Just a week ago, Nigeria’s Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji lai Mohammed, was in Madrid, Spain, playing his own tourism script. Back home and in his state of Kwara, Mohammed was politically amputated and his cell in jeopardy. I am an ardent follower of the minister and his political interest(s).
Why, you are inclined to ask. Well, he is constitutionally mandated to tend our cultural tourism nest, and that is of great concern to me, and his political trajectory, allegdly overrated as a master political propagandist, a job, in all honesty, for which he is well admired and hated at the same time.
In Madrid, Lai Mohammed ensured our President Muhammadu Buhari visited the office the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). The President the said right things about our indigenous tongues and cultures, the investment opportunities and cheap labour, assuring the world and member states of the organisation that Nigeria has all it takes to host them in November.
It was strategic to get our President who was a guest of the Spanish government to help validate our preparedness to host the conference. Smart move by Lai Mohammed.
If you ask me though, I really don’t know what we truly stand to gain from the UNWTO visit. Would it improve our image ranking? Would UNWTO help us in improving our tourism products and services?
What will this visit, expected to gulp almost all the funding expectations of over 11 agencies under the ministry, bring to our table? Nigeria is one of most culturally diverse nations in world, with over 900 indigenous tongues, rich culture and tradition, yet very unfortunate in making the best of these gifts.
Already, the November UNWTO game is on and our very most deviant genius at our tourism agency has suddenly sent a Goliath notice, “We shall give it our best and support our minister,” the enfant terrible of our seven years of fruitless tourism journey of this administration sang!
I just dey laugh! Now, to the issue at stake and telling. The UNWTO conceived the Best Tourism Villages as a strategic plan to highlight how tourism helps safeguard rural areas, local gastronomy, values, landscape, natural and cultural diversity.
In 2021, some villages from 32 countries were granted attestation and our dear Nigeria didn’t even get “waka pass” mention.
Okay, let me take you back to 2010, during the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. What I intend to reveal does not make the UNWTO effort a “lifted effort” or “stolen idea” but it smells of a Nigerian effort, showcased to the world in South Africa; while the world celebrated soccer, Nigeria showcased tourism villages, the difference between the two is that Nigeria came to the sport tourism game with its 36 cultural villages, each of them a one-stop cultural tourism gallery, proudly the best of our nation, while UNWTO, to the best of its intentions, years later, one village, one nation.
Otunba Segun Runsewe (this man again!) was the tourism prophet behind the Nigerian effort, showing the world a lession in rural communities’ empowerment and promotion. To Doubting Thomases, please, search the tourism scriptures and I am sure UNWTO should have it in its archives that a Nigerian plying his well tested cultural tourism effort did give the world an eye to the future. Otunba Segun Runsewe, we won’t forget!
So, if we could set the pace in South Africa, even though exclusively showcasing our diverse cultural magnificence about 11 years ago to the world, why has Lai Mohammed failed to get at least one of our very unique villages numbered as one of global exemplary best?
Now, if you juxtapose this intent with the proposed UNWTO meeting in November, what are we really up to? Did I tell you the hawks at NTDC wish to fly the kite of the National Theatre (Entertainment City) owned by the Bankers’ Committee as its sole tourism product at the November meet? Well, the cookies are about to crumble again.
So, our President has endorsed the UNWTO visit and we wait to see how many countries may consider us serious to honour our invitation.
No doubt, free hotel, feeding and all luxurious vintage opportunities will be thrown at the member states to lure them here but we know that we are not yet there, indeed far from meeting the tourism scale of preference.
Come November, another wasteful tourism jamboree beckons and at the end of the day the civil servants in the ministry will smile to bank and Nigerian tourism will still be at the bottom rung of the ladder.
Next week, I shall endeavour to explain why cultural tourism villages in Morocco, Rwanda, Mauritius, Ethiopia and Kenya made the list for 2022, out of the 44 destinations celebrated at the 24th assembly held in Madrid, Spain and what Nigeria could only bring home is a certificate to host and fête those driving to best tourism nations in the world. Well, let us clap for us, great hospitable people, and with nothing to show for it.