How tourism can drive Nigeria’s economy, by expert

Founder of Sky View, Femi Lawson, has said that investment in the tourism sector can drive the nation’s economy by providing employment, infrastructure and environmental protection.

According to him, if Nigeria must grow its economy and compete favourably with other economies of the world, it must stop paying lip service to the diversification plan of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

He added that dependency on oil over the years had done the country more harm than good.

In a media tour to Badagry, Lagos, in preparation for this year’s Tourism Innovation and Development Advantage (TIDA) conference on April 24, Lawson enjoined stakeholders, governments and private investors to come together and make the sector viable.

The theme of the conference, ‘Impact of Sustainable Tourism Development and Marketing of Tourism Destination on Host Communities’, he said, is to promote not just Nigerian tourism, but the benefit of sustainable tourism development to the host community and Nigeria’s economy as a whole.

His words: “We are doing this because we have a lot of tourism potential as a nation. We have seen the benefits tourism can bring to us. Harnessing these assets is the best thing that can happen to Nigeria at the moment. All over the country, there is no community that does not have one asset or another. How come we talk about unemployment, economic meltdown?”