Observing events from Finland, Nnanna Okorie takes a look at Nigeria’s market-driven tourism czar.
Cliches have high currency in Nigeria. A perennial is the quest to diversify the nation’s income base and in the process stimulate non-oil exports. Sally Mbanefo, the Director-General of the Nigeria Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), is also very passionate about this diversification project. But she doesn’t just mouth shibboleths about it. She means it and walks the talk with a steady determination.
Mbanefo is not a run-of-the-mill political appointee. She had other options. Her socialisation in law cannot have come as a surprise. It was bound to happen. Those of a certain age will remember her father, the highly regarded Chief George Uwechue, the Owelle of Ogwashi-Uku in Delta State.
Uweche was a leading Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). In the family, the legal profession was akin to religion.
Background
Sally is the first of six children. Her cosmopolitan curiosity comes naturally. She personifies an exotic across border mix. Half Italian-Swiss, half Nigerian. Given her background, she predictably read law at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).
Twenty-six years of corporate professional knowledge followed with immersion across the banking, manufacturing, as well as the oil and gas sectors. There have also been stints in private and social entrepreneurial practice. It has been quite a trawl prior to her appointment as Director of NTDC. She was very prepared.
She has brought to that job a wide berth of knowledge in a diverse portfolio. In merchant banking, she had worked as a pioneer staff in the Treasury Department of Abacus Merchant Bank in 1987. Two years later, she joined International Merchant Bank in Chicago, United States of America. In all of her working life, she has had to deal with complex issues requiring innovative solutions.
Professional development
A defining professional moment came with the management of the public offers for the institutions that later became IMB Plc and today’s FCMB Plc. She was active in the restructuring exercises which provided the platform for the conversion from merchant to commercial banking. The experience revolved around an interface with other regulatory authorities such as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Having developed such strong contacts within government agencies, regulatory authorities and the public sector, she eventually became Director of Business Development at IMB in 2002 and a non-executive director at IMB Morgan Plc. (formerly IMB Securities). She had by then developed the sort of managerial savvy which saw her instrumental in the resolution of a major shareholder crisis in IMB in 2004 before she left as a result of being head-hunted by the local subsidiary of the multinational Lafarge Cement Wapco Nigeria Plc. At Lafarge, she was the most senior female executive in Africa at the time.
Redefining tourism
Since she became the NTDG DG in May 2013, Mbanefo has given what had hitherto been a rather stolid ‘parastatal’ a new direction. She has drawn up a new roadmap navigating new frontiers in tourism. An important priority here is the focus on creating synergy by developing the local content of the tourism industry.
Creating synergy is crucial. This is why the promotion of domestic tourism as a source of generating revenue and creating jobs is on the right lines. Her pragmatic approach of using public enlightenment through her interface with stakeholders and continuous visits to tourism sites nationwide has helped to break new grounds.
A key indicator here of her position, which has been crucial, is her belief that “before we can successfully sell Nigerian tourism band to the outside world, we must address the domestic market potentials, secure the buy-in and confidence of Nigerians in the sector and get Nigerians to be proud of their tourism heritage and industry”.
As helmsperson of the good ship, MV Tourism, Mbanefo has placed great emphasis on human capital development. This is crucial. For it is difficult to fathom how a tourism industry, which is supposedly focused as a service segment, can be developed without technically-empowered operators who can become motivating ambassadors of the nation’s tourism industry as a way of modernising the industry.
Her focus on capacity-building and staff welfare really ought to spread to the private operators too, although this is not part of her remit. The entire sector needs to be upgraded. This is why her focus on capacity uplift is so strategically imperative as well as endearing. As usual, she has walked the talk.
Mbanefo has, for example, organised a retreat to equip the staff of the corporation on how to generate revenue as well as strengthen their capacity for enhanced service delivery. In all these areas of creating synergy and expanding frontiers (the pun is deliberate) Mbanefo has shown that bringing in someone with a private sector background and market savvy skills is an inspired choice.
Under her market-driven watch, the NTDC has created synergy using the auspices of the Federal Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Nigeria High Commission and Embassies abroad as a way of accelerating the processing time for the issuance of tourism visas as a means of developing the local content of the tourism industry.
This collaborative effort is aimed at boosting the domestic tourism activities of NTDC, as the new visa arrangements will reflect on re-branding Nigeria and seek to provide, among other things, an earlier and quicker way to issue visas for tourists coming to visit the country.
Sally after-hours
Sally, the Renaissance woman, encompasses many diverse interests. On one hand, she is a devout Catholic who enjoys attending early morning Mass en route to work. On the other hand, we also have Sally, the style icon, quiet philanthropist and prime mover of the Sally Mbanefo Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS, helping the poor and facilitating the provision of decent jobs. The adventurous Mbanefo is, in addition, a skilled painter and an avid artist.
Delightful really, an enterprising face of the Nigeria in progress.