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Osun Osogbo Sacred Grove. Photo Credit- Nigerian Tourism
…six sites on UNESCO tentative list suffer delay
In 2017, a whopping 1.322 billion tourists travelled across the world for leisure, enabling the travel and tourism industry to outperform global economy with US$8.3 trillion contribution to global GDP and 313 million jobs.
As expected, more than half of the 1.322 billion tourists visited the 1,073 World Heritage Sites in 167 countries of the world in 2017, especially the Top 100 sites.
However, enlisting of an attraction in the World Heritage Sites by United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Oragnisation (UNESCO) boosts visitations from global tourists, improves tourism infrastructure development in a country or destination amid huge foreign exchange earnings.
Sadly, Nigeria, with only two World Heritage Sites, Sukur Cultural Landscape in Adamawa and Osun Oshogbo Grove in Osun State, (when Ethiopia, Morocco and South Africa are home to the most with nine sites each); has not been able to attract global tourists in large numbers to these two sites due to failure to develop and promote the sites and hence losing billions of naira in tourist receipts annually.
For instance, Machu Picchu in Peru, a UNESCO-listed heritage site, attracts around 1,000 tourists a day who pay from $50 each to visit, earning the destination $50,000 from entry fees alone aside money earned from souvenirs, transportation, hotel accommodation, among others
Back home, Robben Island in South Africa, Stone Town in Zanzibar, Lalibela in Ethiopia, Memphis in Egypt and even the Kunta Kinteh Island in Gambia, all attract at least 500 visitors a day.
But the Osun Osogbo Grove in Osun State, which made the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 2005 barely, sustains visits throughout the year and peak to about 50,000 visits during the Osun Oshogbo festival every August, the reverse is the case for Sukur Cultural Landscape in Adamawa State.
Due to the absence of enabling infrastructure, security with its location in the troubled north-east region, and poor promotion, till date, Sukur Cultural Landscape, which is the foremost World Heritage Site in Nigeria, enlisted in UNESCO in 1999, hardly records visits apart from researchers.
The sad development has denied Nigeria access to the African World Heritage Fund, launched by UNESCO in 2006 to target the Sub Saharan African region. The fund, which is over $4.7 million from various countries, is for protecting the sites by hiring personnel to maintain existing sites and to prepare nomination dossiers for inscription onto the World Heritage List.
It is obvious that Nigerian Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) charged with the statutory obligation of maintaining the World Heritage Sites is failing. A top staff who pleaded anonymous said the commission barely has funding to maintain the sites or execute projects and that is why the guesthouse in Sukur is still abandoned.
Beyond the inability to access the fund for lack of evidence on proper utilization, Nigeria is facing challenge in getting UNESCO to approve six sites from across the country that on its Tentative List. The sites include: Ogbunike Cave in Anambra State, Oke Idanre Hill in Ondo State, Surame Cultural Landscape in Sokoto, Arochukwu Long Juju and Slave Route, Ancient Kano Walls in Kano and Alok Ikom Monoliths in Cross River State. It is obvious these would-be sites will suffer further set back because the two World Heritage Sites in the country are not living up to UNESCO standard, especially traffic and maintenance.
The fear, according to Andrew Agashi, a monument and artifact expert, is that Nigeria risks the delisting of the two sites from UNESCO world Heritage Site list if the neglect continues. “We need to be serious because each year, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee may inscribe new sites on the list, or delist sites that no longer meet the criteria. They may be looking our way soon if nothing is done to resuscitate the existing sites”, he warned.
According to some tourism experts, the least World Heritage Site across the world receives from 1000 visitors per day and earns at least $150,000 every day from gate pass, purchase of branded souvenirs and photographs, feeding, patronage of accommodations around the sites among other special tours and tourist activities.
“If the infrastructure is developed and the potential of the site is well promoted, Osun Oshogbo for instance, can woo over 1000 guests per day. If they pay N1,000 each for gate pass, it will amount to N1,000,000 per day, N30 million per month, and N360 million per year, excluding expenses on branded souvenir, purchase of local craft, building of more hotels to accommodate growing visitors among others”, Ademola Oludare, a tour operator explained.
Looking at a broader perspective, Magnus Okike, a financial analyst with bias in hospitality, noted if 10 percent of Nigerians are encouraged to travel within to visit some of these sites, the country can generate over N5 billion annually from various tourist activities at the sites, while international hotel brands will be willing to invest if traffic is good.
Speaking on why it is difficult to get the final approval for these sites on tentative list, Nuhu Audu, an environmental and conservation lawyer, said that before the final approval, the host nation is expected to file a dossier spelling out, among others, the “outstanding universal value” of the prospective site, as well as, a comprehensive plan of how the World Heritage Site will be managed in the event that it became one.
“Also, a national legislation is usually supposed to back relevant contents of the dossier and that if that was done in the case of Sukur and Osun Osogbo, why are they not living up to expectations? Audu asked.
Regrettably, since over a decade and half now, the Nigerian delegation to the UNESCO conference in the Moroccan resort city of Marrakech where Sukur Cultural Landscape was designated WHS in 1999, seem to have forgotten the promise they made on improving and sustaining the WHS status of the Sukur.
