Tourism Minister Urges Nigerians to Limit Wildlife Consumption

The Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke, has called on Nigerians to refrain from eating the wild animals native to Nigeria in order to encourage wildlife tourism in the country.

The minister was speaking at the Presidential Summit on Tourism held recently in Abuja designed to promote the sector as an avenue for employment creation and contributor to the Nigerian economy.

"Today, if you want to see mountain gorillas in Rwanda, you will pay $750 (about N120,000) online and have to wait for six months to be given a date and the queue is usually very long. But we have mountain gorillas in Afi Mountain, not far away from the Obudu Ranch, and our own mountain gorilla species are more pristine than the ones in Rwanda and Congo.

"But unless there is a policy and we are able to inform our people, we will continue to find people who will be consuming the wildlife which is going into extinction. Our people must control their palate for wildlife so that the animal species don't run out of stock," said the minister.

The minister noted that such practice is against some international conventions that Nigeria is a global signatory to. He referenced the Rwandan government which has developed a policy through which people are enlightened and informed with proof that protecting those mountain gorillas will generate finance and foreign exchange to the country.