Once upon a time in the vassal kingdom of Cross River, there lived three men named Prince, Tortoise and Tech Bro. Prince was the vassal king, tasked with bringing the kingdom’s 3.7 million inhabitants out of poverty. The other two were his advisers – Tortoise, the independent adviser who always tried to steer Prince toward the facts of every matter to act in the public interest, and Tech Bro the mercenary contractor whose only interest was currying favour with Prince so as to make money.
One day Prince called his two advisers and put a question to them: “Our overlords in the imperial capital city of Abuja have granted me a rebate from our annual tribute in the sum of $500 million – what shall I do with this money? You both are well aware that I believe that Cross River has a lot of tourism potential. What can I do with $500 million to showcase Cross River to the world?”
In his usual manner Tortoise replied, “I think we should, first of all, consult the facts before deciding what to do with the money.”
“Go on,” said Prince.
“You see,” said Tortoise, “The data and numbers really do not support the idea of Cross River as a tourism centre at all. I do not think that tourism should be your key strategic focus.”
“Preposterous!” chorused Prince and Tech Bro.
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“Everybody knows that Cross River is Nigeria’s number one state for tourism. We have Obudu Cattle Ranch and the old Nigerian capital city and an old slave port and beautiful green hills and…well you get the point. What else would we do with all this tourism potential?”
:So the thing is,” said Tortoise, “None of those things you have mentioned is actually central to tourism at all. Cross River kingdom lacks a comparative advantage in tourism.”
“Comparative advantage? What is that?” said Prince.
Tortoise continued, “Comparative advantage means that you explore what you are already good at. So Cross River focuses on what it is already good at and spends this money on assisting the ecosystem around that thing to develop. For example in the 2013-2017 NBS subnational GDP breakdown, Cross River ranks third nationwide in Agriculture with over N1 trillion worth of output. Cross River is actually a net exporter of food.
Take cocoa for example, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council has stated that Cross River has a comparative advantage in cocoa and rice exports. In particular Ikom Ogoja, Boki, Obudu may have even surpassed Ondo as Nigeria’s top cocoa producer. But these places suffer up to 45 percent post-harvest losses due to lack of adequate storage and processing facilities. What if we spend $100 million on such infrastructure for them? We could help them minimise their losses and put more money in their pockets. Also the increased export income would give us more leverage in the imperial capital city.”
“But I like tourism!” said Prince.
“OK, so let’s look at tourism and see whether Cross River has a comparative advantage there,” said Tortoise as Tech Bro sulked, muttering something about “this guy always talking” under his breath.
“I am going to present data from two academic papers. The first is from a 2017 paper titled ‘Assessing the Seasonal Patterns of Visitor Arrivals as an Index for Hotel Industry Growth in Calabar, Nigeria’ by Titus Amalu and Eja Eja of the University of Calabar. This paper, which was published in the Ottoman Journal of Tourism and Management Research shows that the all time peak of visitor arrivals in Calabar between 2006 and 2015, measured using Calabar hotel lodging statistics was in 2015 – a grand total of 18,227 visitors.
A field survey from the same study shows that 12 percent of visitors came for the Christmas festival, 65 percent for the Calabar carnival, 10 percent for sightseeing and holidaying, 8 percent for cultural events, 3 percent for religious events and 2 percent for academic seminars. This means that as at when last measured in 2015, Calabar had a non-seasonal tourism economy worth 23 percent of 18,227 people – 4,192 people. Good luck building a Las Vegas tourism economy on that.
The same study also found that in a survey of hotel industry entrepreneurs in Calabar measuring their biggest challenge, 19 percent complained of lack of patronage, 19 percent complained of lack of electricity supply, 18 percent complained about high taxation, 14 percent complained about government policies and 15 percent complained about lack of tourism activities. That says it all doesn’t it?”
“I’m not convinced,” said a frowning Prince.
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“OK let’s look at the second study published in 2019 in the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences by Mary Ojong-Ejoh, Edet Emmanuel Eteng and Eja Eja. the study is titled ‘Assessing Visitors’ Leisure Time and Constraints to Tourism Resort Utilization in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.’ The study shows that a 2018 survey of tourism entrepreneurs in Calabar showed that lack of patronage was their number one problem (32 percent).
And that is not the worst part. You know the worst part? According to the NBS GDP breakdown I mentioned before, Cross River State ranks in the bottom three nationwide for services – including tourism. I didn’t make that up, you can check it yourself. Cross River State is third from bottom in services GDP nationwide, behind Gombe, Ekiti, Jigawa and Bauchi.”
Tortoise took a dramatic pause and looked at prince.
“When you take all of this data into consideration as Cross River State governor, what then should your budget spend strategy be? Shouldn’t you focus on improving rural-urban transport links to aid evacuation of agricultural produce from farms? Shouldn’t you invest in post-harvest storage facilities to stop losing 45 percent of your cash crops every year? Shouldn’t you perhaps invest in research and development capacity for your state to become better at what it is already good at?”
Tech bro interjected, “None of the above! What you should do instead, my visionary sir, is spend $450 million on a tourist resort. When you do that, then spend another N21.46 billion on an International Conference Centre that has never actually hosted anything significant in its entire existence. Afterward you should then spend $36 million on a monorail linking the two white elephants to each other and then sit back and watch it all die with sickening, predictable inevitability.”
Tortoise cried, “Are you really advising the prince to ignore data, economics and common sense when spending scarce public funds and instead lavish them furiously on these monuments to human foolishness in the middle of nowhere?”
Unable to look the tortoise in the eye and reply directly, tech bro replied, “20 minutes from Calabar is not the middle of nowhere. Your faves are loudmouths with zero vision and why our generation is regarded as a joke.”
Prince said, “I like Tech bro’s idea better.”
And they all lived miserably ever after.
