NTDC throws more light on Tour Nigeria project

NTDC Director General, Mr. Folorunsho Coker has further explained the relevant of tour Nigeria which was initiated by the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporations (NTDC) as a means of selling out good potentials that evolve Nigerians culture.

Speaking at the Jumia Travel conference in Lagos, said in order to find the latest trends is to engage relevant stakeholders in the value chain of tourism and seek good ways of doing something that will enable the development of this country.

Coker emphasised, “If you don’t engage the stakeholders, in the value chain of tourism how do you know if you are doing something good or something bad. How do you find out what the lastest trend is and what are the problem etc.You must talk to your people and this are the people involved.

The NTDC DG further emphasised, “As part of that program austerity, that is, using what you have whether is a lot or little but what you have and what you already have is what you’ll use and you will to get there and out of the economic crisis.

Coker explained, So, what we are doing in NTDC and the tour Nigeria is don’t change Naira to dollar to buy ticket, don’t go and apply for visa and to pay for visa to go there, why roam your phone which is consuming foreign exchange when you get there.

He urged, tour within Nigeria. Is it food you like, take a food. Is it music that you like take a music tour, whatever you do, there are many new medium of cultural expression in Nigeria. Tour Nigeria uses those medium for cultural expressions.

He further urged Nigerians to be responsible to the developmental growth of this country saying, “we must all be responsible in terms of the development of our country we must not just focus on the negative consistent thing and expect development. So, we are all responsible for the development of Nigeria.

Coker added, now some of the roads are bad, in Nigeria, South Africa, America, London. Nigeria is not the only country we have bad roads, why do we focus on it we have a lot of goods roads that other west African countries does not have but we clamour so much on our bad roads and people just assume that all our roads are bad.

Consider talking about the good roads while the bad roads are being fixed. Let us be partners in our aim, desires in developing Nigeria and part of that is reporting about Nigeria in a responsible way and as well ship the Nigeria story, mould it into something we can put out there and not emphasising just the negative, let us talk positively”.

He however optimised that the recent presidential order on the ease of doing business on the immigration, airport experience etc. will further ameliorate partnership with the necessary sector so as to hopefully do joint venture with the relevant stakeholders.

“We are looking at corporate governance and regulation what are we doing well and what are we not doing well as in our laws are 1992 and we are trying to amend them to take cognizance of, this is Nigeria today and to be tally and relevant in the revolution in the next ten and twenty years.

There’s a market of what we have and we understand that the digital age in terms of marketing you know is the whole rage of selling Nigeria and its the new way of selling Nigeria and there is need and we are encouraging the stakeholders especially in the digital platform to better sell who we are.

Financing is tough whether we like it or not the interest rate are tough so we are looking at creating funds that can be used to intervene in positive tourism project and all sort to make life easy for the companies that are selling Nigeria, Coker said.