If there is one thing that has never been lacking in Nigeria tourism is the free talk by many, including government officials and operators in the sector, of the huge potential of tourism.
They don’t stop at that instead go a step further banding figures of all sorts on tourist arrivals and receipts Nigeria is supposed to garner from tourism. This has become a standard and yearly ritual but yet, Nigeria hardly appears on the yearly global performance chart of tourism released at intervals by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO).
Recently, the Institute of Directors (IOD) released astounding figures of revenue amounting to N1.56tr contribution from Nigeria tourism by 2025. Interestingly, the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), also latched on this projection by further amplifying it and making other flowering disclosures.
But observers and stakeholders in tourism said this development is worrisome because NTDC should known better as those figures mean nothing to anyone, particularly the international community and UNWTO, as they lack the basic empirical evident for them to pass the true text in the tourism world.
In the first place, such figures are never arrived at using the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) method devised for such purpose by UNWTO. Although the former minister of tourism, Franklin Ogbeuwu, introduced this to the Nigerian environment but no minister or NTDC’s DG thereafter bother to actually further its use except mounting it when it most pleases them.
What is even more worrisome is the fact that no details, at in this case, are ever released about those bogus figures. It would have been interesting for IOD and NTDC to tell their audience the source markets – both international and domestic – that those figures were based on and their demographics and purchasing powers.
Also, the number of tourists expected yearly from those source markets and what were the figures generated from those markets, say for instance, in the last five years and the projected growth rate year on year from these source markets, rather than enthralled the general public with such bland figures.
Many observers said they expect the DG of NTDC, Folorunsho Folarin – Coker, with so much talked about experience, to have put a stop to such lazy and unacceptable declarations that end up making Nigeria a laughing stuck in the eyes of the international community and UNWTO, because they are never reckoned with.
Folarin – Coker’s musings on domestic tourism is also questioned by many observers because the parameters for such outlandish figures are none existence. It is a known fact that NTDC present lacks the credibility and capacity to achieve such laudable projections because the channels for promoting Nigeria tourism were no nurtured and funded in anyway by the corporation before he assumed office and since he came onboard, he too has not paid attention to marketing and promotion besides aside the occasional media blitz.
The fact of reviewing NTDC’s decree number 81 of 1992 and other extant laws, launching of the long abandoned Tourism Development Fund (TDF), which he has now renamed National Tourism Development (NTDF) and the newly reviewed Tourism Master Plan (Details of both documents not yet in the public domain), among others, are not enough to get Nigeria tourism to perform and produce those flowering figures being touted by IOD and NTDC.
Many operators said that it is time that NTDC and the Ministry of Information and Culture put a stop to this ego tripping and sit down to face headlong the task of promoting and marketing Nigeria tourism both at home and abroad, since they have shown that they can’t develop and grow tourist attractions, by engaging with the right channels and operators to achieve the set goals of tourism rather them arrogating to themselves the omnibus power of seers.
They argue that they should take a cue from the example of international community, especially South Africa and Kenya, which over the years have moved into the Nigerian market. The figures are adding up for them yearly and that is why they have all continued aggressively to battle for the souls of Nigerians.
While the ministry and NTDC sit down doing nothing except to yearly regale the people with unfounded figures and disclosures which even themselves know are false because nobody ever bother to interrogate those figures, not even the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which should know better.
 Today, big figures are what rule the world of tourism and that is the reason UNWTO devoted a group of experts to overseeing this most important aspect of tourism. The research, planning and statistics department of the ministry and NTDC are poorly staffed and equipped, lacking the basic tools and funding needed to assess tourism figures hence the minister and NTDC DG as well as anyone inclined, can band any figure around, which at the end of the day has no impact on the sector.