‘TOURISM IS A BIG EMPLOYER OF LABOUR’
‘TOURISM IS A BIG EMPLOYER OF LABOUR’
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 of a forum held in Lagos recently, the Director-General of the
National Tourism Development Corporation, Mr. Folorunsho Coker, noted that,
globally, tourism was getting bigger by the day and Nigeria could not but
boldly face the reality.
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.”