By Jimoh Babatunde

The new Director-General, National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism, NIHOTOUR, Alhaji Nura Sani Kangiwa, has re-iterated the place of manpower in tourism development in the country.

Speaking on what he plans doing to re-position the training institute, Kangiwa said: “No amount of investments in either infrastructure or in expanding tourism capacity in Nigeria will ever be successful unless the necessary manpower in the required numbers and at the required levels of knowledge and skills are provided to manage the sector.

“I want my tenure at the NIHOTOUR to be a watershed in the development of Nigerian tourism sector, especially in the training and retraining of manpower for the industry.

“My commitment to seeing NIHOTOUR achieve its mandate in this respect remains unshakable.”

He added that he wants to surpass the dreams of the founding fathers of the institute.

“The founding fathers established NIHOTOUR to provide skills proficiency, technical upgrading programmes and professional knowledge-based education in the hospitality and tourism industry in Nigeria and West Africa.

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“It is like of Utalii Colleg, Kenya, which caters for East Africa. I will not rest on my oars until I am able to achieve this for the Institute,” he said.

The tourism administrator said the first task before him is to upgrade the facilities on their campuses so as to deliver on its mandates.

“ We are working to overhaul the training facilities in all our training campuses to make NIHOTOUR vibrant and responsive to new challenges.

“We are also working on programmes as well as modalities for the training and empowerment of rural women and youths on tourist host community participation and self-employment.

“We believe that until Nigeria tourism host communities buy into, and actively participate in domestic and inbound tourism value chain, there will be little or no economic multipliers-effect of tourism in the lives of Nigerians.

“I am also working on making NIHOTOUR visible. Not much is known about NIHOTOUR despite the fact that it had existed for over 26 years.

“This, perhaps, is why we do not have enough enrolment in our various courses. By the time I finish my tenure, NIHOTOUR would have become a household name,” Alhaji Nura Sani Kangiwa added.

Vanguard News Nigeria