No doubt, observing a beautifully looking environment remains one of the
prime desires of every man. This is the reason every able-bodied man works
assiduously to ensure that his/her immediate surroundings appear enticingly.
Tourism as an area of life or human endeavour is a sector that has over
the decades pays an optimum attention to how attractive our surroundings look
thereby making the sector to be globally recognized as an avenue for revenue
generation.
Concisely, tourism is the business activity connected with provision of
accommodation, entertainment, and other hospitable services for people who are
visiting a place for pleasure. In other words, a tourist can be described as a
person who is travelling or visiting a certain locality for the sake of
pleasure.
In the past, our various heritages were being used by our ancestors as a
means of entertaining themselves as well as their visitors or guests.
Presently, the tourist industry has shown that these heritages can also be
utilized as a business venture having formally upgraded most of them to
international standard.
Noting the positive impact of the tourist industry the world over, it is
of no need reiterating the fact that it has contributed massively to the ongoing
socio-economic development of most nations. Analysts are of the view that the
industry represents about nine percent (9%) of the global Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) and that it is a key revenue sector for developing and emerging
economies.
Indeed, tourism plays a very vital role in building blocks of a more
sustainable future for all, which is community development. Above all, it is
widely acknowledged for its capacity to respond to global challenges. In view
of this, there is an urgent need for Nigeria, which is a nation globally
recognized as the “Giant of Africa”, to follow suit towards ensuring that the World
Tourist Industry which helps to foster global unity is granted a preferential
treatment at all cost.
Nigeria can contribute her quota by ensuring that her socio-cultural
heritage is optimally uplifted. This proposed measure would not only help to
encourage the world tourist industry, but would also go a long way to elevate
the country’s Gross National Product (GNP), thus strengthening her economic
prowess.
Nigeria as an independent state is made up of over two hundred and fifty
ethnic groups; and each of these groups is tremendously blessed with various
socio-cultural heritages. These cultural heritages including dancing,
masquerading, dressing, hunting, fishing, wrestling, molding of sculptures,
just to mention but a few, if well harnessed, would no doubt help to uplift the
nation’s Tourist Industry thereby boasting her socio-economic and political ego.
Sunday September 27, the world over celebrated
the 2015 World Tourism Day. At its third session held in Torremolinos – Spain
in the year 1979, the United Nations Assembly mandated its Member States to
observe September 27 each year as the World Tourism Day having reached a
unanimous resolution.
The day of the commemoration was chosen to coincide with an important historic milestone in the world’s tourism sector, which is the anniversary of the adoption of the UN Tourism Statutes on 27th of September 1970. The first commemoration of the World Tourism Day took place in 1980.
The timing of the World Tourism
Day is particularly appropriate, because it comes at the end of the high season
in the Northern hemisphere, and at the beginning of the season in the Southern
hemisphere when tourism is of topical interest to hundreds of thousands of
people worldwide.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development held in 2012 emphasized that well-designed and appropriately
managed tourism can make a significant contribution to the economic, social and
environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The Secretary General, Mr.
Ban Ki-moon further highlighted that, tourism which remains one of the world’s
largest economic sectors, is specially well-placed to promote environmental
sustainability, green-growth coupled with human struggle against climate change
through its relationship with energy.
As Nigeria joins the international community to celebrate the World
Tourism Day, we are all expected to contribute our quota toward ensuring that
our respective environments or surroundings become globally recognized as ‘attractive
and human friendly localities’, so that, generations yet unborn would live to remember that an attractive
environment is equally a revenue source.
In addition, the Nigerian government ought to note that it is high time
the country’s Tourist Industry is uplifted through the realization of the fact
that the Oil and Gas Industry may not last for eternity. To this end; embracing
diversification as regards the nation’s revenue generation/source is long
overdue. Think about it!
COMR FRED DOC NWAOZOR
(TheMediaAmbassador)Executive Director, Centre for Counselling, Research
& Career Development - Owerri
_____________________________________
frednwaozor@gmail.com
+2348028608056 http://frednwaozor.blogspot.com
Twitter: @fdnnwaozor
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