* President Muhammadu Buhari
If there’s one agency that the federal government may use as a laboratory to check its planned deployment of the newly introduced projects monitoring capacity, that agency is the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC).
There are no denying the fact that other agencies of government may also be caught napping in acts unbecoming of the best global practices on probity and accountability, what you are about to read here is an elevated act of mirage management, such that can found in the world of fiction and make-believe.
From available records, the NTDC tourism projects mirage technology from 2017 till date, could be likened to the unbelievable hour of darkness and wickedness at Gethsemane. With an average 1: 5 billion naira allocation yearly, totaling in figures of about six billion naira in four years, this fiscal year inclusive, the projects listed are on the wings, cleverly programmed but hardly backed up with clear cut evidence of reality.
NTDC as Gethesmane, is a place where projects are nailed to a cross of darkness, a clear case of the more you check, the less you see. In fact you may need special scientific specks to navigate through projects evidently listed but not seen anywhere.
Here, tourism projects are well classified, repeated and repackaged yearly on the budget circles and marshalled with pedestrian process yet not evident. And where there were mere attempts, it ends up as kitchen table affair, just to deceive the very sector it was meant to provide succour.
In 2019, for instance, project items such as review of NTDC Act and Amendments, office equipment, tourism research planning and survey, project vehicles, purchase of buses and tour packaging by the National Travel Bureau and six geographical zones are repeatedly captured as ” ongoing projects” in every budget circle in the past four years.
Others are participation and support of heritage and domestic tourism/ cultural festivals and trade fairs, enumeration and enforcement of standard in hotels and other hospitality enterprises, tourism stakeholders meetings, marketing and promotion of tourism sites across Nigeria, assessment and authentication of tourism sites in Nigeria, production of promotional materials collaterals, rehabilitation of cultural and tourism site, in Kwara, construction and rehabilitation of recreational facilities in Nigeria.
In the 2021 projects allocation sighted by me, and for the sake of emphasis, most of the projects listed in previous budget circles and so funded, were relisted even though most of the items such as stakeholders meetings, participation and support for heritage, domestic cultural festivals and trade fairs and the enumeration and enforcement of standards in hotels and hospitality enterprises, among others cannot pass validity and probity checks.
For instance, NTDC in the periods under review never held any stakeholders meeting which had pitted it against Practitioners in the industry.
In the 2021 budget circles, strangely and allegedly dubbed ” my budget” the management of NTDC came up with new projects apart from those captured as ongoing three years down the line.
The seemingly padded up entrants to the Gethsemane listings are development of Tourism village for skill acquisition in Abuja, ECT monitoring performance evaluation and control, tourism branding of airports, World Tourism Day celebration, capacity building for tourism development and continuation 2nd phase of Argungu International Market ( Kebbi).
Others in this “creative” listings are Tour Nigerian flavour road show carnivals etc, establishment of tourism data bank and implementation of Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), participation at UNWTO approved international fairs and exhibition, establishment of comprehensive tourism development centre in Calabar municipal, Cross River State and construction of stand alone solar street light at Emurin Ahehere Road, Epinmi Akoko, Ondo state.
In the above projects listed and to which tested practitioners maybe shocked never to had seen or witnessed, were project templates such as stakeholders meeting and enforcement of hotel and hospitality certification which never happened. Indeed, the classification of hotels was tabled by NTDC as albatross fall out of the supreme court judgement in 2013, which gave federating states powers to legislate over hospitality and tourism matters and to which the current management hinged t the desire for a review of NTDC Act, which has gulped millions of naira without success in sight . So you wonder at the listing and funding for a subject matter clearly out its alleged mandate and oversight.
Indeed, there is nothing to add to these supposedly funded project circles except to ask the management of NTDC to come to the public square and support the listed items with verifiable evidence of performance and execution.
During Jonathan era, consequent to why the industry lost its stand alone status at the coming President Buhari in 2015, was the very flagrant abuse of the Sure P Tourism funds by the Ministry of Tourism, headed then by Edem Duke which listed mirage projects that never were, gulping millions of naira shared by then government officials and their cronies.
Attempts to justify and cover up the racket through arranged media visits failed woefully as most journalists on the tour refused to play ball.
With the development regarded then as the biggest tourism funding heist, dubbed “Sure P gate,” I went through the listed states and sites, from Borno, Yobe, Nasarawa, Kogi , Ondo and Cross River states, , adjudged as one the most detailed and profound tourism media investigation ever done in Nigeria, which unveiled cleverly concealed can of worms.
Scared Ministry officials and their cronies came up with clandestine agenda to shoot down the investigation and the publication. Mr Femi Adeshina, Special Adviser Media to President Mohammadu Buhari, then Managing Director of the Sun newspapers, was very unrelenting and insisted to publish my over one month findings which indicted the Ministry and its officials, leading to the dismissal of top hierarchy of the Ministry, with others quick to return to government coffers the stolen funds in order to buy their freedom from the rampaging anti corruption crusade of president Muhammad Buhari.
As won’t with my dedication and expectation as a watch dog of public office holders in the sector, there are no doubt that this NTDC show of failure, will be scrutinized to help us know who is to blame for the retardation of the sector in the recent times. Again, the judgment day comes, what happened to the ministry may also befall the apex government tourism parastatal if the rot in its projects implementation is not well captured and delivered.
It may not be strange to know that the management of NTDC has prepared the organization for the cemetery and maybe scrapped by incoming administration since there are nothing to show for its expected or perceived usefulness to the economy, job creation and empowerment.
Will the management of NTDC come clean on these Gethsemane projects or bully its way through systematic official cover up? Will the management of NTDC seek the help of the national assembly to cover its failings? Where are the projects, the templates of staff welfare, training and exposure? Plenty questions and to which time will tell and provide answers.
* Frank Meke, a Media and Tourism Consultant writes from Lagos.
