Legal luminary and proprietor of Afe Babalola University Ado Ekiti, ABUAD, Aare Afe Babalola, SAN, has called for the existence of a robust and strong legal framework for the enhancement of the tourism sector in Nigeria.
Making this call while receiving the Senior Special Assistant to Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi on Tourism Development, Mr Wale Ojo-Lanre and Team Ekiti Tourism Development, in his White Rock Office, ABUAD, after a tour of the university campus, the Multi-System Hospital, the Planetarium and ABUAD Farms all within the ambit of ABUAD, Aare Babalola commended Dr Fayemi‘s tourism vision, exposed why Nigeria has not been reaping bountifully from tourism.
The legal legend said, “We have a country which is overwhelmingly blessed with viable and humongous tourism wonders, most in their pristine form. We have intelligent, resourceful and vibrant tourism practitioners and stakeholders, who are frenetically strengthening themselves out to eke something from the tourism offerings.
“We have a world that is ready to explore Nigeria. But regrettably, we have a set of weak legislation and laws which were crafted when the tourism sector was in an analogue era.“
He called on both the public and private sectors tourism practitioners in Nigeria to synergize efforts at ensuring the enactment of a purposeful and vision driven legal framework is made possible, pointing out that the tourism sector is at present an unregulated and uncoordinated sector that revels in archaic and obsolete legal contents, which bear no relevance of appropriateness in the face of contemporary developments
Responding, Ojo-Lanre disclosed that his mission to ABUAD was in furtherance of Dr John Kayode Fayemi’s tourism policy of enhancement of tourism potentialities of Ekiti State.
The SSA described Aare Babalola as an asset of inestimable value to Ekiti State not just only because he planted an international trans-generational academic enclave in Ado Ekiti, but because he has also created in Ado-Ekiti a global tourism destination capable of attracting millions of tourists to Ekiti State.
He pointed out, “Here within the canopy of Afe Babalola University, one can enjoy the luxury of an Edu-tour by feeding one’s eyes with the beauty of a truly conducive academic environment, embarking on agro-tourism, sightseeing of a large expanse of well-mechanized farmland of varieties of crops, poultry and animal husbandry, with allied industries processing them to finish products, take an expedition on medical tourism to one of the most equipped medical complex in Africa and finally take a trip from the earth and explore the space at the biggest and largest Planetarium in West-Africa.”
Ojo-Lanre pointed out that the totality of Aare Babalola as a person and accomplishments is tourism itself, for those who want to take a tour of a life which survived in the middle of hopeless deprivation and rose from grass to grace of fortune and opulence.
