Sports Tourism expert and CEO of Diplomacy Publishing and Events, MrSòókò Deji Ajomale-McWord, has identified lack of coordination and collaboration among sports and tourism administrators as the major factors militating against the growth and development of sports tourism in Nigeria.
Ajomale, who since 2014, has hosted quite a number of golf tournaments in Ikoyi Golf Club, Ikeja Golf Club both in Lagos and IBB International Golf and Country Club, Abuja and became a national and even global phenomenon in golf event management, said sports is tourism and separating the two only means that sports tourism will never flourish in Nigeria.
Speaking in an interview with LEADERSHIP Sports, Ajomale said Nigeria has huge potential for sports tourism because of its population and will start thriving when sports and tourism administrators start working together.
“Sports tourism takes place in Nigeria every week because the real definition of sports tourism is that if you travel as low as 3 to 5km for sporting purposes, you have done sports tourism. So, every week there is sports tourism going on in Nigeria but it is not connected. The key administrators are not working hand in hand, they remain aloof to one another. In fact, I don’t understand or I probably understand but for some reasons don’t want to mention that they hate to work together,” Ajomale-McWord said.
He Speaks further: “Sports administrators believe the travel profession is such a laid-back job that they can get any friend or associate who parades him/ herself as a travel agent to do it. They end up making a mess of the grand opportunity a sporting event provides for visiting sport tourists to experience our country or city. They do not leave up to expectations and are hardly bothered about the damage this does to the image of the destination.
Nigeria has huge potential for sports tourism because of our population. I wrote an article some years ago about how the Nigeria Premier Football League can give up to a billion naira economic impact every week because if you go back to history, I have stumbled on pictures where our stadiums used to command more crowds than the Bernabeu and Old Trafford. I stumbled on pictures where the stadium was filled to the capacity and people were practically sitting at the edge of the roof not minding the risk. That was how crazy we were about football in this country. These were the days in this country when there was security, road travel was safe and the passion was there. The passion is still with us but there are militating factors now. If we take care of these militating factors, Nigerians are still as passionate about football as they were fifty years ago. Nothing has changed, we are still passionate people about football.
“Take golf for an example, there is nowhere that is too far for a golfer to go and play if the roads are safe and the flights are there. Golfers go to any part of the world to play. So, sports tourism is in Nigeria but not thriving, we must tell ourselves the truth, and we would start the journey to make it thrive when sports and tourism administrators start working together.
For instance, Kenya Open, a pro golf tournament, became Magical Kenya Open in 2018 or 2019, I can’t really remember. If you are very familiar with tourism, you will know the Magical Kenya, a tourism ground in Kenya and it is globally known in the tourism space. The year Kenya Open was renamed Magical Kenya Open, the press conference to inform the public about the change of name was chaired by the then minister of tourism in Kenya, that is to tell you the importance of tourism in golf.is a sport, In the words of Desmond Chiji, La Liga delegate global network/La Liga country manager for Nigeria and Ghana, ‘sports is both a tourism product and platform’, trying to separate the two only means that we will never thrive.”
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