By Onyeka Ezike
The President of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agency Mr. Yinka Folami says his agenda is to protect NANTA’s interest and enthrone fairness and equity in the traveltrade business ecosystem. He spoke on Thursday, reeling out a scorecard on his first 100 days in office, noting that his administration is excited by the achievements of the immediate past President of the association, Mrs. Susan Akporiaye, which set goals that led his new new policies and agenda.
Throwing a more light on the policy expectations, Mr Yinka Folami who is the special guest on Creative Nigeria, a weekly Tourism and Cultural magazine program on Mainland 98.3 FM, Lagos anchored by veteran award-winning cultural tourism journalist, Frank Meke and Bunmi Bade Adeniji every Thursday, he noted that what Nigerians need now are deep mind shift change to Technology.
“The first thing we did was to clarify what our direction will be, and there is no way we can clarify our direction without acknowledging what we have been doing in the past. I thank the former president for what she did in NANTA, as we have planned to ride on her continuity and focus on new policies.”
“Our Policies are in three legs. But let me talk about a very interesting theory that I would like everyone to read. It is called the “Theory of the Commons.” What the theory talks about is that if you do not checkmate and control access, everybody will eventually lose. It is from this theory that we developed the first leg of our policy, which is fairness.”
Folami further explained that the Theory of the Tragedy of the Commons is an economic and environmental science problem where individuals have access to a shared resource and act in their interest at the expense of other individuals. This can result in overconsumption, underinvestment, and depletion of resources..
“The theory was made popular by an American ecologist Garrett Hardin, who used the analogy of ranchers grazing their animals on a common field.
“I do not think anybody can fault anybody on fairness, even President Tinubu told us to be fair to the Nigerian State, as we all have to be collectively fair to the Nigerian State
He disclosed that the second leg of nanta policy under his watch is the protection of the Nigerian travel trade market, adding that ” time has come for us to protect our travel trade market ecosystem. We have a situation in the downstream travel space today. We call it consumer trading, but what it means is infidelity to our trade, which is extractive. In a situation where someone sits down in Gabon or China and has airfares that are better than one the fare in Nigeria.
” We have a situation whereby the high rate factor is from Nigeria, but the sales are not from Nigeria, and it is extractive and infidelity, and we will stop it.
“We need to protect NANTA, and this is our third policy focus. Because as we protect the market, we need to protect NANTA, and one of the best ways to protect NANTA is that NANTA is a trade association, and every trade association is guided and protected by the constitution, he emphasised, stressing that
“The best way to protect NANTA as a trade association is to ensure that when we shake hands, we build ownership, and that is unity, collaboration, and cooperation, and ensuring equity.”
Lookin inwards with hope sanitising NANTA, folami, stated that there is a lot of housekeeping ongoing in NANTA, which is expected to help drive collaborative efforts. “But more importantly, the Nigerian people and the public that we represent need to like us, and that’s to how we know who we are and they will begin to like us, including our stockholders.
Mr. Yinka Folami also promised to eliminate touts and hoodlums in the travel space market, especially those unprofessional agents who hang around the airports, without detailed information about the travel arrangements. He informed, ” We have gone into partnership with FAAN to eliminate these touts because they are the biggest threat to our travel space market.
” Also, one of the best ways to protect the consumer is to eliminate touting and hoodlums in the market, and we, as NANTA, are not touts but trained professionals in the travel trade business” he added
