By Frank Meke.
Counting the cost and benefits of certain projects or efforts surely takes a lot of thinking. Growing up, we usually leave the cost implications of our escapades and fun to our parents and swag in the benefits. Celebrating xtmas and new year holidays usually wear the garments of frivolities, even in dare economic situations, as we find ourselves as a nation and people.
So, to count, the cost of Celebrating anything at all is usually not a serious thought, I mean the implications either immediately or after. Please, i am not referring to detty December in lagos magical figures ooo. What counts is that we are cheer leaders, and that’s in itself is a big problem for future planning, and if you’re thrift, some lessons for another day.
Dr Abisoye Fadage, Director General, National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism, says we should register our presence in the industry and some people, kept wondering why. I won’t preempt him because this is one sector in which everyone is an expert. Laugh loud!
A state ( s) host a festival or fanciful carnival for twenty-five years or two days, yet there seems to be no records of capital expenditure and even the gains to the economy.
We just dance to the game of assumptions, no figures, no records, and indeed no growth plan or even semblance of growth. We are all happy to dance along the streets, and when we want to deceive ourselves, we dub our gatherings the biggest street party in Africa.
During the pre and after xtmas, I just indulged in driving through the city of lagos . It is by choice as all the madness associated with the city traffic disappeared.
Now, this is the best period to cruise around lagos. It’s an undiscribeable experience, surreal, heavenly, and daring. Yes, daring because you can stop in the middle of the road and you won’t hear anyone screaming blue murder. Please don’t try it ooo, it is dangerous, but again, i was just lured to temptation, to see the traffic madness which the city is pleasantly notoriously known for suddenly evaporate.
So i did a cruise around to count the gains of a traffic free lagos, its impact on my mental health, the regenerative calibrations evidenced by the movement of the people away from the city to the hinterlands.
Lagos, like most cities in Nigeria, comes to live in the night like the peacock. It glows, and the angels come to town. What did they come to do? They are possibly counting the numbers of those who stayed behind, those who were not tempted to eat their chicken and the eggs at the same time. But wait, have you ever planned for our tomorrow with numbers in sight?
Tinapa got burnt during the sad end SAS saga in calabar, yet we forgot that such infrastructure does count in the holiday trade development ecosystem.
Our holiday crazy people turned our airports and overrated domestic carriers into molues because we couldn’t predict nor plan with numbers. We resurrect anything on wheels and put them on air or the road, and if we dare check through the records, we possibly could find faint foot prints but no hard facts of end users. How do you plan with so many chaotic exaggerations for an industry that is dynamically scientific, evolving, and driver of development?
The president spent his holidays in lagos, and I was just thinking how that opportunity could have benefited the industry and our people, particularly the young persons. For the period Mr. President spent in lagos, it was just the politicians that came to pay homage with their long flowing agbada and nothing more. I won’t say that they came to lie to the president about the great things they are doing in their corners. The tax reforms? I don’t know why it’s paining some people.
I thought stopping by the president abode in ikoyi but thought better of it. Some years ago, we were fortunate to interact with former president Olusegun obasanjo, and we asked him why he didn’t open some places in the presidential villa so that ordinary Nigerians with their families can tour the dreamy city of power. Know what he said?
I won’t tell you, same way you possibly would hear our governors signing up stupendous budgets across the country yet there are no street lights on major highways and our railway cabins still begging for modernity
We are back to work, and the question lingers , deeply dividing the soul. How much did we make out of the xtmas tourism holidays? How much did we spend to light candles, sorry street lights and boring new year eve count downs? How much?
Almost all my friends in travel and tours were on holiday, attending to family and friends, which itself bears some serious cost to development yet nobody is telling us anything so that we convince the president to declare Nigeria a visa free country.
I heard that the only functional statistics outfit, though still far from my expectations but can be described as manageable,;. the National Bureau of Statistics was hacked recently, and I wondered by whom?
Now, before I am accused of planning to overthrow the minister of culture and tourism, Hannatu Musa Musawa, let me just say that our festivals and holidays provide ample opportunities to learn some lessons in counting figures and using same empirically for planning. When we don’t count figures, we end up with jamborees, few people in government smiling to the banks with collective patrimony while the rest of us either take it or leave it. And where our government angels were generous enough, you must show your identification card to qualify for a cup of tasteless tea with no milk or sugar!
I hope now that those who are in the dark, why Dr. Abisoye Fadage wants everyone, Yes, every serious player in the industry to register on the NIHOTOUR website can make sense out of that initiative. In 2025, numbers must count, but I worry about phantom generated figures that some of our ex ministers were infamously associated with or the Humpty Dumpty figures from one tax magician on detty December in Lagos. Next week, we shall look seriously at the Dreamy statistics from detty December. It will open my series on Nostradamus insights for 2025. Happy New Year to you all.