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The founder, Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti (ABUAD), Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), has called for the drafting of a robust and strong legal framework for the enhancement of the tourism sector in Nigeria.
Babalola made the call while receiving the Senior Special Assistant(SSA) to Ekiti State Governor Tourism Development, Ambassador Wale Ojo-Lanre, and his team on Wednesday, May 26, after a tour of ABUAD campus; Multi-System Hospital, Planetarium and ABUAD Farms all within the premises of the university.
Babalola commended the tourism vision of Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi.
“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 said.
“ One of the impediments truncating the phenomenal transition of Nigeria into a viable tourism economy is the lack of a robust and strong legal framework which is the necessary jelly for the lubrication of a vibrant tourism economy and business in Nigeria,” Babalola said.
The founder of ABUAD called on the public and private sector tourism practitioners in Nigeria to synergize efforts at ensuring the enactment of a purposeful and vision driven legal framework, pointing out that the tourism sector is at present an unregulated and uncoordinated one that revels in archaic and obsolete legal contents which bear no relevance of appropriateness in the face of contemporary developments.
In his remark, Ojo-Lanre disclosed that his mission to ABUAD was in furtherance of Fayemi’s tourism policy of enhancement of tourism potentialities of Ekiti State.
He described Babalola as an asset of inestimable value to Ekiti State, not only because he planted an international trans-generational academic enclave in Ado Ekiti, but because he also created a global tourism destination in Ekiti capable of attracting millions of tourists to the state.
The ambassador pointed out that “here within the canopy of Afe Babalola University, one can enjoy the luxury of an Educ-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.”
He pointed out that the totality of 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 .