The Minister of Tourism, Chief Edem Duke, says  carnival is  multi-billion dollar business, which Nigeria ’s economy needs to tap into in order to grow capacity in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across the country.

Duke  made this known in an exclusive interview with Sunday Business, stressing that it is important to introduce tourism into the school curricular to build a cultural society from the foundation. This he said will increase participation in festivals and carnivals at different occasions.

“All over the world, carnival is multi-billion dollar business. For instance, in the United Kingdom (UK) alone, there are about 70 carnivals, not to talk of the Caribbean, where every country has a carnival, not to talk of South America, North America and parts of Asia.

So, there is a global carnival circuit. People travel around the world following football, human endeavours and social interest just the same way with tourism. The big brands all over the world are chasing after carnivals. So, in Nigeria , we must not look at the opposite direction if we want to grow capacity,” he said.

“We have a growing number of carnivals, which the most prominent are Abuja and Calabar carnivals. These are the biggest carnivals in the continent and we should tap into the enormous potentials for local economies arising from carnivals. We must move from our carnivals being street parades with a lot of cultural contents to business.

This will promote SMEs from conceptualisation of the carnivals to the films, interpretations, administration, designing of the costumes and musical instruments. These have small enterprises around them. We must find a way to aggregate the economic benefits. The Calabar carnival went on for 32 days non-stop. A two day carnival in London rakes in about $200million into the economy.  The 15 countries of the Caribbean also have carnivals, which engage about 200,000 people in small scales businesses.

“So, it is very imperative to attract the attention of government and the leaders of the economy to see the great potentials in tourism and the prospect of main stream tourism in our economic blue print. Happily with the support of President Goodluck Jonathan, we have found a voice.

The co-ordinating Minister of the economy has been very supportive. To begin with, she identified entertainment as one of the critical sectors that government will focus on in the prospect to create wealth, especially among the youths. That to me has been very encouraging but I think we must advocate more”.

On how much he thinks is needed to develop the sector, he said, “A lot needs to be put in. There should be budget for tourism within the framework of government’s holistic financial plan for the economy”.