was then our truly tourism house!
It wasn’t long before Nigerians came to accept that tourism was indeed business. And with the ever-supportive and aggressive Nigerian media, ever willing to partner with government and its officials, patriotic enough to provide Nigerians options of economic opportunities, Runsewe took Nigerian tourism in content and context to the marketplace.
One tourism message, chronicled without let and key to our development, was his prophetic vision on weaning Nigeria from the misplaced dependence on oil economy. It was a truth told in uncommon Nigerian candour and, even in government, no one, I mean no one, has shown the guts to get us away from the benumbing effects of oil economy.
Though focal about the emergence of the Nigerian tourism economy, a vision he pursued with catholic faith and spartan zeal within and outside Nigeria, the gods of oil economy ignored his calls to diversify to cultural tourism economy.
When he took a deserved rest in 2013, the hawks in the sector made gains for themselves, destroying his legacies and ignoring the message. They warped around NTDC and took it back to its vomit. Instead of sustaining the Runsewe initiative, giving it stronger perspectives and interpretations, the K-legged administrators took to outdated fashion catwalks and now to Google technology, dipped in incoherent wall ups and fraud.
Now, Runsewe is back, and having stabilized and refocused the culture sector as mandated by the administration of President Muhamandu Buhari, he has pumped up enough energy to revisit the diversification of the heavily oil-dependent Nigerian economy to tourism.
Please, make no mistake about his vision. Runsewe is not merely canvassing a mere sharing of economic space with oil, he is in bullish mood to push tourism to the front of the national economic space, and for those who love statistics, profitable figures from a well-enhanced Nollywood, cultural festivals, contemporary music and songs, arts and crafts, indigenous cuisines and religious tourism certainly boosts and booms the new Nigeria tourism economy.
Oh, yes, many people out there may say we have heard these before, yet they are unwilling to take to the streets. Today, despite our challenges, it is not out of place, right before our eyes, the richness and reality of the birth of our tourism economy.
Do a national quiz on Dubai as a destination, trust Nigerians to give a profitable rundown on their infrastructure and creativity, yet they are ignorant of the fact that Dubai has nothing tangible on cultural tourism but massive dose of faith in tourism creativity.
Do you know that the popular Yoruba Adire fabric can be found in Dubai, presented and marketed differently? The Chinese now learn the Igbo language and have mastered how to cook egusi and okro soup to woo itinerant Nigerian businessmen and traders to their country.
I am not in love with South Africa, but in their heyday in tourism, they came with their national carrier and ferried us with our money in our pockets to their country, selling to us tourism value chain compared to which we have more in number, unspoilt, natural and yet neglected.
One thing I am sure, and I hope you believe me, is that Runsewe will make this happen. When he engaged the media in Lagos last weekend, I saw that glint and determination, a kind of spiritual trademark he usually fronts when convinced about cultural tourism projects for the public good.
Don’t be deceived by those who don’t believe in Nigerian tourism, those who have opportunities to do something new but choose to wail, to put money first before our tourism tomorrow, who beg to be at the behest of cataloguing the many sins and insecurity in Nigeria but will never lift a finger to help Nigeria.
Runsewe is at our door of economic diversification, and he has sent notice to bang it open for tourism economy ever than he did before.