By Juliet Umeh

When people think about tourism in Nigeria, they usually picture waterfalls in the hills, old palaces, or sacred groves filled with history. Places like Erin Ijesha, the Ooni’s Palace in Ile-Ife, and the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove have been the main highlights of Nigeria’s cultural tourism for a long time. But as the country looks to boost its tourism, one big question comes up: Should we only celebrate the old and rural spots, or should we also include the modern, lively areas where younger folks express themselves?

This question got a lot of attention recently when Landmark Beach, a popular urban spot in Lagos, was demolished to make way for the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway. This decision caused a lot of anger across the nation and sparked discussions about what counts as heritage, who decides that, and how Nigeria can balance growth with its identity. “It felt like watching a modern culture museum being torn down,” said Michael Ajassi, a travel influencer and cultural commentator from Lagos. “Landmark was more than just sand and water—it was a vibrant space for urban life, business, music, art, and creativity.”

Ajassi, who has travelled to more than 30 tourist attractions in Nigeria, is one of the voices who argue Nigeria has left out a key component of her tourism future- modern lifestyle tourism. In his own opinion, traditional cultural sites were important but the vision for tourism in Nigeria couldn’t be complete without acknowledging the presence of modern urban attractions such as Landmark Beach, Freedom Park, Nike Art Gallery and the growing café and creative scene in cities such as Abuja and Enugu.

 “Tourism is not pretty much what we inherit from the beyond,” Ajassi said. “It’s also about what we’re building nowadays—what young human beings are experiencing, growing, and exporting in actual time.”

Landmark Beach offered something uncommon in Nigeria: a family-friendly, globally attractive, well-controlled beach destination with a clean shoreline, restaurants, bars, water sports, and an atmosphere of small corporations. It has become a haven now not only for locals, however also for Nigerians inside the diaspora and tourists in search of a secure and fun experience in Lagos.

Its demolition felt, to many, like a setback to everything the country claims to want for its tourism financial system—mainly at a time when younger Nigerians are mainly a grassroots motion to rebrand the reputation via photo-journey, virtual storytelling, and life-style innovation. Critics of the demolition argue that it displays a larger sample of short-sighted city making plans and pushes aside tourism as a critical financial sector. They factor out that at the same time as other African international locations like Rwanda, Kenya, and Ghana have made planned efforts to hold and sell contemporary traveler property, Nigeria remains reactive, with little coordinated approach or felony safety for spaces that don’t have healthy conventional molds.

There is not any argument against infrastructure development here. Few deny its potential value-a modern coastal highway linking major southern cities. But why not explore further possibilities for a project of this scale to keep much made by an asset such as Landmark-which was already keeping jobs, investment, and international visibility.

Ajassi said, “This is a country where we’re always saying to diversify the economy. So why go and demolish something that’s already working? Why not build around it or integrate it into a larger plan?”

Urban tourism has become a strong economy in much of the world today. In cities such as Cape Town, Marrakech, and Accra, monuments are not the only source of livelihood; they survive on lifestyle destinations-coastal lounges, music festivals, exhibitions on tech-art, boutique hotels, and creative markets. Those spaces evolve culture-where culture is not only preserved.

If Nigeria were to make some forward movement, it may entail re-thinking what “heritage” really means, for while cultural tourism should not be mired in the past, it can and should possess elements of the living city, modernity-both the roots and the rhythm of a nation.

Regrettably, Nigeria’s tourism sector continues to be hampered by a fractured policy context. The lack of safeguards for landmarks mirrors the general lack of a national tourism development and preservation framework. Attractions remain susceptible to real estate pressures and infrastructure politics in the absence of rules acknowledging tourism zones or heritage locations (both old and fresh).     

Urgent action is needed, according to Ajassi and others in the tourism sector, not only to lament what has been lost but also to safeguard what is still there and prepare more wisely for the future. “We need a national register of tourism assets,” he noted. “We need urban zoning rules that defend creative spaces and let them flourish. Most importantly, we should understand that culture is also something you drink at a beach club, distribute at an art show, or post in a vlog.

Ultimately, the struggle to preserve contemporary locations such as Landmark Beach is about more than nostalgia. It’s about realising that 21st-century tourism needs to change. It comes down to deciding to export not only our history but also our present and future. Nigeria must stop destroying what makes it unique and begin creating a future that both visitors and locals can be proud of if it is serious about becoming a major player in the world tourism market.