Ikechi Uko: Nigeria Needs National Calendar of Festivals to Promote Tourism 

Travel expert and organiser of Akwaaba African Travel Market, Ikechi Uko told Charles Ajunwa, that Nigeria needs a comprehensive national calendar of festivals to attract tourists and promote tourism. He also said despite currency crisis and power issues, hospitality in Nigeria in the last five years has shown resilience, while noting that Governor  Peter Mbah is trying to make Enugu State a destination of choice, among other issues 

The hospitality sector in Nigeria has continued to show so much resilience amidst global economic meltdown. What is your take on this? 

The hospitality in Nigeria, at least, in the big cities of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, were the first to restore to good health in Africa based on reports immediately after COVID-19, because Nigerians weren’t travelling abroad, so they started patronising the hotels and restaurants within the country and this was a very positive thing. It led to a robust return to profitability for most of the hotels in these cities, compared to other cities in Africa. So, hospitality has shown quite a lot of resilience in the last four or five years, and a lot of them are doing extremely very well. Despite the currency crisis and the power issues of last year, they still did very well.

Even with the success stories of those hotels, we still don’t have a lot of quality hotels in most of our cities, compared to other big cities across Africa. Even small cities, when you’re talking about three, four star, five star hotels, I don’t see any Nigerian city that has quite a lot of them. Then if you go outside the big cities and take smaller cities, like Calabar, Jos, Akure and others, the quality and the quantity of hotel rooms, are not commensurate with the size of those economies. 

Owerri, the capital of Imo State, is said to have the highest number of hotels in Nigeria. What do you think is responsible for this astronomical growth? 

I don’t know if Owerri has more hotels than other cities, but it has quite a lot of new hotels that grew in the last eight to 10 years. From the years of Rochas, the hospitality environment in Imo State exploded and everybody in South-east and South-south knows that Owerri is the town where the hotels and entertainment centres are full every weekend. 

 There’re quite a lot of factors responsible for this – the food, the companionship, the social life, and the air of hospitality in Owerri draws people into the city and those have to be catered for. When I did a survey there six or seven years ago, we counted more than 75 new hotels a year, and that’s quite a lot. Most of the hotels are not in the five star range, they are two, three star quality hotels. But for a town like Owerri, you do have quite a lot of hotels. You can do with some standards. 

Then the other thing I found out most of the hotel managers in Port Harcourt, Calabar, all relocated to Owerri. So, Owerri has some good managers who came from other towns with some experiences, but they need to actually skill off the standard. If it has to be the hospitality hub of the South-east, then it has to raise the bar of qualities. Not just coming Thursday, Friday, Saturday, then everything goes. 

Owerri is appropriate for a MICE and entertainment hub, and quite a lot of investments not just from Imo citizens, but a lot of people from the South-east and South-south who had invested in hospitality projects. And with the New Arena being built by one of those people, I think Owerri will be a hot place to be for hospitality business in the coming years. 

ATQNews and Seven Wonders of Nigeria have launched a comprehensive survey to identify the top 100 hotels in Lagos and Nigeria, as part of efforts to showcase Nigeria’s leading hospitality and tourism destinations. Can you throw more light on this? 

You know, ATQNews and Seven Wonders decided to do this project because after the celebrations of Detty December and all the noise, the question came up. Where will people stay if we double this number in 2025? How do we accommodate people? Nobody actually knows the number of hotel rooms that are available, the quality of hotel rooms that are available, the quantity, the standards, restaurants and bars.

When you are planning to have people, you have to also plan to have the products. You have a city that receives a million people last year and everywhere was stretched to the brims. This 2025, you are expecting more people, are we prepared for it? Part of what we want to achieve is to have a comprehensive idea. How many hotels in Nigeria have more than 100 rooms? How many in Lagos have more than 30 rooms? Can we count a100 quality hotels in Nigeria? Can we count basic hotels that can serve the basic tourists in Lagos? You know, Airbnb, shortlet apartment, all these other types of accommodation are being pushed to accommodate everybody. There is a limit to what shortlet apartment can handle. You still need regular hotels because the security, the services can be measured against stated benchmarks.

So, part of all we want to achieve is to produce a list and I am expecting that we can get up to 100 and 200 hotels in Nigeria that have more than 100 rooms. We will publish it in our shortlist, then we can choose the best from there. And part of the survey we are doing is trying to provide basic information for people in travel business. ATQNews does that regularly. Seven Wonders of Nigeria, we’ve done True Niaja Seven Wonders. We’ve done Best Waterfalls, and Best Destinations. But now, we want to provide some basic data for people to work with. Not just for 2025, but for years to come. 

You’re one of the consultants assisting the Enugu State government to revive its tourism sector. How much progress has been made in this direction? 

Enugu State is one of the states that had legacy products from pre-colonial and post-colonial times. Then, when the state creation started, everybody moved and Enugu wasn’t in the main news again as a destination. I grew up in Enugu, I knew there was a zoo and a botanical garden next to it. We’ll go to the coal mines. We also had beach experiences. But now, some of those things, the zoo has been parceled out into a very beautiful housing estate though but you still need a zoo. The governor has this vision of building a $30 billion economy or more and he is trying to make the state a destination of choice.

Some of us were invited to contribute our knowledge to what he’s doing. If you see, he has handed over Nike Lake Resort to Landmark and that’s big. Landmark, we all know what they did in Lagos and how they transformed the beach environment. So, that’s big for Enugu State. If Landmark would make investment and bring the same energy and audience to Enugu that they had in Lagos, that would be massive. He is doing the airports, in the area of infrastructure, Enugu State is one of the leading states now. I’ve seen the bus terminals, I’ve seen quite a lot of plans, even a plan about Enugu airline. So, in the area that we’ve been invited to look at, we chose like 10 locations, natural tourist attractions that would be enhanced for tourists.

The tallest cross in Africa will be sighted at a Okpato Hill, which is the highest hill in Enugu which is 580 meters. Then there are canopy walkways in different locations, the longest in Africa will be sighted at Nsude Pyramids. The first zip line in Nigeria will be at Ngwo Pine Forest. There are water parks at Akuke Beach, with infinity pools, boardwalks, promenades, all the walks.

There will be Enugu Garden and planetarium at Iva Valley. Yes, the old Iva Valley of the coal camp of the coal mining era is being brought back to life. Then there’s Ovu Lake, one of the finest lakes we’ve seen, a real golf and tourism resort. One of the biggest tourism attraction in Enugu, Ohu Waterfalls. One of the best falls with mystical powers in Nigeria. A lot of things would be built around there, linking it to Okpato Hill with the cross there, because there’s already a monastery nearby. So it will be a place for a retreats, and other things. 

Enugu State is ready. The governor is building roads to all the tourism attractions that are being developed. I think seven will be done in the first phase and other tourist attractions will be upgraded in the second phase of the project. You have the Ngwo Pine Forest, Nsude Pyramids, Okpato Hills, Iva Valley, Ohu Waterfalls, Akuke Beach and Ovu Lake. These ones are in the first phase of the project. And the city planning, upgrade of the roundabouts that they’ve already done for Christmas and they are doing more. So, I’m impressed with what Enugu State is doing. 

What’s is your take on tourism sector in Nigeria? 

I saw quite a lot of positive changes in tourism in the last one year. But the sad part was we lost the Ministry of Tourism that was given to us. Even without releasing the take-off grant, the minister was able to make some little impacts, but it’s sad that the ministry had been scrapped. Some states appointed knowledgeable people into positions of authority and this is impressive. Kogi State has a former president of NATOP in charge of their tourism board. Ekiti State had a former Tourism editor in charge of tourism. And the differences are clear.

Akwa Ibom State has the president of FTAN and former president of NATOP as Special Adviser to the Governor. Cross River is already on its own doing very well. Lagos State, oh, they did fantastically very well last year. You have Oyo State, Edo State, Enugu State and others that did quite a lot last year and this is impressive. Then private sector, you have those hikers bringing people to Plateau and showing that Plateau is still the home of tourism. If we have 10 states playing at this level, then tourism in Nigeria will be better. But the federal government on its own didn’t do much. They didn’t leave much impact.

I don’t know if it’s funding. I don’t know what the problem was. The minister was a lone-ranger with the past NIHOTOUR DG, Nura. But Nigeria is bigger than just two people. So, we need more attention from the government. I’m happy with what has happened so far in the last two or three years. 

Stakeholders in the arts, culture and tourism sector are advocating for a national calendar of festivals as obtainable in other countries. Don’t you think such is needed at this time to promote the country’s rich cultural heritage? 

The national calendar is imperative. The first book I ever wrote was on national calendar festivals. I compiled over 300 festivals in Nigeria. The dates, the time, the relevance. It was published and NTDC in 1999 sponsored part of that. That was the second time there was a calendar of festival in Nigeria. A lot of people took from that and built platforms out of that. Then when Ogbuewu came in 2004 and said we should convert November, December to the Harmattan tourism season. That led to the formation of Abuja Carnival and Carnival Calabar. They came out of that vision. Now, what has been happening in the South-east, you had people come back home every December and the Igbos must go home. There was always a calendar on what to do, on 26 December everybody knows it’s the village game – football final and house warmings. So, Nigeria is finding itself back in the tourism groove.

Ghana, after their year of return, created what they called Christmas in GH. Three years ago, they launched a national calendar for December in Ghana. So, if you are doing an event, you register your event and it’s published and you don’t have events clashing. You don’t have big players playing the same day. Nigeria is a bigger country. You can actually have carnival in Calabar on the 28th, Mmanwu Festival in Enugu on the 29th and all the Detty December events from 15th to the 23rd. Then we’ll go to Benin and Plateau. So, we have a national calendar that can move people round. Then you can arrive in Uyo for 9999 Carols. You have a national plan that can be sponsored and promoted for the whole world to come.

Lagos alone cannot accommodate seven to 10 million visitors in 2025. But if you bring in large numbers, you can share them around. Last year, our airlines failed us. They couldn’t carry the volume. I know that airlines will prepare better this year and we can actually do better.

But Detty December shouldn’t just happen by happenstance. It has to be coordinated. There has to be some intentionality. Cross River every year will produce what they call their calendar for the festival. Then they have what they call the Power Week from 26th to 30th, you had massive events every year.

So, Nigeria needs to have a national calendar similar to that. It will pay everybody and everybody will benefit from having a plan. Don’t just let Detty December happen on us again like last year.