IT was laughable when  I read in the media the statement credited to Cross River State Governor, Liyel Imoke, that the state target market for the annual Calabar Carnival for now remains the Nigerian market.
He was said to have made the statement while speaking with travel journalists at the end of this year’s carnival that the state has been able to develop the carnival as a good product that sponsors now want to have their brands identified with it.
“For us as a policy, we believe that we should focus first and foremost on the 150 million Nigerians that if you focus on 150 million people and you can bring 1% of that to Calabar for the carnival that is 1.5m people. Why do you need another foreign audience, they can watch it on television.
According to him, that I have had the privilege of interacting with a couple times in the past over the direction of the state’s efforts in promoting and marketing it as a destination of note in Nigeria, the governor was also quoted as saying “this is a show for us and a show that we can make a statement with that we can do it as anyone else; So for us, we see a huge expatriate audience and they will come. The better the carnival gets and the more popular it gets that audience will come, he said.” Again,  Imoke emphaised that the state is trying to create a tourism culture in Nigeria that does not exist. We don’t have a culture of holiday and the very few elite definition of holiday is shopping in London and South Africa.”
The governor said one thing about the annual Calabar festival is that it is a good place to come with the family. “We have some personalities that came here because the children don’t want to hear anything else about where they were going to spend Christmas.
“I always tell people that this just speaks so well about the potential of our country, the Calabar festival was first Christmas festival and it got so big that I said let call it Calabar Festival. There are things that are Christmas related, there are things that are not Christmas related, but there are great fun for everybody.
Governor Imoke said one thing about Calabar carnival is that “it showcases our culture, it showcases Nigeria beautifully, and it showcases our history. That is why I am particular about the theme for every carnival and the details which the bands go to interpret these themes speak volumes for us.”
He added that the carnival is a product that markets our country like no other products.
Explaining the reason for having Durbar in the festival, he said the Calabar festival has people coming from all part of the country. “So, we have the Durbar, I was telling Mallam Sanusi, the Central Bank Governor, that I am sure you have never had a Durbar at night. But look at how colourful the Durbar was at night.”
Governor Imoke added “We try to make it a very relative inexpensive fun, so that people can come in from any where and enjoy the festival. So we did not have any special invitation.”
Speaking on the economic value of the festival to the people and the government, Governor Imoke revealed that they have started realizing the benefit as they have developed a product that has some values.
“We are now getting sponsors who are paying good money to have their brands on our product and that is very good. Right now we are even negotiating for title sponsor, the people who want to rename the carnival as title sponsor and that is very positive from our own side.” He said the most important thing is the value the festival has created in the economy and that the people are now able to understand the value.
“The first two years of the carnival, nobody could bring out a canopy and set up some chairs to sell pepper soup and know that today is my day to make some money. That happens now.
Governor Imoke said as a government, the benefit lies in the taxes that they derive from the development of the tourism industry.
“To us a government, the benefit that we derive is in the taxes that those who make the money pay.  So, we need to be more efficient in our tax collection and that is what we are trying to do.”
He said the government has introduced tourism levy, which is the tax on the consumers, not on the hotel or restaurant owners. “So as a visitor to Cross River, you pay a tourism levy of 5% on whatever you consume. If your hotel room is N12000, 5% of that goes to the tourism development and what we have done with the tourism levy, we put that aside for tourism development in the state.”
Governor Imoke reveled that there are plans to make the state is developing a product that will make tourists visit the state all year round.
“We want to attract people all year round and what we are doing now  is to design Calabar International Conference Centre , what we find is that if you have more conventions and meeting there is much bigger  in flow of  people.”
He explained that the thinking is that if the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events [MICE] market are well developed “we will have a lot of people coming into Calabar for meetings; we will be able to attract people to visit other tourist sites in the city.” In spite of the governor optimism, the governor must be told that no destination with the huge investment like the one Cross River state has spent on tourism, Liyel Imoke must spread its tentacles.
Destinations like Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, US, China among others travel around the world selling to attract the big spenders to sustain their products.
In perspective, the yearly Calabar carnival alone cannot help, much more the lack of competitiveness of the states in terms of cost and accessibility.