Lagos plans arts exhibition to boost employment

Plans are on to organise an arts and craft exhibition in Lagos State, as part of efforts to boost youth employment,

the Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs. Uzamat Akinbile-Yussuf, has said.

She made this known yesterday in a chat with reporters in Alausa, Ikeja.

Akinbile-Yussuf said that her ministry, which had started implementing the Community Based Tourism (CBT), an aspect of the state’s revised tourism master plan, had trained 150 youths to serve as tour guides.

Encouraging unemployed youths to take advantage of the opportunities available in the sector, she said they can go into arts and crafts, especially the production of items of cultural and aesthetics values, which can be purchased as souvenirs by continental and international tourists coming to Lagos.

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“Stakeholders’ input is very critical in this newly planned exhibition, which without doubt is a community-based programme that will be economically, traditionally and educationally be of immense benefits to our people in the areas so far identified,” the commissioner said.

She said her ministry had been engaging community leaders in selected local governments on the need to curb challenges such as harassment by hoodlums (area boys) and ways of harnessing the gains of domestic tourism.

Akinbile-Yussuf said the six pilot councils for the CBT, namely Ikorodu, Epe, Oshodi-Isolo, Surulere, Eti-Osa and Badagry cut across the divisions of the state, adding that findings conducted by the government showed that identified  points of tourism “in these areas can be economically viable for the residents in particular and the state in general.”