The co-founder and Managing Director of GOTA International Group, a travel and tourism company, Dr. Olanma Ojukwu, speaks on how collaboration between tour operators in Nigeria and Benin has started yielding results for both countries. She also speaks about reforms in Benin tourism, brought about by the current president, among other issues. Charles Ajunwa brings excerpts
You were one of the experts that attended the 2025 Accra Weizo in Ghana. What was the motivation?
My company, GOTA International Group, is into international travel and tourism in West Africa. We say in our slogan, we are bridging Africa and the world with excellence since 2009. The visioneer of Akwaaba, Ikechi Uko, who also is the visioneer of Accra Weizo, we met for the first time at the World Travel Market in London in 2011. After that experience, he gave me a platform to speak on my experience between Benin and Nigeria border. Because I’m a Nigerian, but I’ve been in Benin for the past 26 years, and by God’s grace today, I’m Beninese by naturalisation. Then we used to have a very tough one by the border. He granted me the opportunity to speak on several panels addressing ECOWAS and that led to the Benin and Nigeria border especially Seme border to be precise being opened unofficially before the time. So the challenges we were going through tourism events were kind of breached before the official time. And this has also opened a lot of doors between Nigerians and Beninese.
As a Nigerian living in Benin for these years, we started what we call, weekend Francophonie and weekend Anglophonie. Bringing Nigerians to Benin from Friday to Sunday, where we expose them to the opportunities in Benin and make them speak French. Also weekend Anglophonie, where we take Beninese to Lagos, make them experience English for three days, and then also the business opportunities. So this since 2009, has given birth to a lot of businesses that we have in both countries. In 2016, we took it beyond Benin. Today, we began the business summit of West Africa in Turkey, with the Turkey Chamber of Commerce. We work with DELIC, we work with NUSIAD. It was our first experience in Turkey where we took the Ambassador’s wife to Turkey that pushed the Turkey DELIC to come visit the Benin Chamber of Commerce. That was 2014 and 2015, the discussions led to the Ambassador of Turkey Embassy coming to Benin. In 2016, the Turkish Airlines came to Benin. I must say that we have done a lot of things between these countries and beyond. Today, what we do with the Turkish business group has given birth to medical tourism. We represent two big medical tourism bodies of Turkey in Africa. A lot of things that we’ve been able to birth out of these relationships and we have received awards internationally. In 2016, the present President of Benin came into power and wanted to reform Benin tourism. In 2017, he selected six tourism consultants from all over the world that were going to help reform Benin tourism.
In 2018, I became one of the tourism consultants among the six that significantly affected the relationship between Benin and Nigeria. I represent the Nigerian tourism interest at the Benin tourism body, which is called IMPT. We worked on putting the roadmap together. Today, we have Amazon and others. I’m the only one living in Benin among the six tourism consultants. Then what we’re able to do is to say, we want to tell the story because there was no emblem of Benin before then. We sat down and they wanted us to have the emblem to be something else. But we said we wanted an emblem that will be liked, an emblem that will affect everything, that will speak for the woman. And because of that dynamic story we have of the woman king from Abomey, the twin sister of the king when the brother died in war she wore his dress and ruled Benin for three years without the people knowing that she was actually a female. What did she do? She was able to build the Agogie. The Agogies are the women warriors. That’s what we were able to bring out as our emblem.
Today, when you visit West Africa and you have not visited the Amazon statue of Benin, you have not visited West Africa. That is part of the things that we realised. In 2013, I was made the representative of Akwaaba in the French-speaking countries, Benin and Togo. In 2016, we brought about 10 travel agencies from the two countries. At the 2025 Accra Weizo, Benin and Togo participated in panel discussion. The relationship GOTA entered into with Akwaaba is now a game-changer for the French-English speaking countries. Today in Benin tourism, we have Akwaaba listed as the platform where operators of Benin and Nigeria meet.
We no longer see ourselves as strangers. We are able to do joint packages simply because of this relationship. For instance, the current NATOP (Nigerian Association of Tour Operators) President, Bolaji Mustapha, had been sending tour operators to me since 2016. She has been to Benin through this relationship to discover business opportunities.
So bringing people into Benin and Nigeria has become seamless because of this platform. The NATOP president last week came to Benin with over 20 tour operators from Nigeria to explore new opportunities and interface with their counterparts in Benin. Five senior tourism journalists accompanied them. They were well received by managers of Azalai Hotel Cotonou, Benin Royal Hotel, Hotel Germain Ganvie Holiday Resort, Chez Byou Restaurant, Casa del Papa Resort, and others during the three-day farm trip. This is one of the achievements of that collaboration between Benin and Nigeria. The free trade zone that the president of Benin opened encourages this kind of visitation, and an average tourist is a potential investor.
Through this regular visits, weekend Francophonie, weekend Anglophonie, we’ve been able to have Nigerians that are today installed in the JDZ where we have as the free zone for business. I can tell you what is happening in Abuja out of the relationship that these people that came from Benin to visit Lagos has led to.
How has this exchange between Nigeria and Benin impacted tourism?
When we talk about tourism, there are different types, and discovering tourism is actually what people begin with. They discover business opportunities. Today, the Benin government, under this president, was able to invite the UNWTO group to take the tourism training to the next level where we have most of the 70 tour guides that they trained, making them become bilingual whereby Nigerians visit Benin at ease, do business tourism and even invest. Tourism-wise, every country that is talking about tourism, even though they want to discover their waterfalls and all of that, the real thing is for you to discover the business opportunities and invest.
There are still challenges at Seme border and tourism is being affected. Are there solutions to these problems?
This is what Accra Weizo and Akwaaba have been fighting. In fact, there is no meeting we called that we don’t talk about seamless travel through the corridors, which was the theme of 2025 Accra Weizo that I moderated. We the private sector, we do the lobbying, the recommendations, and all that. We hope that the recommendations made out of the Accra Weizo, where you have about six West African countries discussing seamless movement will be pushed. This will be pushed beyond what it is right now. Good enough, ECOWAS was at the tourism conference in Accra, Ghana. The coming together of tour operators from Nigeria and Benin that I earlier mentioned, was a fallout of the Accra Weizo. One of the discussions that we had about seamless travel also focused on the Schengen experience. The Schengen countries you go through their borders without even knowing and we have the East Africa single visa experience. Why don’t we have this model set in our own region? Since this is what has worked elsewhere, helped economic growth and a lot of things.
Why should any travel stakeholder attend Accra Weizo?
The reason why I would strongly advise tour operators or tourism stakeholders in West Africa to attend Accra Weizo, is because all regions are looking for networking within regions. We need to connect more amongst ourselves. Tourism will grow and expand when all stakeholders work together.
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