Mr Toni Ukachukwu, founder of Walk for Love Africa (WFLA), a non-profit organisation that promotes intra-Africa travel and trade liberalisation, has called on the Nigerian government to initiate a free visa policy for Africans visiting Nigeria. Ukachukwu said this will help grow tourism and improve the country’s GDP.
Ukachukwu made this call during a two-day summit held by the organisation in Lagos. He said what WFLA was advocating was to lower all the challenges that impede travel in the country. According to him, the removal of these impediments would make travel and tourism thrive in Africa, thereby growing Africa’s GDP.
Ukachukwu called on Nigeria to lead by example by enacting a no-visa policy for Africans coming into Africa, which would have a ripple effect on the African continent. His words: “They say charity begins at home, Walk for Love is a pan-African organisation but we are based here in Nigeria, with other offices in different African countries. We now said. let’s start from home, let’s start from Nigeria. The minister of tourism was in the programme yesterday and was able to gain firsthand knowledge of one of the key issues, which is the liberalisation of the African sky. Dr. Richard Aisuegbegun was here and gave an insightful presentation on challenges from the Yamoussoukro declaration that now led to the single African market and how it has taken us more than 30 years and we are still here. She sat and saw these challenges and how they can be overcome to improve inbound tourism to Nigeria and how we relate with other countries when it has to do with tourism. Tourism is a reciprocity thing. If you treat me well, I will treat you well. Somebody said yesterday that Nigeria is a big country. Other African countries are looking up to us on how we move the pin because it is difficult to come to Nigeria, so how will they not make it difficult for Nigerians to go to their countries? So, Nigeria should show an example by saying, “We are open for tourists to come to Nigeria” so that others can also replicate the same policy in other African countries.
He also called on the government to remove some of the barriers to tourism and trade among African countries to help improve intra-Africa trade: “The barriers I am talking about is the visa issue, payment. For people in the travel and tourism eco-system to make payments with vendors across Africa is a major challenge. We also have diplomacy issues and security. These are some of the issues. We are trying to say okay, one by one, can we begin to advocate for these things to be lowered? We are not saying we would have all these issues solved, we are saying can we begin to lower those barriers.”