Tourism Minister disagreed with UNWTO should respect Nigerians.

The Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Mr. Edem Duke, has called on the United Nations World Tourism Organisation to respect Nigerians.

Edem said this at the Ministerial Roundtable of the 20th General Assembly of the UNWTO  hosted by Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The theme was ‘Visa Facilitation, Connectivity and Relations Between Tourism and Air Transport Policies.’

In a statement by the ministry’s spokesperson, Taiwo Oladokun, Duke said, “Often times because of our adventurous spirit and because of our desire to enhance knowledge, we travel to different parts of the world. Nigerians are regular travelers   around the world.   This keeps embassies of foreign countries in Nigeria busy and thousands of flight seats are also filled by  Nigerians traveling for different purposes including business, education,  holiday, shopping and other legitimate reasons. It is therefore   important to treat Nigerians with greater respect because they contribute significantly to tourist arrivals in many countries.”

He decried the  situation where some countries come up with discriminatory visa policies that made it difficult for some nationals to travel for  tourism, business and education and criticised the use of the benchmark for certain countries as yardstick for endorsing tourism in other parts of the world,

Duke said, “For instance, you have countries that are not subscribers to the UNWTO Convention   but they are the preferred countries  for many tourists and, it is now said that when you have visas to those countries, you will have non-encumbrance access to those countries.

“My question is  what about countries which are members of the UNWTO and are big source markets for Africa, Europe, Asia, North America and South America, and tourists from  these places spend big for the economies of the preferred countries. Why are they also not given visa facilitation and treated with great respect?”

He added that the new tourist visa regime put in place by the Federal Government will be diligently pursued to remove all encumbrances hitherto associated with   obtaining the visa to visit Nigeria.

International tourist arrivals in Africa, is said to have grown from 15 million in 1990 to 52 million in 2012.

Earlier, at the opening ceremony attended by the President of Zambia, Michael Sata and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the Secretary-General of UNWTO, Dr. Taleb Rifai, said though the last two years were marked by slower than expected global economic recovery, a lingering recession in the Eurozone and remarkable geopolitical changes in many parts of the world, international tourism had continued to grow.

Rifai said international tourists arrivals grew by four percent in 2012 and by five percent in the first half of 2013, thus exceeding the UNWTO’s initial forecast for the current year of a three-four per cent  growth.

“On the political level, 2012 reflected our collective efforts to improve tourism’s recognition on the global agenda. World leaders at the G20  Summit in Mexico and Rio+20 UN Decade of Sustainable Development Conference, for the first time, singled out tourism as a driver of economic growth, development and job creation,” he said.