Nigeria’s tourism is world’s best kept secret - Tourism Minister

Tokunbo KayodeAdetokunbo Kayode, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and current Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation comes across as someone who has spent many years in the tourism sector because when you meet him you are immediately consumed by his passion for the sector. He is so much in a hurry to achieve that you believe his whole life, after the ministry, will be devoted to tourism. Kayode is so fond of his job that, to properly groom himself, he attends international courses on tourism. He speaks with Associate Editor, Debo Abdulai. Excerpts:

AS the honourable Minister of Culture, Tourism and National Orientation what did you find on ground when you asssumed office?
When I got into office, I am sure like every other minister, I was bewildered by the way things were being done probably because that sector was new to me. I was surprised.. I also found that people were ready to work if properly pushed so we began to take briefing. Briefing on culture were just the story of ‘when we went to Japan yesterday, we went to Paris the other day...”

So we said we had to get involved. Look at the Nigerian museums for instance. It was a complete mess. It is the most shameful thing that has happened to this country, what is happening to our museums. Looted, messy, no infrastructure, no security. The stores where the artifacts are kept were made hundred of years ago. Water was leaking, nothing was happening. There was a white paper on Ambassador Olusola’s committee which approved the emergency renovation of these things and nothing was done, infact the report is being hidden from us. We had to use force before we got the report. Now we are going to inaugurate committee for emergency repairs of Nigeria museums all over the country.

In addition to that we are going to be taking inventory. They don’t have inventory of what artefact they are keeping. Those were some of the things that we met. In the tourism sector, yes, a lot of work had been done when we got there and we are grateful to the previous government, the consultancy that worked with them, they have a policy and all we need to do is watch and begin the implementation and, of course, face the challenges of implementation. Some of the challenges of implementation are, for instance, there were a lot of programmes about what to do with NTDC. We have resolved that we would keep it, we would restructure it.

But changes come with pain and people want to resist it so you can understand the challenges we have with management of NTDC. As at this moment, we believe we have been able to get over that. We have explained to the management that our mandate, our focus, everybody will have to key into the new structure for the construction is designed to make the place proactive, progressive and effective, more importantly to help.

It is to help the new operators who are coming in to understand that the NTDC is not a master of the operators but their servant and to make it easy for the operators to obey the law.

Most government agencies in our country make it difficult for operators to obey the law and help them to do bigger business which will be to the best interest of our people.

Those were some of the things we met on ground. You know my ministry is an ideas ministry, you have to sit down to think about ideas that would make things work. It is not a place where for instance you say you want to build that road and it is already there or you want to build a bridge or buy planes. It is a place where you must allow imagination to flow, to widen it so that you can pick pieces of ideas and bring them together to run the ministry. And sometime, gradually push those ideas and you discover it works. For example, the idea of we having a Tourism Support Group, the idea of really thinking big for the country and believe that it is possible and not be overbeaten by, “oh Nigeria’s image is bad”. As far as we are concerned, Nigeria’s image is perfect. It is very good, it will be better. It is not worse than many other countries. We are only thinking we have image problem. I’ve never seen any country in the world where they say they have image problem.

We are better than many countries. The whole of the crime in Nigeria in one year is not up to the number of crime in some countries in one month. We have some countries having some cities which are described as the most dangerous in the world and Nigeria is not having such so, we don’t have to worry.

Those are the kind of things we met at the ministry and of course the basic problem which everybody knows is the issue of inefficiency, inability to make the big changes. The next thing is the issue of the way the ministries are being funded. That is why you see that the government insists rigidly on the procedure.

Rule of law is that if there is procedure, just follow the procedure.

People call Nigeria the heart of Africa, that it is the tourism destination. How realistic is this ?
For me, Nigeria should be the tourism destination for Africa and all of us must insist that it should be.. We have varieties that no other country in Africa has. We have the Savannah, we have the Sahel, rainforest, we have the semi-savannah, semi sahel, we have everything. We have mountains, gorges, rivers, we have the water falls, we have wild animals. We have things like Obudu, which is unbelievable, and we have the Mambilla too so we have the right, the only thing is that we have to put things together. Putting things together not necessarily in a luxurious way. We need to know that these things are to be enjoyed, keep them clean. Get ready for people coming in there and change our attitude to work. Attitude to work is one of the orientation programmes that we are planning to do. It is already being rolled out now, change of attitude to work. You must be ready to work hard for your pay.

So, we are trying to claim the heart of Africa but the heart of Africa project is a project to draw the attention of the world to the soul of Africa. We are really the heart , if anything happens to Nigeria, the whole of Africa goes down. That is just the truth.

And when God created Nigeria, He gave us everything. He denied most countries a lot of things and gave everything to us: Strong people, good health ,good environment. That is why I don’t believe when people say life expectancy is forty-four years. In my village, nobody dies before eighty except something happens. You see alot of old people there, my Oba is ninety-seven and my father eighty-something, it goes round. We have the right to claim the heart of Africa but we should be ready to accept responsibility. Part of the problems that we may have is that we have not accepted that we are big. We don’t even know that we are. Recently, one of our presidents gave some money to a country, a small country that could not pay her salary and people were saying we have not taken care of our problem and we are giving out some money but we are big. By the time we get everything together, everybody will soon be very well in this country.

People are going to do well in every sector, tourism is more than enough for us. Like the UAE, we put aside the oil, it’s a state policy. Look at Agric and Solid mineral, it is the same thing. We make noise about oil but do you know we have not exploited gas? We have one of the largest deposits in the world. Nobody has ever drilled one hole for gas. What you see is associated, that is coming out of fuel.

So what are the basic things that are needed for tourism development if we really want to be the destination?
We have a roadmap towards achieving greatness in tourism and that roadmap is the national tourism policy. National tourism master-plan based on policy. Implementation of that policy is like following a road-map which will take us to our destination to make Nigeria one of the biggest tourism countries in Africa. And the road map says we must develop new hotels, we must develop new tourism products, must plan, implement our plan using a restructured or an efficient implementation plan, whether we call it NTDC or whatever. We are restructuring to ensure that we have a strong implementation arm that knows its job, that is effective and doing well.

We are also trying to develop domestic tourism. When we do cultural festivals people come from all over the states to watch when you do programmes, either sporting activities under sport tourism, you are developing tourism. The more people move around, the more tourism revenue is earned and by the time foreigners are begging to come in, you begin to have foreign exchange and that will entail a lot of challenges.

If we continue to push the way we are pushing we need bigger airports. Look at what China is doing now. They’ve built the biggest airport in the world. I am sure Dubai is going to beat them in the next one or two years. Even China is signing to build about five more airports. The best airport in Nigeria today was built thirty years ago, so we have to face those challenges. To me, they are not problems. They are just part of the challenges which we have to face. All we need is to be focused. We need a strong railway system to get people to be able to move around and reduce the so called dangers on the road. Again when Mr. President visited China he said that was one of the key areas he’s focussing on. It must be done.

Thank God people are looking at the possibility of allowing the private sector to handle this thing because that is the way it is being done all over the world. Even if the government lays the tracks, individuals can buy the trains. Individual business concerns can put in money to buy the trains. Even we have tourism train that would take you round Nigeria for a fee so those are part of the challenges.

Of course there are challenges of security. The critical thing is that we have to get many young people employed. The more you develop tourism the more employment is created so that the time would come when this country can say okay, every youth must have a labour card. You must be registered in the labour office nearest to you. It is either you are working or you are not working. If you are not working, government would give you something however small. They get you a job and you start paying tax, if you don’t pay tax you go to jail, it is very simple but we must create the opportunities and one of the easiest way to create these oppurtunities is to develop tourism.

I have this theory which you can check out: no country has broken through the barrier of poverty without having tourism as catalyst of the breakthrough. Every country that is doing well today has strong tourism sector.

Every country that has not broken through has not really developed its tourism. We are at the verge of breaking through, we must develop our tourism sector. We can make it. We have 140 million people and even if just one million Nigerians are moved round in a year it is a huge tourism market. That is why in the international community, they believe Nigeria’s tourism is the world’s best kept secret and when it breaks open, it would be unstoppable. It would just be like China even within their country they can’t cope and outside they are the largest international tourists all over the world.

Is that part of your idea of tourism police?
Yes when you talk about security, actually it is nothing new, they do it in South Africa and few other countries like Kenya and so on. These are police who are specially trained to handle tourism so we have met with the IG, he was very enthusiastic about it and we are going to work with them to have policemen who are going to handle tourism. Cross River has introduced something like that. We are going to have something more encompassing.

We’ll have police who are actually trained to handle crowd, visitors and tourists and that is part of the idea to improve the security environment of visitors, which is what tourism is all about. Challenges of security would be faced and don’t forget again that the federal government has already set up a panel to review the problem of the police. In as much as somebody is thinking about the problem, the solution would be found and by the time it is found, things would move on very well.

Earlier you said there is no five star hotel in Nigeria, and you said for us to develop tourism, there have to be more five star hotels, so what is your ministry, in conjuction with the private sector and state, doing to improve the sector?
Thank you very much, I told you, we already have a group to tbe inaugurated very soon, the Tourism Business Support Group (TBSG). It is a group of about twenty five to thirty people drawn from the banking sector , people who are in property, business and so on who will support development of tourism. Two days ago, I had a meeting with the CBN governor on the matter and he’s giving us total support. Our target is, let’s say about 500 billion is dedicated to tourism development in the next five years at least, minimum because even the money should be more than that. By the time we talk with them the Nigerian sector can bring N500 billion and if they do that, five times that amount will come the way of foreign investment, that would be 500 billion naira times five. It is very possible because if the Nigerian business sector shows courage and put down 1 million their foreign partners will put down times five of that. Nigeria has the highest return on investment in the world today, at least the highest in Africa and our stock exchange is getting more virbant, getting more efficient and people.They can easily take the project to the stock exchange and people buy shares there. There is a lot of confidence in this area and I pray that the confidence would continue. So, with the TBSG we hope that we can get the business sector to put a lot of money into tourism. That is one. Let the state give guarantee to build hotels and in two years, they sell the shares in the stock exchange.

The trick is the federal or state government should not allow their hands to stick to a project. You must have your plan, your in-line and exit line so that you know when to remove your hand. Or you can start it, so that you incubate it then you remove your hand. What that means is that the area between long term funding and short term funding has disappeared. You can put down long term money and get it back in short term. How many of us know Dangote’s factories but we all bought his shares because we have confidence in him.

But to do this well, this is one of our strategies, we ask the French embassy here to contact Achol .Achol is one of the biggest hotel groups in the world and they sent their director to see us, this was last week and we discussed and they were so excited, they told us that they did the study of Nigeria’s hotel sector five years ago and they believe it is one of the most lucrative in the world today. This is their own study and what is stopping them is from coming to work here is that they need a strong Nigeria group to work with so that they can sign an agreement with let’s say twenty hotels in the next five years or 25 hotels in five years but how many can they do with single individual. So, with TBSG, and other interested groups, we are going to develop a strong group that can go into the tourism sector with strength and that Nigerian financial sector can put a lot of money into that. So, we are working and it is again going to create a lot of opportunities for us.

You can easily buy one or two shares from this group and you just smile home.

The TBSG, I am a little scared, because if the TBSG now wants to buy the National Theatre, will Nigerians not compare it with Transorp?
Thank you for this question .. Let us no mix-up things. The concept of Transcorp is a fantastic concept let us understand that. Maybe we have certain questions to ask about how it was started off but having a strong company, any day gives you confidence. You have small money you buy some share. Like the UAC of old. So, if they can get their acts together, it will be good.

Secondly, the Tourism Business Support Group (TBSG) is just a group of business men who will see what is good in this and they can encourage their business colleagues or support the idea or be able to buy into it..
So, we believe the best practise would be applied but the truth is, this is what other countries have done. . Those who have broken through used groups like this, we want to encourage the private sector to come into it. Using the NACCIMA for instance or Lagos chamber of Commerce, you need to talk to them.

Right now Lagos Chamber of Commerce is launching its own tourism group very soon and NACCIMA to I believe will follow suit, Abuja chamber is trying to do the same. So businessmen will come together and say okay, we want to talk to tourism ministry, we like what the minister is bringing out and we want to say we too, we’ll form a group so that we can work with one foreign group to do this thing.

Tourism resort, we don’t have one in this country. Look at all the islands in Lagos, look at Gurara falls. Every dam has a tourism content. Gurara dam that is coming up now, that is a tourism content. We need group because these things cost a lot of money. I can not do it, you can not do it but all of us coming together can do it.

There appears to be a setback in the tourism sector which has to with the government itself, that the government is not pushing people, that we don’t believe the government.

That is part of the orientation that we should address. I am part of government. Before you wash the spot of doubt off the leopard, it takes time a little to get that achieved but with time government will be able to respond to the needs and the desires of the people but my brother, is it everybody in South Africa that loves Tambo Mbeki? Is it everybody that really believes in the government? You see, we set very high standard for ourselves, we doubt ourselves so much. We set standards which we should not bother to set for ourselves. In America, it wasn’t that they believe their government and that is why they put the fear in them that somebody is going to bomb them. They don’t give a damn about their government, they don’t believe in Washington, you know what I am talking about.

With time, things must improve, there is no other way about it.

How did we arrive where we are today and what is your ministry doing to make us believe in ourselves, in our country?
I think we made a lot of mistakes and the critical one was to allow the army taste power. The military in power created a lot of problems for us in this country, loss of our sense of understanding of what it takes to have dignity of labour, loss of love for the country, you see people struggling for power, coup and counter coups. They deceive. They came and did the worst thing.

So, in order to arrest the situation, we are bringing Civics back to the schools by giving free books. I’ve discussed that with the president and he’s going to make special presentation. In fact, that had already been done by the previous administration, we are only building on it.

Secondly, we are a doing programme on attitude. We are going back to see how we can challenge ourselves on attitude, attitudinal change. We are doing a programme on integrity in the public service, that is going to be done next week Monday (tomorrow), Mr. President is involved and it is to tackle the problem of the civil service. This by extension will also go to the private sector because there is corruption even in the private sector. There is also a programme which we call Nigeria Arise, to protect the image of the country to help us to begin to believe in our country. I was talking to somebody yesterday and I said look, I know about ten people in this country, the M.D of Julius Berger for the past thirty years retired about four years ago and he’s still leaving in Abuja, GUINNESS M.D. is a French man, he has been here for 33 years. Two Americans, ambassadors back to back.

We are try to get some of them to give testimonies. Foreigners who have been here for the past thirty years. They are now Nigerians. You can check this out, I’ve never seen any white who came to this country, spend two years and wanted to go back. I’ve never seen one, although when I say so, I don’t mean hundred per cent but 80, 90 per cent don’t want to go back. They enjoy Nigeria.

I must however concede something. In my attempt to study this problem, I discover that the government has a duty to care about the welfare of the people. I want to see, in the next one or two years, a situation whereby anybody who is above sixteen, has an identity card/labour card. If you are in school, if you are not in school, you must register somewhere.