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Abstract:
In recent times, the economic fortune of Nigeria has been dwindling as a result of a drastic fall in the price of oil in the world market coupled with the illegal bunkering and the Niger/Delta militancy. This calls for the need to diversify the economy. Tourism is one sector that can guarantee numerous benefits for a sustainable growth from the over reliance on the oil sector. This paper therefore, examined the prospect of tourism as a source of income generation, foreign exchange earner and a source of employment. The sources of data were secondary gotten from CBN Statistical Bulletin and the World Tourism Organization. The paper examined the relationship between tourism and economic growth using Least Square. The result revealed that there is a significant relationship between tourism and economic growth. This confirmed the tourism led growth hypothesis that tourism triggers economic growth because tourists' spending provides foreign exchange earnings and job opportunities. It follows that if well annexed, tourism can serve as a good alternative to oil reliability thereby bringing an end to Nigeria's over dependence on oil with the attendance volatility. The paper recommended provision of infrastructural facilities and improvement in security in order to motivate prospective tourists.
Keywords: economic; diversification; tourism.
Jel Classification: O12; Q01; Z32.
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Introduction
Tourism has being playing prominent roles in sustainable economic growth of several countries and has helped, not only to diversify the economies of countries that depend largely on primary products, but also helping in alleviating poverty in those countries. Besides, it has also serves as major foreign exchange earner to a number of developing countries. Countries like Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and United Arab Emirates have over the years have explored their tourist sector to the fullest such that it has become more or less there major economic sector (Ayeni and Ebohon 2012, Dwyer and Spurr 2011, Herb 2009). Tourism has the potential of combating poverty by providing livelihood to the poor. The development of the sector will have a trickle-down effect on a number of sectors (World Tourism Organization 2017). Over the years, tourism is said to have witnessed continued growth and deepening diversification to become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world (World...