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Recently, I saw an information pamphlet on the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism Studies (NIHOTOURS) in my library. I won’t bore you with the history of this Institute, originally located in Bagauda, a beautiful biospace with its famous lake, sharing presence with the flow of Tiga Dam.
It was so nostalgic for me, even the thought of what must have become of NIHOTOUR training hotel, the Rock Castle Hotel, with its panoramic view, which added to my pain for our industry and NIHOTOUR in particular.
I am very sure that many of those who came to NIHOTOUR after Kedeng left office as executive secretary of NIHOTOUR about 20 years ago never bothered to visit the founding location of this hospitality and tourism vocational training school, some 60 kilometres from Kano metropolis, which was once the apple of the eyes of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
One of the major objectives of establishing the school was to train needed manpower for tourism and its related activities through professionalisation benchmark, birthing proud professionals in all areas of the industry.
Indeed, at its birth in 1988, NIHOTOUR’s focal reach by government through careful monitoring and mentorship by UNDP and ILO was to advance and serve as the professional career ladder for West Africa’s tourism and hospitality industry, not just for Nigeria alone.
Notably, Nigeria then was truly the giant of Africa, with its unbelievable natural resources and active, growing population, ingredients and enablers attracting international visitors and tourists that certainly would need well trained professional service providers and practitioners.
Certified as one of the best ILO and UNDP projects in Africa, NIHOTOUR was supervised then by Nigeria Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) on behalf of the Ministry of Commerce and Tourism; and it stuck to its operational objectives and held court to support the development and growth of the Nigerian tourism and hospitality industry, nay, that of West Coast sister nations.
Unfortunately and regrettably, NIHOTOUR, in recent times, lost touch with reality when the military pulled it out of the supervisory hold of its original principal, NTDC.
All the arguments for such intervention years ago, particularly on the need to provide the institute with adequate funding metrics and to also process engaging curriculum to meet with the feverish dynamics of the industry, fell flat over time and became more pronounced in the last four years. It was a catastrophic fall, an unprecedented unexplainable somersault. A supersonic accident!
There’s no denying that NIHOTOUR was prematurely cut off the apron strings of NTDC and has become a psychological burden to both the industry and the federal government. It has become more of a construction firm than a vocational hospitality education institute. No collaboration ethos, top-heavy, with questionable administrative staff and short on professional teaching staff.
Indeed, what is at a play at NIHOTOUR is a big contradiction to its founding expectations and now turned into an express delivery vehicle of deepfakes as academic intervention projects in the past four years. The allegations of job racketeering are rife.
It is hilarious to see a tourism and hospitality institute transmute into a local government works department, providing street lights and construction of religious halls. It is disturbing and offensive that the only zonal intervention projects that could advance the original objectives of NIHOTOUR should be projects outside its core deliverables and operational responsibilities. Unfortunately, corruption is another name for ZIP projects as most are only on paper without physical presence!
The madness in NIHOTOUR has assumed a worrisome proportion with its leadership behaving like an emperor. Nura Kangiwa hardly factors the deep values of industry professionalism and an all-inclusive, well-guided curriculum of a vocational hospitality and tourism training institute to meet with future and immediate manpower gaps in the sector. It has lost its original West Africa badge.
The curriculum of the institute is still the same today as some 36 years ago, no wonder NIHOTOUR now trades on the streets of Abuja, calling out the hungry to come and eat food under its unbelievable N29 million worth gastronomy festival.
Let us not discuss the piggy fuzzy academic environment in which the school domiciled in the six geography zones operates, reflecting the questionable parades of zonal intervention projects on its appropriation records by the National Assembly, so it seems. One such appropriation for construction of modern toilets in selected markets in Edo State and for selected schools (not specified) in Abeokuta begs the absence of well-appointed hygienic public conveniences in NIHOTOUR training centres across the country.
It would amount to a waste of time to itemise the many ludicrous projects found in NIHOTOUR appropriation in recent times, certainly fueling allegations of misappropriation and misapplication of funds through those zip projects. Sadly, in the eyes of government, these strange ZIP projects are counted as releases for hospitality and tourism studies.
During President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, the Sure-P funds for tourism development also controversially grew wings. From Maiduguri, Mount Patti in Lokoja, Nasarawa’ s Farin Ruwa, and the slave trade market in Cross River, there were no such projects found and the snakes in the ministry of tourism swallowed it all.
Those projects’ monitoring and investigations were one of my most tasking assignments as a journalist, and a coloured two-page centrespread report in The Sun newspapers revealed unabated thievery of government funding for tourism in recent times by government appointees who generate deepfake projects and pass off same as done deal. Certainly, the fight against corruption is a big kettle of acid. The perpetrators are some well-known poor sickly fellows of yesterday!
Last week in Lagos, NIHOTOUR went to Oyingbo market and Ojuelegba roundabout to pick up strange faces as “stakeholders” for its training the trade, trainers racket. Branded red caps were distributed to all the hired stakeholders, who proudly showcased caps crafted under the bridge of Oshodi. The pictures forwarded to me by a friend who monitored the training for market women and “NIHOTOUR journalists” did not reveal known faces in the industry.
No doubt, the procured crowd was not oblivious to the charade by NIHOTOUR in Lagos, indicative of the need for emergency intervention to audit NIHOTOUR before it becomes a mockery of the government intention to provide professional education base for the industry.
Lola Ade John, as minister of tourism, is not in control and can not justifiably arrest the decay in nihotour. Why? She is a special guest of nihotour, housed by nihotour. Her vehicle is a gift from nihotour, same for her office, and trips allegedly funded from the unexplainable gestures from the rich pockets of nihotour. Her trip to Saudi Arabia and salacious trips to “ best tourism states in Nigeria to unveil “ ECOGen projects “ had the colour of Nihotour.
She has certainly lost her supervisory mandate to the hands of Esau, a typical scenario where wisdom in leadership falls flat for a piosionious portion of porridge craftily presented as donations or charity from a pedestrian merchant of deception. Lola Ade John is now a certified nihotour fellowship award winner, allegedly offered as part of the bargain of loyalty to uncensored freedom to rule without accountability by the Emperor
DO you know that the content of the ministry’s supplementary budget is heavily soaked in nihotour as the vehicle implementation, stylishly ignoring ntda which ordinary should drive the projects ? As we say on the streets, deepfakes shenanigans may be cast on the hush-hush style of the Emperor . We will cast our net wider to unveil the misapplication of N Power training fund and how it’s was allegedly ambushed and diverted.
I really don’t have issues with a minister whose renewed hope agenda has been met, but I pity an industry bewitched into silence and made to believe that the newest Emperor in town must be courted before he can listen to them.
Despite subtle resistance by the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria, Mr Emperor of our time knows how to glavernise his own stakeholders and also threw crumbs at them. Next time, watch the food you eat from the Emperor’s table, it could be poisoned!
His journalists are led by a known leper, an accomplished rouge king of the highway, and such likes and their groups who are willing vehicles to retire pictures of “well attended stakeholders training.” It’s not entirely a new game. Sadly, it looks like a perfect fix ( some people have a price), but surely such a deal ends in shame and ignominy. There is always an end to everything under the sun!
By August, a new sheriff shall come to Nihotour even though we trust that the Son of the President won’t allow his name to be dragged into the mess at Nihotour. we also believe that the minister may be outsmarted by her benefactors as we approach the final hour of reality.
Can Mr. President be bold enough to arrest the decay in Nihotour and the Ministry of Tourism? The supplementary budget for the ministry and Nihotour shouldn’t be a takeaway gift !! Let us organise a vigil as time is ticking!
