By Daniel Tyokua
The Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa has pledged the Ministry’s readiness to inject more funds to move the sector forward.
She said with additional funding, tourism sector’s infrastructure and other strategic areas will be revamped.
Musawa made the statement during the public presentation of a book titled, “What My Feet Saw” written by Gershon Ogbuluijah, as a documentation of the author ‘s experience gathered over a 6-year period of travelling around Africa.
The Minister explained that the Federal Government has big plans for the tourism sector including injection of funds and improvement of infrastructure, which the government will be making a big announcement soon.
She said, “We are doing a lot of things. When you talk about infrastructure, next week we’re going to make an announcement about what we’re building, hotel wise in Abuja which is an amazing 5 star hotel that is coming up.
“What we’re doing is integrating culture, creativity and tourism. So everything we are doing should be based on our cultures and different activities throughout the year. So this is why we want to bring people into Nigeria for tourism” Musawa said.
On his part, the author, Gershon Ogbuluijah, described tourism as a source of education, citing example of his grandfather, who according to him, never went to any formal school but before his passing was able to speak English, French and Spanish.
This, Ogbuluijah said, was because he had at various times lived in Equitorial Guinea where he picked up the Spanish language sand Gabon where he picked up French.
He listed Some of the countries he has been to include Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, The Gambia, Rwanda and Egypt. Others are: Uganda, Ethiopia, Equitorial Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritius. In addition he has also visited Lake Victoria and Victoria Falls.
Ogbuluijah reaffirmed his belief in Nigeria’s ability to take her proper place in the comity of Nations, saying,” Nigeria is still the giant of Africa. The giant may be ill but is a giant
The event began with a guided tour of picture frames showing different places of interest across Africa including Nigeria. The author who led the tour regaled guests with the interesting background stories of some of the places.
