Ten months into his four-year tenure, Director General, National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism, Dr. Abisoye Fagade, says he wants workers in the hospitality, tourism and travel sectors to be treated with dignity and paid handsomely like their foreign counterparts. Charles Ajunwa brings excerpts: 

There’s a misconception about what you intend to achieve with the implementation of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR) Act. Can you throw more light on this?

In NIHOTOUR, there’s medical tourism, cultural tourism, sports tourism and religious tourism. So it’s an Act of capturing opportunities for everything. On religious tourism, The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) will rival Mecca. We have not captured all of that. We’re only facing the sector that has the financial muscle to help the other sectors grow. The way they treat us is the way we have treated ourselves over the years. The gap that we have created amongst ourselves is what we are suffering today. There has to be a level of respect for what we do. Associations are not meant to organise people, it’s the government that will create an enabling environment that will coordinate all of us. Today, NIHOTOUR is that regulatory body. When I joined NIHOTOUR, I went to a couple of the training schools. You will not be able to train your chef there because they are underfunded. Nobody has seen the value of what we are doing. Our value position was very weak. And we are talking about Switzerland and Kenya. Do you know how much investments that were made into those ones? It is high-time we funded tourism, the way we funded oil in 1960. If you put one-tenth of the investments in oil and gas to tourism, you will see the difference. It is not a big deal to build an edifice that is a training school. Most important is the structure. Our funding system is wrong. What we are trying to create here is to show them that this is an industry that is a social Bitcoin. In eight months, you can’t build that. But we have laid a solid foundation to do all of that.

I have met with ambassadors of Qatar and UAE. They are interested in investing in Nigeria. All of these are small wins. But the biggest win for us in this country is the NIHOTOUR Act by my predecessor, Nura. I will publicly praise him for making sure that our industry has an Act. There is no way you would do a reform without an Act. Today, the industry also has regulations. People will just wake up and say, there is no law in Nigeria that is perfect. Forget it. But It is already a law and there are regulations. What we need to do is, let’s look at these regulations as we go along and say, okay, we can make amends. It can’t be perfect in one day.

No individual can say the law of Nigeria cannot stand. It’s not possible. Let’s abide by the law first and its compliance. No industry has survived or thrived in this world without compliance. You have to comply first. When they are building a hotel, they will say, health and safety compliance. Everybody will be running helter-skelter. The industry you are making money from has no compliance. That’s why the foreigners will come and take advantage of our weak system because there is no structure. Internally, we have done regulations on the appointment of MDs. In that regulation, just the way it is with banks. I cannot appoint an MD without informing CBN. This may not apply with small hotels. We are talking about the big brands. Trust me, we are lucky to have this regulation. Just like everything in Nigeria, it may not be perfect, but it is what it is. Let’s work with what we have. NIHOTOUR today, I can tell you we are prepared more than ever. Aside from the sentiment that we are using to run, today, nothing can stop us. I’m not here for politics; we are here for governance. 

You can’t put the regulations into use unless you make the industry fall in line. But really, if you look at it, people that are scared of this Act, are people that are benefiting from the disorganisation of the industry. We’ve biggest 15 hotels, biggest 15 restaurants and biggest 15 tour guides. I invited them, wrote official letters to them. I said, please come, let’s have a meeting. I gave them like a week.

Do you know what happened? None of them showed up. I wanted to start with the hotels first. Then we’ll go to restaurants and clubs. See, these people would not have a problem with NIHOTOUR if they are running the way they are supposed to run. Because some people are benefiting and they are grandstanding. You can’t grandstand in front of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I have no power. I always say to my staff, NIHOTOUR is a moving train and I won’t stop. Nobody can suspend the law of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

Should there be a human face to it? Yes. I agree with that. If I tell you what I have been through, the kind of humiliation I have been through as a federal government agency, you would pity the agency not me. They will see my letters and ignore them which is why I just look at them and smile. They don’t even understand the kind of power that is embedded in that Act. Sincerely, do you know that the same power that FIRS has is what NIHOTOUR has. By the time we coordinate ourselves, things will get better.

The only people that will be sending negative stories about the NIHOTOUR Act are people that are scared that Nigerians working in the hospitality industry will now start enjoying the benefits of working in that industry. There’s no way you work in hospitality, tourism, and travel you will not have an HMO. That you will not have insurance. That your boss will just wake up one day and sack you. There’s no way. It’s not a union matter. It’s about asking for the basic rights of Nigerians. Protecting people that work in that industry. They are the creatives of that industry. We must protect it. If those structures are not properly done, we cannot benefit from those things.

What are you doing in terms of hotel categorisation? 

Let me state it clearly. I have no business in grading hotels. But I’m interested in their level of service and performance. The NIHOTOUR Act protects the craft. It’s for Nigerians. Initially when I resumed, people thought I was gallivanting. I wasn’t gallivanting. I was going to relevant agencies. We have been to Immigration. We have been to CAC. We have been to BOI. We have been to NAFDAC. We have been to EFCC. We have been to FIRS. We have been to those places for a reason because I know that we can’t work independently. Very soon my team will be at ARCON. We are studying how they have been able to scale themselves from just being a training body to a regulatory body. We have been to Nexim Bank looking for ways how we can structure loans for our investors in Nigeria, because this is the only sector that didn’t get anything from COVID-19. We were not coordinated. We are using sentiment to run.

We have done a strata that is easy for you to know where you belong. We will not ask Eko Hotel to pay the same amount with smaller hotels for their management. It’s not possible. But then you fall in a strata by the value of your investments, the size of your staff number and the location you easily know where you’re falling. You will be charged accordingly. That’s for management staff. I expect the hotel to pay for their management staff. For all the staff including ones that will get the certification themselves. It’s my job to make sure that I register everybody and publish their data.

Does it also apply to expatriates? 

 Yes. When I tell you I’ve been to immigration, there’s no expatriate that is coming into our industry don’t know. They will ask for NIHOTOUR certification before you can get that job. I went to a particular restaurant in Abuja where a friend of mine was having birthday, in that particular restaurant I counted seven Lebanese. They are not working but just directing. That’s seven jobs gone out that are supposed to be done by Nigerians. Also on the part of the investor, there’s a tribunal if they catch any of your staff doing things that are not supposed to be we can deregister that person for life. The good thing about our tribunal is, it has a lot of credibility. Our Chairman, is a former CJ. He’s currently the Chairman, Disciplinary Committee for Nigerian Lawyers Association. He’s strong and it’s based on merit. We are putting the right standard to make sure that this works well. I’m building a legacy that will outlive me as a DG. I was only given four years to do this. I’ve spent 10 months, remaining three years and two months. I can tell you that NIHOTOUR is already successful. Successful because of the efforts that have been made in the last 10 months and still counting.

What’s your take on the incident in Lagos where the NIHOTOUR Enforcement Team was accused of brutalisation? 

Let’s remove sentiments from what we are doing. When we got to Lagos State, nobody was even listening. They were referring me to an association that is not even a registered member of FTAN, a recognised body in Nigeria. All that went on for almost 6-7 months. I can show you the record, but that aside. Before the Enforcement Team could happen, three letters were sent to the affected hotels. First demand letter was, send a profile of your management team. The letter was ignored. Second demand letter sent to them, we’re not asking for money. We want them to send the profile of your alter ego. Nobody answered us. This is a space of three, four months. The third time, we sent a court order to them. While we were doing that, we wrote to the Inspector General of Police informing him about our Act and that we want to start enforcement. IG called a meeting with the DIG Legal, we went through the NIHOTOUR Act. They passed it. IG approved a Pan-Nigerian enforcement. They wrote a memo from DIG Legal to DIG Ops to signal all the states.  DIG Ops informed all the states including Abuja about the NIHOTOUR Act. I said to myself, where’s the best place to start? Is there a place where we have more than 40 per cent of hotels that are big? It’s Lagos and Abuja.

They signalled all the commissioners in all the states. I started in Lagos. If it’s an illegal enforcement, have you ever seen an enforcement that is being led by CSP? CSP is just a step to Assistant Commissioner of Police. The drill was simple. I’ve sent the first letter to you, second letter to you. They ignored all the letters. The day we launched NIHOTOUR Enforcement Jackets, we published it on our NIHOTOUR website. I was doing it on purpose and I was building my case. I built this case to a stage where it would be difficult for anybody to fight NIHOTOUR for doing the right thing. They wore their jackets properly, dressed for the occasion and there were 20 policemen in the enforcement team. The drill was simple, when you get there, request for the management team. Once you get to the management team, take them to our office because we have done a civil thing by writing three letters, which they didn’t reply. It’s in the regulation that a fine of 500,000 will be paid by each person found guilty. If a hotel has 10 management teams, that’s N5 million. The big hotels, that’s the ones I went for. What the law asks us to do is simple. Are you ready to comply or are you going to court the following morning? You’ll be shocked that 95 per cent of them complied that day. They paid the fine, and they gave them a memo to say we’ll comply and we’ll send the profile of our management team, and the rest of them in seven days. I tested it and it worked.

Some people have gone to court, the court won’t say I should not work. It’s the enforcement they said I should stop. But the enforcement is physical enforcement. There are other ways of enforcement that I can use. I’ve tried to come to the table and say let’s talk. I know that if the big ones see what we’re trying to do, they will be scared. You know why? They are the major benefactors in this case. Most of them are the ones making sure that tourism does not grow. There’s a lot of credibility in what we have done and we have done it in the confinement of the law. NIHOTOUR is 38 years old. Would you be happy as a mother that your son still lives in your house at the age of 38? NIHOTOUR has everything embedded in it. I will not under my watch allow any sector to kill the dream of a lot of value chains.

What’s your reaction to the recent release from the Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy suspending the implementation of the NIHOTOUR Act? And is the tribunal kicking off?

My minister is a lawyer. She understands the law. My minister did not suspend the Act of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. People are weaving stories from whatever she said and quoting her. She is a barrister, a sound one at that. The enforcement that was done was what she said we should suspend. That was the physical enforcement that was done. And don’t forget, I told you that the enforcement was done for three days. She didn’t know it was planned for three days. I will not be telling anybody that I’m just doing the enforcement for three days. By the time my minister says suspend the enforcement, we’ve already concluded three days. It’s a pilot. But out of honour for my minister, I halted action on everything that we should have done. The minister suspended that physical enforcement, not the Act passed by the National Assembly. The only reason why we are not doing every other thing is because she wants us to sit down with all parties involved. She’s a very amiable person and wants to hear from all sides.

Can you explain the Gastronomy exhibition NIHOTOUR is putting together? 

Gastronomy exhibition is going to happen this year and it’s happening in a very special way. It’s coming with a very big bang. This year, we are making an attempt at the Guinness World Record for the longest table in the world. So, it’s Gastronomy with a spice and it’s going to happen in December.

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