Nigerians Seek
Promotion Of Local Delicacies
Nigerians
in Canada have called on the government to promote local
delicacies for export, harping on the need to use food tourism
as a tool to promote the country’s re-branding project.
Speaking to newsmen in Toronto, Canada, a spokesman for the
Nigerians, Dr. Mike Egbuna said Nigeria’s local delicacies could
be exported just as the Chinese, Indians, and Italians do.
He said food items such as jollof rice, pounded yam, amala, eba,
egusi, ogbono and ewedu soups, are peculiar and could attract
the kind of patronage the Chinese, Indian and Italian food
enjoy.
According to him: ’’ Nigerian food export should go beyond
small scale restaurant businesses operated by Nigerians in
Diaspora.’’
Egbuna stressed the need for the government to organise regular
food exhibitions through its embassies and high commissions as
part of effort to promote Nigerian foods.
Also speaking, a nurse, who resides in Vancouver, Mrs Yewande
Badmus said that the Asian, Spanish and Indians were famous for
their food tourism, through which they remit a lot of foreign
currencies back home annually.
The Nigerian Ambassador to Canada, Professor Iyorwuese Hagher,
however said that instead of food tourism, cultural tourism
should be promoted.
Hagher said that the food export industry had been taken over by
other countries, asking Nigerians to encourage the promotion of
fashion and fabrics through cultural tourism.
NAN/Williams/Yinka
