RESUSCITATING NIGERIA’S TOURISM INDUSTRY AS THE WORLD CELEBRATES THE 2016 WORLD TOURISM DAY ON TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 27
Today, Tuesday September 27, the
world over is celebrating the 2016 World Tourism Day. At its third session held
in Torremolinos, Spain in 1979, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly
mandated its Member States to observe September 27 each year as the World
Tourism Day having reached a unanimous resolution.
The day 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 September 1970. The first commemoration of
the World Tourism Day took place in 1980; suffice it to say that this year’s
anniversary marks the 37th edition of the laudable annual event.
The theme of the 2016 celebration is ‘Tourism for all: promoting
universal accessibility.’ Accessible tourism for all is about the creation of
environments that can cater for the needs of all of us, whether we are
travelling or staying at home. There’s a compelling need for everyone,
irrespective of age or status, to boast of an accessible tourism. Hence, this
commemoration is an avenue to call upon the right for all of the world’s
citizens to experience the incredible diversity of our planet earth and the
beauty of the world we live in. This year’s World Tourism Day is a golden
opportunity for us to spread the word of both the importance and immense
benefits universal accessibility has, and can bring to the society at
large.
The last time I checked, observing a beautifully-looking environment
remained one of the prime desires of every sane being. 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; this makes the sector to be globally recognized.
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. Tourism has been proven to be an outstanding industry that can
guarantee absolute relaxation for mankind irrespective of background.
In the past, our various heritages were being used by our ancestors as a
means of entertaining themselves, and their guests. Presently, the tourism
industry has shown that these endowments can equally be utilized as business
venture by upgrading them to international standard. Noting the positive impact
of the tourism industry the world over, it is of no need reiterating that it has
contributed massively to the 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 to follow suit to ensure that the
world tourism industry, that helps to foster global unity and complete rest of
mind, is granted a preferential treatment at all cost.
Nigeria can encourage the
commendable crusade by ensuring that her countless socio-cultural resources are
optimally rejuvenated. This proposed measure would not only help to encourage
the world tourism industry, but would go a long way to elevate the country’s
Gross National Product (GNP), thus strengthening her ongoing sagging economy. 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
endowments. These cultural resources including dancing, masquerading, dressing,
hunting, fishing, wrestling, and molding of sculptures, just to mention but a
few, if well harnessed, would definitely help to revive the nation’s tourism
sector, thereby boosting her socio-economic and political ego.
The timing of the World Tourism
Day is 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 UN Conference on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 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, and human struggle against climate change through
its relationship with energy.
Ever since its inception, the World Tourism Day is celebrated to foster
awareness among the global community on the essence of tourism and its social,
cultural, political and economic value. The celebration seeks to highlight
tourism potential as regards promotion of the SDGs, as well as how it addresses
some of the most pressing challenges the global society is currently faced
with.
So, as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to celebrate the remarkable 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 a society we all yearn for.
The truth remains that everywhere in Nigeria bears tourism potentials, thus
all that is required of the government among other concerned stakeholders is to
swing into action headlong with the sole aim of doing the needful. Hence, it’s
high time we quit retrogressive debates and discussions regarding tourism. Think
about it!
Comr Fred Doc Nwaozor
(The Media Ambassador)
-Public
Affairs Analyst & Civil Rights Activist-
Chief Executive Director, Centre for Counselling, Research
& Career Development - Owerri
_____________________________________
frednwaozor@gmail.com
http://frednwaozor.blogspot.com
Twitter: @mediambassador
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