BYCALEB AYANSINA
The Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke has presented a new tourism and culture transformation agenda to the heads of parastatal under the ministry, just as he admonishes them to eschew rancour and work in synergy to move the sector forward.

Speaking at the first meeting with the Board Chairmen and Head of Parastatals of the ministry in Abuja, the minister urged stakeholders to subdue the misconception that culture and tourism are not for serious minded people.

Duke said with the collective effort of all stakeholders and synergy between the agencies in the industry, tourism would be mainstreamed into country economic agenda through the document.

According to him, the ministry will work with the agenda for a while before presenting it to the economic team headed by the minister of Finance, Dr. Okonjo Iweala.

His words: “I have prepared document on Tourism in the Transformation Agenda wherein I have tried as best as I could to present the huge potentials of the industry and additional things we could do together to transform the sector into a real pillar of economic growth in Nigeria.

“Mr president’s Transformation Agenda and the Vision 20;2020 emphasizes the need for us to aggregate all the initiatives and potentials within the sector into a massive agenda that depicts one Nigerian Tourism/Culture identity; strengthening collaboration internally between the ministry and its parastatals on the one hand and among the parastatals on the other, as well as streamlining the activities of all the parastatals with a view to having a common goal.

“We need to explore the prospects for effective collaboration and synergies with stakeholders outside the ministry, especially in the area of sports tourism as well as the film industry in Nigeria.

“In appraising these responsibilities, there is no gainsaying that all the stakeholders in the sector must work together as a family to create strategies and platforms for sustaining international best practices. It follows then that we must eschew all form of rancour, divisiveness and distracted tendencies to be able to even identify our common goals.

“We must mainstream tourism into the current economic transformation agenda. We must reposition, re-engineer and professionalize the industry. Being in tourism can be as professional as being in medicine or as professional as being in engineering. Time has come for us to subdue the misconception within and outside the sector that tourism is all about dancing and levity.

“I am aware of the challenges facing the sector, especially the need for improved budgetary provision. We are already working hard to ensure that machineries are accelerated at the ministry’s level to review budgetary allocations to the sector”.