Senate moves to revive Nigeria’s tourism sites

The Nigerian Senate on Wednesday urged relevant ministries and agencies of governments at all levels to urgently revamp the various tourist attraction sites across the country.

The upper chamber also urged the Budget Office of the Federation to increase budgetary allocation to the culture arm of the Ministry of Information and Culture towards the promotion of tourism.

It called on the Ministries of Environment at various levels of government to create incentives to promote eco-friendly waterfronts to make beaches more tourist-friendly.

The red chamber also mandated its Committees on Foreign Affairs and Information and Culture, in collaboration with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Information and Culture, “to organise a stakeholders’ meeting to ensure dialogue and discussion of the issues of promoting tourism in the country and the way forward.”

These resolutions of the Senate followed a motion titled: Need to promote tourism to further diversify the Nigerian economy, moved by Senator Oluremi Tinubu and co-sponsored by 22 other Senators.

Senator Oluremi, who represents Lagos Central, in her lead debate, urged the Senate to be aware that Nigeria depends on crude oil revenues for bulk of its foreign exchange, “to the detriment of other critical sectors.”

She insisted that there is need to diversify the Nigerian economy to reduce dependence on oil revenues through creating new streams of income, which has been “a core agenda of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration.”

She called on his colleagues to be sad that the country seemed to be doing everything to ensure that tourism development is hampered.