TOURISM AND THE REBRANDING OF NIGERIA’S IMAGE (2015-2019)

AYANRINDE,, Racheal Tijesunimi (2022) TOURISM AND THE REBRANDING OF NIGERIA’S IMAGE (2015-2019). Masters thesis, Landmark University, Omu Aran, Kwara State.

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Abstract

The image of a country is determined by the perception of the country in the international system, given that most decisions are dependent on perception, regulating such perception becomes critical to the nation's general well-being. Branding is the totality of people's perceptions of a product, person, place, or nation. However, Nigeria’s rebranding agenda in the Fourth Republic has been the use of slogans such as Heart of Africa, Good People, Great People, and change begin with me. This study, therefore, examines the use of tourism as a mechanism to rebrand Nigeria’s image. This study adopts linkage theory, the theory assumes that there is a nexus between domestic politics and international politics. A two-stage sampling consisting of purposive and simple random techniques was used to select agencies and respondents respectively. This study adopts a qualitative method, primary and secondary data collection was utilized. Thirty-two key informants were interviewed from academia, tourists, and tourism agencies in the public sector and the private sector. This study used content analysis and thematic analytical techniques to analyze all the data collected via Nvivo 12 Software. The software generated word cloud diagrams, clustered word similarity diagrams, themes, and subthemes from the transcripts. This study finds that Nigeria’s rebranding agenda have not been effective in rebranding its image and tourism can be used as a mechanism to rebrand Nigeria’s image. This study discovers that tourism has changed the perceptions of tourists to some extent because most of the tourists are willing to visit Nigeria again. This study identifies insecurity, paucity of funds, absence of functional amenities, lack of synergy, constitutional ambiguity, and corruption as the major impediments to tourism. The study concludes that tourism is an excellent tool to rebrand Nigeria’s image, and the federal government should invest in the tourism sector. The study recommends that the government should invest in tourism by developing the attraction areas to international standards and maintaining them, the security agencies should ensure adequate security, and the Ministry of information and culture should advertise the attraction areas and festivals through media. Keywords: Tourism, Nigeria’s image, Tourism agencies

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