By Frank Meke
My chanced meeting with Nigeria’s Minister of Tourism, lola Ade John, last week in ilorin, kwara State, was filled with trepidation. It was laced with emotional landmines, witnessed by a large number of female folks, and if you know how women could deploy emotions to win wars at home, the office, and on the streets, then you could imagine my huge misgivings.
Indeed, the atmosphere was strategically tailored to make me look like a valian, an uncaring, an unsportmanship pugilist, and a populist influencer not given to understanding the pleas for either reasonable or unscrupulousnes causes or issues.
As a tested member of the fourth estate of the realm, devastated and usually unappreciated by the political elites who hate to be held accountable for their actions or inactions, I knew that this meeting with the minister could be an entrapment , a pitiful, particularly held around a breakfast table with women well seated and ready to flow with emotional combustive narratives carefully targeted to naturalise my instincts and sense of smell for a poisoned cup of outbursts in a manner of speech though!
Lola Ade John is certainly a beautiful woman. She is also outspoken and well crafted in deploying her strength to tackle perceived” talibans” to her senses of survival as a leader. I am convinced after our encounter that she and only she alone knows how she wishes to run the Nigerian tourism business.
She is more clever than we thought, and as a tested corporate game player and actress, plays the victim, prants ignorance of her call to service, weighing stakeholders’ strengths and weaknesses, even including measuring those of her two agencies heads and numerous yes men and women in our tourism space.
So, who were the witnesses on the minister’s breakfast table where unleashed bombastic emotive offering that Thursday morning in ilorin? These people were credible witnesses, maybe not before this encounter organised by delectable Ime Udo, immediate past president of natop. Until that incident, I didn’t know that Ime udo has the capacity to interface over industry dislocations. She has always stood aloof, so I thought!
I won’t and had never underrated the capacity of women to create an enduring atmosphere of peace and harmony. I didn’t also know that Ime udo has earned my respect. I usually don’t join the vain gang or associate with them.
So Ime udo was the referee, and the waiting judges were all natop BOT members, Nkereweum Onung, Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria president, Mrs uloma egbuna, Stella fubara, Alhaja Bolaji Mustapha, new natop president, ikechi uko, Alhaji kabir Malan, Chairman of Association of Tourism Practitioners of Nigeria ( Atpn), Mrs shagaya, a lady from kwara State University, , Annie Essienette of Ibom Air, Ime udo and a special assistant to the minister. I didn’t remember asking his name. Remember, this meeting was informal and impromptu.
My appointment and appearance were not defined, so it was like walking into a ring where all eyes were set on you, angry eyes some who possibly don’t understand the politics and shenanigans of our tourism leaders. “Here comes the vallian, in the black corner, the troubler of Lola Ade John’s Israel, ladies and gentlemen, frank Meke! . I heard the heartbeats of all those seated. The resultant manifestation, the expressive octane emotional missile directed at me by the minister, nearly made me feel guilty and condemned.
I took a seat, went into the spirit, and listened to the Holy Spirit! I am not guilty. It is a job I must always do without fear ,anxieties, and contractions. Accusations must come, stones shall be thrown , even of sharp pebbles, but the truth can’t be buried. I won’t forget that voice, I was momentarily disconnected from that environment and later came back to the human plane and heard the voice, the minister’s voice. It was desperately pained, emotive, accussative, and, at the same time, reconciliatory!
” Frank Meke, what did I do to you? You have always criticised my every step. People come to show me all your reports against me. Why don’t you like me? I have no office, no official car, no money. I borrow money to do the little I could. Whether you like it or not, you must become my friend, ” the Minister lamentated.
I was made to change positions and dragged like a lamb before her, seated this time around very close to her. She clearly got me off my feet with her outburst but l like I told her when I was flagged off to speak, that whatever she read was in the line of duty to the nation and our people.
I have never had personal issues with anyone in and out of government, but I am intentional, committed, and dedicated to tourism development in Nigeria and will always hold any appointee of government in culture and tourism accountable.
The various sub industry leaders heard me loud and clear, and for those who follow my footprints in this sector in the past thirty-five years, I don’t welcome or salute mediocrity and deception.
It’s sad that we have come thus far and are still shouting to high heavens that our cultural tourism economy is the future oil. It’s painful to remain in one spot, immobile, and visited with leaders who came for self and not for all.
Fortunately, there was no body in that table that didn’t feel the pains of our industry being seen and regarded as a dumping ground for political exiles. Ali Ndume, the newly appointed senate committee chairman on tourism who turned down the gesture, succinctly captured the overall sociopolitical ranking of our trade as a place for learners. A place where those who are politically surplus to requirement are dumped and forgotten.
Ali Ndume says he will stay off the Senate Tourism Committee leadership appointment but will remain behind as a student of tourism. This is a significant sign, and narratives to which we have insisted in the past and today should not form the plank of operational and developmental ecosystems for the industry.
Lola Ade John is a pleasant person, but her beauty is not the subject matter but the character, strength, trustworthiness, and clear communication skills she brings to bear to her tourism assignment for nation and people.
I will accept her friendship if only she matches it with resilience and communial engagements. According to Wikipedia description of the gender leadership values, while men are agentic, women on other hand are more communal, warm in relationship to others, responsible, fair, and mindful ( sensitive) to the feelings and expectations of those around them.
Women leaders are also quick to offer assurances of delivery and hope to the hopeless and greatly manage conflicts and enthrone discipline and understanding. Lola Ade John has not measured up on these scores.
Yes, she has moved around. Yes, she has no office, but there is an office. Yes, she has no money, but she is borrowing money to squander it on frivolities, nonsensical travels which bore no impact or birth opportunities for job creation and offer space for sustainable tourism development in the sector.
Indeed, lola Ade John has no clear-cut purpose or policy drive for the sector. She is not communicating communiality and has by act of deliberate omission or mischief, enthroned division, and bitterness between her two agencies’ leadership.
I won’t choose friends for lola Ade John, but I must advise her to stay strong on fairness and equity in all issues in the industry. She must communicate her vision and mission without hiding behind expired transactional projects forced on her by corrupt opportunists. In every home, there may always be conflicts, and rightly so when stakeholders are not known zoombies.
All the lies and conjurings from the moon that the industry associations and in particular travel journalists are pecuniary is the handiwork of the judas of our system. They steal us blind yet accuse advocates of accountability of shopping for non-existent funding, stolen in the name of the suffering and ignorant collective.
I don’t know if lola Ade John would end up as lai Mohammed, our immediate past minister of tourism. I can’t fix it, and I am troubled because we are many in this same vehicle of anxieties and worries that the beautiful lady on our tourism driver’s seat may take us to nowhere.
The picture here is credited to the president, Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria ( ftan) , Mr Nkereweum Onung, who tried to moderate this encounter with the minister
