NIGERIAN ELITES DON'T CONSUME NIGERIAN TOURISM PRODUCTS - Chief Samuel O. Alabi

 

NIGERIAN ELITES DON'T CONSUME NIGERIAN TOURISM PRODUCTS- 

Chief Samuel O. Alabi

MIM: Tell us your name and a bit about your background?

 Alabi: My name is Chief Samuel Olu Alabi, the Oluomo and Agba- akin of Erinle in Kwara State. I served as the president of the Hotel and Personal Services Employers' Association of Nigeria and president of the Federation of Tourism Association of Nigeria.  I am an officer of Eko Hotels Limited. I'm married and the union is blessed with three beautiful children. I am a lawyer by profession and I have been in the industry for thirty years.

MIM: It is said that hospitality drives tourism. What is your take on this?

Alabi: Tourism is a temporary sojourn outside your normal place of the domain. The moment you are somewhere else aside from your place of abode, you will be thinking of where to put up for the night if you are not going home. The hospitality sector provides the solution for this. Tourism has many branches: tour, travel and so on. All this cannot be done without the provision of where the tourists will lay their heads at the end of the day

MIM: You have been in the industry for  30years, what can you say about hospitality in Nigeria?

Alabi: First and foremost, the hospitality sector in comparison with other sub-sectors in the industry has paid it dues; it has given a good account of itself. In fact, if there is any visible sub-sector out of all the sectors that made up the tourism industry, it is the hospitality sector. Hardly do you have a local government in Nigeria or an urban area without a form of guest house or hotel. In Nigeria,  I can say that the hospitality sector does not only provide employment opportunities, it also provides the opportunity of generating income for our Gross Domestic Product.

MIM: As a prospective hotel owner, are there professional associations one must register with?

Alabi: Well, you don't register before you start putting your structures in place. Look at banks; you don't become a member of an association of bankers of Nigeria without first of all having your bank up and running. In fact, you have to start operating your business before you decide to join any of the relevant associations in the industry. We have quite a number of them: Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria, Hospitality and Tourism Management Association of Nigeria, Nigeria Hotel Association, and of course Hotel and Personal Services Employers’ Association of Nigeria among others. It is whichever one that catches your fancy. 

MIM: During your tenure as president of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria, what can you say about the association and its influence on issues in the industry?

Alabi: Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria is a private sector tourism body that represents all sub-sectors in the industry. It regulates all activities of the industry in the private sector. In view of our agitations, meetings, and interactions with the people in authority, we identified areas of need for the growth of the industry in general. In one way or the other, some of the needs were attended to.

MIM: Countries in the Southern region of Africa seem to be doing well as regards tourism. What is the problem with West Africa and Nigeria in particular?

Alabi: The advent of oil in Nigeria economy has made many other sectors to be very lazy. The goldmine has remained untapped not only in tourism but other sectors of the economy. It is a case of complacency towards other sectors of the economy. In the southern part of Africa, many of the countries there has little or no major source of revenue other than tourism. So, they work to develop it, but in Nigeria, we believe, we have oil. If we don't look at tourism from a narrow sense of it; narrow in the sense that foreigners must come. If we look at it holistically, we shall discover that there are products that we don't identify as tourism products but they are. Like you said, if we place side by side South Africa and Nigeria, we are nowhere close to South African achievements in the industry. The reasons for the variance are not farfetched: Nigerian elites don't consume Nigerian tourism products. How many times have you seen middle earners in Nigeria moving with their families to Tinapa in Calabar for a weekend or to Argungu Fishing Festival during the event or Oshogbo during the Osun festival? How many times do you take a vacation to tour within Nigeria, for example, a tour from Lagos to Ibadan, Calabar, or Kano? In fact, it is funny that these days, Nigerians prefer to go and holiday in Ghana, Gambia, and so on. Once you are not consuming the products yourself, outsiders would not consume them for you. If Nigerians have devoted appropriate time to consume our own tourism products, we won't be where we are.

Interview by Taiwo Owoeye