By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
The Chairman, Board of Trustees of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN), Chief Samuel Alabi has said that the annual World Sustainable Gastronomy Day celebration is a sure way of promoting Nigeria’s exquisite cuisines.
Alabi emphasized that the annual food display event usually organized by the Nigerian Hospitality and Tourism Institute, (NIHOTOUR) is a sure way of promoting Nigerian array of exquisite cuisines for export to the global community.
Chief Alabi stated this in an interview as a Special Guest and recipient of NIHOTOUR’s Fellowship Award at the just concluded 2022 World Sustainable Gastronomy in Abuja.
According to him, the food exhibition, couple with the skill acquisition programs embarked upon by NIHOTOUR across the country, is empowering the youths to export not only the skills they acquire, but the Nigerian cuisines in the form of establishing Nigerian Kitchen abroad.
The FTAN BOT Chairman, said he was amazed at the varieties of Nigerian dishes displayed at the exhibition booths of the six geo-political zones of the country packaged by NIHOTOUR, including the South West Zone.
He said, ‘I don’t know that we have varieties of food…even from the South West that am from, I found out that there are cuisines that I have never seen before, I tasted them and they were wonderful.”
He therefore urged the Federal Government to support and promote the annual Gastronomy Day event.
Alabi commended the the Director General of NIHOTOUR, Nura Sani Kangiwa, for injecting brilliant ideas and innovations into the sector, adding that Kangiwa is a professional and an active key player in the hospitality sector.
He also expressed his satisfaction
at the success of the event and said, ‘The attendance of foreign embassies was very amazing; The creative and ingenuity of the Mobile Kitchen was another awesome sight to behold.”
