Lagos State Commissioner for Tourism, Art and Culture,
Folorunso Coker, who spoke at the launch of Flavours of
Lagos, said the state is being made a tourist attraction and
create wealth for the citizens.
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understand that some of these things you cannot do themover night.We have created three tourist brands in Lagos in lessthan a year, including the Flavours of Lagos. If weentertain 100,000 people and they spend an averageN5000 each over a two-day period, including transport,multiply that. What is the implication on GDP? So theseare the areas we are thinking about in terms of communitydomestic tourism; driving consumption down to thegrassroots level.Security is part of tourism. What are you doing toensure that people are protected in Lagos?If you move around in Lagos you find out that Lagos issafe. Lagos is safer than many cities in the West. Theamount of money Lagos state government expends inproviding security in the state is second to none in Nigeria.Any time the government spends money on security, it isnot just for you and I alone; it is also for anybody thatcomes here. There is a lot of security in Lagos. InFebruary last year we had a marathon of 26 kilometers inLagos, there was no incident. But if you compare Lagos toany of the cities in advanced countries, I don’t want toname any of them, when last did you hear of somebodygoing into a supermarket and starts shooting? They willsay Lagos is not safe, but I will say your city is not safe. I
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am more at risk in some of those cities in some of thosecountries than I am here.They may have a bigger voice but let us not deludeourselves; let us stop thinking negatively about Lagos.You need to talk positively about this city. For example,this is a Blackberry phone produced by Canadiancompany. It is a global product. Where it was made thepeople there consumed so much of it, they loved so much,so it grew from one country to the whole world. If we wantto grow our own we must state positively about what wehave. And let not the non-African thinking dictate ourfuture. Whoever said you have to go through the Dubai orLondon model before you grow your own tourism? We arejust 56 years old. We may not have a national carrier butthis does not mean we cannot develop our own tourism.Let us believe that with our own hands we can shape ourown destiny.Where do you want tourism in the state to be in thenext 10 years?I want to see a Lagos that is loved even more by allLagosians. I want to see a Lagos that its vibe is second tonone. I want to see a Lagos where Lagosians areconsuming so much of Lagos. That the people fromYoruba land come to consume more of Lagos; that thepeople from the rest of Nigeria come to consume more of
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Lagos and people from West Africa come to consumemore of Lagos. It is in that consumption of what is indeedours, of all the skills we have here; of all the assets thatwe have here that we generate employment and generateincome. It is from there that I will be surprised to see non-African, Europeans coming to Lagos because they musthave heard there are 24 million people living in this stateof aquatic splendor, merry making tribe of sub-SaharanAfrica and having fun, let us go there and see. Let usshape positive images of the aquatic splendor of Lagos.It isn’t about negative things all the time. Let us know thatanytime you put something negative out there it isconsumed by the world and that suppresses our potentialadvancement. So anytime you write something think aboutthe implication.THISDAY
