Air Peace Chairman and CEO Allen Onyema has urged tour operators to actively market Nigerian destinations to international visitors, arguing the country’s largely undeveloped tourist attractions could become a genuine source of foreign exchange while showcasing Nigeria to the world.
Speaking at the Nigeria Association of Tour Operators’ fifth Annual General Meeting in Lagos, Onyema said Nigeria has too many attractions whose potential has gone unrealised simply because they haven’t received adequate attention, pointing specifically to the North’s Durbar festival, growing in popularity but underpromoted compared to something like Caribbean carnival, which draws crowds from around the world, and to the Calabar Carnival as an equally compelling spectacle worth promoting harder. He suggested that Emirs’ palaces in the North represent another untapped opportunity, arguing that with proper investment from government and the private sector, palaces could become genuine money spinners simply by setting up a theatre style auditorium where foreigners would pay to watch traditional administration of justice and cultural exhibition firsthand.
Onyema said some Nigerians unintentionally de market their own country by creating an impression that it is unsafe for visitors, investors, airline crew and tourists, arguing that while insecurity remains a real challenge, constant projections of fear from certain individuals and organisations damage the country’s tourism potential and discourage international business unnecessarily, a pattern he said has created needless fear among foreign airline operators and professionals visiting Nigeria, with foreign pilots, engineers and aviation personnel often demanding heightened security arrangements before agreeing to come based purely on negative perception. Let me shock you, he said, insecurity is business for some people, pointing to how ordinary cabin crew from foreign airlines get escorted by security because they’ve been told they’ll be kidnapped, and how visiting pilots and technicians immediately start asking where their security detail is. He urged Nigerians to change the narrative by promoting the country’s positive attributes rather than dwelling on its challenges, arguing such negative framing damages economic growth and tourism development, and praised the federal government’s coastal highway project, describing the Lagos Calabar Coastal Road as one of the initiatives capable of unlocking Nigeria’s tourism potential by improving connectivity, creating jobs and exposing the country’s coastal attractions to both local and international visitors.
