IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development

IIARD International Journal of Economics and Business Management (IJEBM )

E-ISSN 2489-0065
P-ISSN 2695-186X
VOL. 7 NO. 2 2021

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Diversifying Nigeria’s Economy through Tourism; Boosting Socio-Economic Development: An Overview.

Blessing Okwuchi Nwagba, PhD

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Abstract

Nigeria’s vast tourism potentials, including historic towns and highly diversified cultural heritage embodying people’s traditions, religion and belief systems, festivals and ceremonies when properly harnessed are capable of diversifying the economy and boosting the socio- economic development of the country. Tourism over the years has proven to be a strong and resilient economic activity and a fundamental contributor to economic growth of nations. It generates billions of dollars in exports creating millions of jobs. On the basis of this, this study sets out to examine the need to diversify Nigeria’s economy through tourism since crude oil, the major source of foreign exchange, is slowly but surely getting exhausted. With the incessant fall in the price of crude oil, Nigerian workers are owed months of salary arrears. To achieve the objectives of the study, two hypotheses were formulated as a guide and literatures related to the variables were reviewed. In pursuance of this, the survey design was adopted and a total of 290 questionnaires were designed and administered to elicit information from respondents. With the Pearson Moment Correlation Coefficient analysis employed at .05 significant level, all the null hypotheses were rejected and the alternate accepted. Among the findings include that tourism development is very vital in the diversification of Nigeria’s economy since the country has vast tourism potentials, historic towns and highly diversified cultural heritage embodying people’s traditions, religion and belief systems, festivals and ceremonies that are capable of boosting the socio-economic development of the country. Secondly, tourism has become more recognized as a potential industry that contributes to a country’s revenue, economic growth, balance of payments, and foreign exchange earnings, creating various employment opportunities. Based on these findings, this study concludes that revenue inflow from tourism can be of great benefit for business turn

keywords:

Tourism; Socio-economic development; Employment; Diversification of the economy; Tourism Policy

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