Federal Government reveals plans to prioritize tourism sector

The Federal Government has revealed that it is prioritizing tourism because it sees the potential in the sector to become the next oil and gas in revenue generation for the country.

This was disclosed by the Minister for Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed during a visit to the National Tourism Development Commission, NTDC in Abuja.

The minister charged the NTDC to work towards ensuring that the sector is tapped to the point of helping the government to reposition the economy.

‘‘Tourism is not just sight-seeing, tourism is the entire creative industry: film, music, astronomy, beaches, fashion, photography and monuments. NTDC is not just the apex organization for tourism, is actually at the centre of all these tourists activities", he said.

‘‘The Act mandates it to develop, promote and market tourism in Nigeria. You need to understand this significant role the law has saddled on you.

‘‘This government believes that in the nearest future, NTDC which used to pretend is going to be the next oil. And when oil would have dried up, the creative industry with our cultural heritage, our music, fashion, astronomy, food etc. will always to attract people to Nigeria to come and visit them.’’

The minister also revealed that the Visa-On-Arrival policy of the Federal Government will bring about a major boost to the tourism sector.

‘‘At NTDC, you are sitting on a cage of unexplored potentialities. You have the mandate and I believe you have the capacity also to harness the huge potentials of Nigeria to attract people to Nigeria because there are many reason why people should come to Nigeria.

‘‘We are a country of colours, 250 ethnic groups, blessed with different culture, beeches, all round good weather, film industry that has become global and number two in the world and talented artists. Today, we are the dinosaur of this industry, fashion, people also come to Nigeria every day for religious tourism.

‘‘This is why you are important. You need to attract people to come and see what Nigeria is made of, what we can offer on the global stage. Our industry is the fastest growing sector in the Nigerian economy today, employing 1million people but has capacity to employ several millions more. Our film industry is probably the least untapped.

‘‘Today we have 53 cinema house with less than 200 screens but for a population of 200 million people. We need a minimum of a 1,000 cinema houses and 6,000 screens.

‘‘You can imagine if Nigeria made $53m million last year from the film industry under 200 screens, how much more when we have 6,000 screens. Our music is growing; we are looking at $56million next year.

‘‘We need to work harder so that we can actually actualise the potentials of this industry and make it not just the fastest sector in Nigeria but also increase our GDP from 1.24%, the industry accounts for 2.24% of our GDP. This can actually grow to 3% of the GDP.

‘‘We often underestimate the impact Nigeria is making towards civilization. A month ago, the Oxford dictionary, admitted 25 new words, which are Nigerian words like banana. This shows that the world cannot afford to ignore us for the good reasons,’’ the minister said.