Umuahia — Chairman of the National Park Service (NPS), Dr. Kingsley Ononogbu has urged Nigerians to cultivate the habit of accommodating leisure period in their annual planning.
He said that such habit would boost the nation’s tourism industry and increase life expectancy through the health benefits of taking time off one’s busy schedules to get close to nature.
Speaking with journalists weekend in Umuahia, Ononogbu, who was recently inaugurated as the Board Chairman of NPS, said his vision was to change the current state of the national parks and maximise their revenue potentials.
According to him, “parks can become a major source of revenue for government” beyond the leisure benefits they offer, if right strategies were adopted to popularise as many parks as possible and make Nigerians to patronise them.”
He said that aside from the derivable economic and health benefits, national parks also provide educational and research opportunities for academics, creative writers and film makers.
However, Ononogbu regretted that Nigerians are not even aware of the existing national parks and the benefits derivable from spending quality time with family and friends at such natural facilities.
“We have to create awareness so that people will know the natural parks in Nigeria,” he said, adding that even the mini park with live animals at Abuja is unknown to most residents of the Federal Capital Territory(FCT).
“It is by creating that consciousness of developing a lifestyle that promote good health, educational and research values that we can maximise the benefits of our national parks,” he added.
To this end, the NPS Chairman stated that the Board was poised to adopt strategies spanning immediate, intermediate and long term outcomes to revitalise the nation’s parks and make them visible and attractive for local and international patronage.
Ononogbu, who is also the Abia State Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), noted that the very few Nigerians that have integrated leisure into their lifestyle still prefer to spend their holidays at parks in foreign lands.
He said that Nigeria would save foreign exchange if the national parks could be upgraded to the level where Nigerians would prefer spending their holidays at home instead of going abroad at very high cost.
“We are going to showcase the diversity of our national parks and make Nigeria a tourism destination,” Dr. Ononogbu said.
