Badaki Demands Tourism Restructuring, Tasks South-East FTAN Council To Lead

• Nigeria has the attractions but lacks the structure: Badaki says urgent tourism restructuring is needed to move the country from potential to performance.

• He challenges the new South-East FTAN leadership to stop operating in isolation and turn the zone’s tourism wealth into visible action through unity and collaboration.

• Badaki puts the responsibility squarely on the private sector to drive tourism development, with government providing the policy and regulatory support.

September 07, (THEWILL) — The President of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN), Dr Aliyu Badaki, has charged the newly inaugurated South-East Zonal Executive Council to unite tourism stakeholders in the zone, develop a clear action plan and work with state coordinators to unlock the region’s tourism potential.

Badaki, who spoke at the inauguration of the council in Enugu on Sunday, said the South-East had a major role to play in repositioning Nigeria’s tourism industry, urging the new leadership to prioritise collaboration, visibility and effective engagement with government and other stakeholders.

He said the council must first bring tourism operators in the zone together, stressing that collective action was essential to achieving the objectives of the federation.

“Number one thing you need to do is to bring yourself together. Bring yourself together to achieve your destiny”, Badaki said, urging members not to work in isolation.

According to him, the newly inaugurated council must develop an action plan that reflects the tourism assets and peculiarities of each state, with state coordinators playing a central role because of their knowledge of the attractions and opportunities within their respective states.

Badaki also stressed the importance of visibility, saying tourism associations that were not known or recognised would struggle to influence decisions or attract meaningful partnerships.

“If you are not visible, if you are not known, there are a lot of things you will be able to achieve, but you won’t be able to achieve it”, he said.

He advised FTAN officials to deliberately engage commissioners, government agencies and other authorities in their states, noting that the strength of the federation would be better understood when its representatives presented themselves as a collective body rather than individuals.

The FTAN president said the private sector must take the lead in driving the restructuring of Nigeria’s tourism industry, while government focuses on creating the appropriate policy and regulatory environment.

“There are issues in the industry, and these issues are basically because we have not got good structure”, Badaki said, adding that meaningful transformation could not be achieved by continuing with the same approaches used over the years.

He called for serious restructuring of the tourism sector at the federal level, arguing that Nigeria, despite its huge population, attractions, resources and human capital, was yet to translate its advantages into commensurate tourism activity.

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“We have the number. We have the resources. We have the brain. We have the attractions”, he added, lamenting that Nigeria remained behind smaller tourism destinations in West Africa in terms of tourism implementation.

Badaki cited neighbouring Benin Republic and Ghana as examples of countries that had deliberately developed tourism activities and destinations to attract visitors.

He maintained that Nigeria had the capacity to attract visitors from across West Africa if its tourism assets were properly developed, packaged and promoted.

According to him, the government’s responsibility is largely to create an enabling policy environment, while the private sector, which he described as the owner of the tourism business, must develop attractions and create commercially viable tourism products.

“The real business to be able to take place is in the hands of the private sector because you are the one with the agencies, the various attractions. You are the one to develop them”, he said.

Badaki charged the South-East council to demonstrate its capacity through concrete action, saying the region was rich enough to host tourism activities regularly and compete strongly with other zones.

He urged members to ensure unity, collaboration and strategic engagement in order to make the South-East a leading tourism destination in Nigeria.

“I know South-East is very, very rich. Even if every month we have to be coming to South-East for activities, it is not difficult”, he noted.

He challenged the new executive to prove its leadership through action, declaring that the zone should aspire to become a benchmark for other regions.

“Let us see it in action that South-East is number one”, Badaki said.