Fajuyi Memorial Park, Ado EkitiSegun Oni’s impactful tourism achievement

By Wale Ojo-Lanre - updated: Wednesday 15-04-2009

OF all the administrators and executive governors that have ruled Ekiti State, Engineer Segun Oni, whose tenure was truncated for a re-run-election to be held on May 25, stands taller when it comes to tourism appreciation for profitability and development.

This reason is not far fetched. The engineer did not wake up one morning to assume that God has directed him to rule over his people in Ekiti at all cost.

No, Engineer Oni who has impressive evidence of purposeful living and professional work experience both at Rank Xerox where he excelled as the first Nigerian to be exported out to salvage the dwindling fortunes of the company in Kenya and at the Educational Trust Fund (ETF) where he achieved a lot for the South-West are verifiable testimonies of his sparkling virtues to administer successfully a corporate organisation, entity and state.

His professional training and experience impacted positively on his style of administration which stand him out as a purposeful planner, a goal getter, who abhors pandering into the gallery of noise makers and cosmetic expectation.

Hence, all his programmes and projects executed in the last 18 months in Ekiti were not transient nature but enduring projects conceived, built and implemented to withstand the test of time.

For, there is a blue print on every major sector of Ekiti State with sequential order of implementation.

And so it is with the tourism sector, where he analysed rather than pandering to the popular opinion of tourism as a hotel business, he fine-tuned his tourism blue print towards employment generation, wealth mobililzation, empowerment and development.

Engineer Oni commenced his tourism revolution by rescuing Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi’s cenotaph from the wretchedness and abject parlousness.

The cenotaph which was a major tourists’ delight in Ado Ekiti was abandoned, unkempt and turned into convene for hemp smokers, thugs and social irritants by previous administration before him.

In fact, the cenotaph which was strategically located at the spot where three paths meet when entering Ado was an object of shame and humiliation not only to the people of Ekiti but to the person whose sacrificial body was buried within the Cenotaph.

But being a responsible person with a decent background and who believed that honour must be decently bestowed on whom deserved it, Engineer Oni rescued Adekunle Fajuyi’s Park from the hooligans, hemp smokers, serpents and other creeping wild animals and turned it to the most beautiful cenotaph ever in Nigeria.

This singular act of rehabilitation and wholesome renovation of the Park won the hearts of many distinguished Ekiti people who thronged out enmass during the commissioning.

One of the most distinguished and respected Ekiti indigenes who was the architect of the cenotaph, Major Gen. Adeyinka Adebayo, was so impressed by the sense of responsibility displayed by Engineer Oni.

Gen. Adebayo was particularly impressed that since he created the cenotaph, no administrator or executive governor of the state has deemed it fit or reasonable enough to think that the Cenotaph of one of the very rare patriotic Nigerian of Ekiti blood who died to save Nigeria from disintegration needs to be renovated, uplifted or rehabilitated.

Greatly impressed, Gen. Adebayo said and prayed that “I pray that God will give us responsible men like Oni to ruler over Ekiti.”

Since the commissioning, the Fajuyi Memorial Park has not only beautified the city, generated employment, motivated youths but also mobilized wealth as shops and kiosk owners around it have testified to increase in patronage.

Apart from the Fajuyi Park, the step-aside governor had given marching orders to all the local governments to identify a tourist site each for a collaborative development scheme in the state.

He had also turned the Fountain Hotel into a thriving business corporate entity, manned by a consultant and an indigenous club.

While a former governor vandalized all the assets in Ikogosi Warm Spring, the foreign core investors who has over N2 billion for Ikogosi Warm Spring project was expected to commence transaction shortly before the court order ed for re-run.

The Ikogosi Warm Spring Spring Project has been estimated to create about five-thousand employment in the next two years, by the planning of Engineer Segun Oni administration.

At Joint Tourism Board Conference NTDC tasks tourism administrators

Otunba Olusegun RunseweRecently precisely on March 25 and 26, 2009 in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal capital, the apex Tourism Regulatory body in Nigeria, the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), successfully hosted commissioners in-charge of tourism in the states, general managers of State Tourism Boards, Directors and Chairmen of Tourism Boards, among other tourism stakeholders in the states and the FCT.

The Joint Tourism Board meeting is usually organized by NTDC every year to discuss the way forward for the tourism industry with tourism stakeholders from the states and FCT.

It is important therefore to state that prior to the present leadership of the NTDC, the meetings were staggered and not held regularly which had created a lot of communication gaps between NTDC and the State tourism bodies.

Thus, on coming on board in August, 2006, Otunba Oluesegun Runsewe, the Director General of NTDC, knowing the importance of hosting the meetings, decided that it must be held at least once in a year. Since then, every year, the Joint Tourism Board meeting is held to serve as a think tank and brainstorm on issues affecting the industry both at the states and at the Federal level.

NTDC is mandated by its enabling laws to coordinate all tourism activities in Nigeria as the apex tourism regulatory body and to hold such crucial meetings between the states regularly which serve as a platform to discuss the issue of National hotel Registration and the sharing formula between NTDC and the states among other issues affecting the sector.

The states play very important roles in the development of tourism in Nigeria and NTDC being the apex umbrella body of tourism, must work with them to harness the tourism fortunes of the country.

Indeed, the 2009 NTDC Joint Tourism Board meeting was timely and purposeful, especially in view of the current global recession and the need for the diversification of our economy from over dependence on oil to non-oil sector, which tourism is the most veritable alternative considering the potentials Nigeria has in this sector. Also for the simple reason that tourism has been the mainstay of most economies in the world, even some African countries like South Africa, Kenya, the Gambia, just to mention a few.

It is against this backdrop that the theme of the meeting was apt: “Tourism As a vehicle for Achieving The Seven-Point Agenda and Vision 2020”.

The forum was premised on the harmonization and discussion of action plans for the development of tourism in Nigeria.

It afforded delegates the opportunity to have an update on national and global tourism development as well as issues on national security.

It would be acknowledged that the meeting which was chaired by the Otunba Runsewe, was unique, rich in form and contents. For the first time ever, a lecture on tourism and national security was extensively delivered by the Director General of the State Security Service. Of course, you cannot divorce security from tourism, because without adequate security, tourism cannot thrive.

According to the NTDC boss, “for the first time, we are having a meaningful meeting with the commissioners”. Yes the DG meant it, the meeting was indeed fruitful and all the commissioners attested to it. Otunba Runsewe further stated: “the time has come, I believe we must make tourism to work”, he stressed.

He affirmed without mincing words that Mr. President’s seven -point economic strategic plan is embedded in tourism.

Borrowing from a popular Chinese Proverb, the NTDC helmsman was able to teach the tourism commissioners from the states how to fish rather than giving them fish.

NTDC was able to prove that as the apex tourism body in Nigeria, it has been able to put its house in order. Thus it coordinated the meeting with professionalism and practicality to the admiration of the delegates.

You cannot give what you don’t have. Certainly, NTDC had a lot to showcase to the states which was masterly done.

The corporation’s operational headquarters in Abuja now called Tourism village, has become a tourists attraction of a kind one of the best office environments which has been adjudged a monument site by the FCT. It is fast becoming a one stop shop.

That alone dazzled delegates from the states. The collaboration between the NTDC and the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC ) which makes it mandatory for those registering travel and tour businesses to get approval from the NTDC before they could be fully registered is a great milestone and unprecedented in the history of the corporation. The present leadership of the commission was able to do this for the sake of the industry so as to discourage fraud and charlatans in the sector.

The objectives, discussions and decisions reached at the meeting were far reaching which left no one in doubt, particularly the states that the NTDC of today is now digitalized and is ready to take tourism to the next level.

By this, the states have been called upon to take a cue from the vibrancy of the apex body.

A retrospective view of guests at the Joint Tourism Board meeting, the importance of the papers delivered as well as and the level of responsibility they bestowed on NTDC would mean that the corporation is making progress. In the words of Barrister KGB Oguakwa, the Chairman, Committee on Tourism and Culture, House of Representatives, “this timely national meeting could not have come at a better time.

Our task is great and time is fast running out. Let us all follow the worthy example of today’s NTDC in bringing our actions at effective par with our rhetoric.

In the words of the special guest of Honour at the forum, the Hon. Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Senator Bello Jibrin Gada, “the opportunities offered by tourism for sustainable development, especially at grassroots, its capacity to quickly stimulate income and employment growth, and its high potentials for enhanced foreign exchange earning make tourism one of the strongest vehicles for diversifying our economy and actualizing the Seven-Point Agenda of Mr President as well as Vision 20-20-20 and the Millenium Development Goals”.

Judging from the quality of the communiqué issued after the meeting, s one is convinced that the era of robust synergy between NTDC and the states has just begun.