Tourism
Ten best tourist destinations in Nigeria
1. Lekki Conservation Center, Nigeria is a green oasis of calms and peace away from the busy city life of Lagos. The centre was established in 1990 to promote and preserve the local biodiversity and to serve as an educational center. It was built by Chevron who still funds the center. The foundation wants to preserve Nigeria’s rich plant and animal species and ecosystems by raising environmental awareness and promoting responsibility. The 78 hectare center is located in the Lekki Peninsula where we can find wetlands with swamp and savannah. Visitors can walk on the longest canopy in Africa and enjoy the park through several hiking trails and tree platforms helping you to observe the wildlife. The park is ideal to have a picnic with a panoramic view of the reserve.
2. Idanre Hill (Oke Idanre) is located in Idanre Town in Ondo, in the south-west of Nigeria. The landscape of Indanre Hill is well-known among Nigerians and besides the fantastic views the area has a wide variety of cultural and archeological sites. It has been added to the UNESCO world heritage site list and has since then gained in popularity. The hill is 914 meters above sea level and houses a unique ecosystem in which we can find the remains of the ancient city. A visit to the hill is a full day of discovery filled with breathtaking views, cultural and archeological exploration and a great exercise as it’s quite the hike!
3. Coconut Beach: This idyllic beach is located in Badagry, about 30 km from the border with Benin, and is surrounded by .. you guess .. coconut trees. There are several beach resorts where you can stay for a few days to relax in this beautiful tropical setting. The place is popular among Lagos and Abuja residents and expats who come to spend the weekend here.
4. The Gurara Falls are among the most famous tourist sites in Nigeria and are popular among Nigerians and expats who are looking for a nice day out. They were discovered in 1745 by a local hunter. The falls were named after two gods which were worshipped by the Gwari: Gura and Rara who went to pray near the waterfalls. The falls span 300 meter across and have a 50 meter drop. They are about an hour drive away from Abuja and are best visited between April and November when there is a lot of water. It is safe to swim in the river during the dry season.
5. The Ikogosi Warm Springs are located at Ikogosi town in Ekiti State, in the south-west of Nigeria. Besides the warm spring there is also another cold spring and the two eventually meet each other, providing the perfect temperature of 37 degrees for anyone who wants to bathe.
6. The ancient Kano City Walls are a defensive system which was built by the king of the Kingdom of Kano around the city of Kano to protect its inhabitants. It was constructed between the 11th and 12th century and was finally completed in the 14th century. It is one of the most important and interesting historical sites to visit in West-Africa. Inside we find the Kurmi Market and the Emir’s Palace, there are 15 gates through which you can enter.
7. Gashaka-Gumti National Park was created in 1991 out of two game reserves and is the largest national park in Nigeria. It is located near the border with Cameroon and covers over 6.400 sq km. The south of the park is very mountainous, rich in valleys, gorges and montane forests. In the north we can find mostly savanna. There are 103 species of mammals which have been identified such as golden cat, buffalo, duikers, wild dog, roan antelope, and chimpanzees. The park has over 1 million birds and we can find over 500 species. It is favoured by birders all over Africa. With its spectacular landscapes the park is definitely worth a visit.
8. Zuma Rock
Zuma Rock is a large natural monolith in the Niger state just outside Abuja. It rises over 300 meters above the flat surrounding landscape and we can find its picture on the 100 nairo bill. The rock has a very peculiar form and is massive in size. It is a popular stop to view this amazing natural wonder and to take photographs.
9. Farin Ruwa Falls
The Farin Ruwa Falls are among the highest waterfalls in Nigeria and are located in the central region of the country. The name comes from Hausa and means ‘white water’. From the distance the fall produces a white-smoke like effect on the mountains. The water drops over 150 meter during its descent from the Jos Plateau. Visits are mostly done from Lafia. The falls are most impressive when visited during the rainy season.
10. Lagos Nightlife
Nigerian music is booming like no other and is currently dominating the African continent. Stars such as Davido, Mr. Eazi, Wizkid and Burna Boy have been gaining popularity in the west and have been working together with western artists. Lagos is the musical center of Africa where we can find the best nightlife in all of Africa with exclusive clubs pounding the newest afro beats and attracting the hippest crowd of the continent. When you’re in Lagos you definitely need to visit the local pubs and clubs.
Blue Economy
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Nigeria’s tourism sector needs urgent policy reform, stronger collaboration and fresh investment to compete globally and water transport operators who are members of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) want that conversation to include the boats, ferries and waterway routes that move millions of Nigerians and could move even more tourists.
That was the underlying idea raised by Comrade Babatope Fajemirokun National President of Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) represented by Chief Raymond Gold, National PRO of WABOTAN, at the ninth Nigeria Tourism Investors Forum and Exhibition (NTIFE), held over two days in Abuja under the theme “Tourism Transformation Through Collaboration, Policy Alignment and Investment.” The events took place between Thursday 30 to Friday 31 of July 2026. Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN), is a corporate member of FTAN
The forum drew policymakers, investors, tourism operators and development partners.
FTAN President Dr Aliyu Badaki used his welcome remarks to press the Federal Government to overhaul tourism-related laws and regulatory frameworks that he said breed duplication, institutional conflict and legal uncertainty for operators. He said the federation’s newly developed Tourism Transformation Mandate (TTM) is meant to unify every segment of the tourism value chain.
Babatope Fajemirokun, through Chief Gold emphasizes the fact that this value chain for Nigeria’s coastal cities, riverine communities and inland waterway corridors, runs directly through water transport.
Badaki argued that fragmented efforts and weak coordination have held back the sector for years, and called for regulation that enables rather than inhibits growth.
Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, who declared the forum open, described tourism as a strategic pillar for economic diversification. She said government cannot finance tourism transformation alone and that private capital must lead, with government’s role limited to creating an enabling environment for investors.
In his keynote address, Sen. Ibrahim Ida called for stronger collaboration among government, the private sector and host communities, saying tourism can generate jobs, foreign exchange and diversification if properly harnessed.
Panel sessions, moderated by Justina Ovat of Calabar Hospitality House Limited, featured Nigeria Tourism Development Authority (NTDA) Director-General Dr Ola Awakan, who called for policy consistency and investor-friendly incentives, and Dr Philip Maga of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), who flagged the need for stronger workforce training to close skills gaps across the hospitality industry.
Hospitality entrepreneur Lanre Balogun urged investors to prioritise disciplined, long-term planning.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria’s water transport sector, NTIFE’s reform push is not a side conversation. Rather, it is a direct stakeholder issue. FTAN’s corporate membership includes Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) and the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters of Nigeria (ATBOWATON), both drawn from the ranks of operators who run the boats, ferries and water taxis that already serve Lagos’s creeks, the Niger Delta’s riverine towns and coastal leisure routes. Their presence inside FTAN means the federation’s demand for regulatory clarity and coordinated policy carries an inland-waterways and blue-economy dimension that goes beyond hotels and heritage sites.
That matters because water tourism sits at an awkward regulatory junction in Nigeria. A tourist boat operator answers not only to tourism authorities but potentially to NIWA, LASWA (in Lagos) and NIMASA on safety standards, and state government tourism boards, precisely the kind of overlapping jurisdiction Badaki described as breeding “duplication, institutional conflicts… and operational uncertainty.”
The 2026 Supreme Court ruling affirming NIWA’s regulatory authority over inland waterways nationwide, following the NIWA-LASWA jurisdictional dispute, is a live example of the kind of institutional friction FTAN’s Tourism Transformation Mandate is meant to resolve, at least on the tourism side.
Musawa’s call for private capital to lead tourism investment also lands squarely on water transport operators’ desks. Vessel acquisition, safety retrofitting, jetty infrastructure and life-jacket compliance all require capital that small-scale operators, including WABOTAN’s member-cooperative structure, have struggled to access, a gap that echoes the long-running CVFF disbursement failure in the cabotage shipping sector and underscores why financing bottlenecks are not unique to cargo and passenger shipping alone.
If FTAN’s push for policy alignment succeeds in drawing water transport formally into Nigeria’s tourism investment architecture, operators like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON could gain a stronger claim to inclusion in infrastructure programmes such as the Omi-Eko electric ferry project and LASWA’s ferry safety development initiatives, turning routine commuter water transport into a recognised leisure and tourism asset, not just a transportation afterthought.
For a sector accustomed to being regulated but rarely consulted, this call by Babatope Fajemirokun is a modest but meaningful call.
NATOP to Spotlight Water Tourism, Blue Economy Integration as Part of 10th AGM
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
The Nigerian Association of Tour Operators (NATOP) has signalled a stronger pivot towards waterfront tourism and blue economy integration as it prepares to host its landmark 10th Annual General Meeting in Lagos from July 8 to 10, 2026. One of the event’s significant talking points is a NIWA-backed waterways clean-up initiative.
NATOP President Hajia Bolaji Mustapha, speaking at a pre-event press conference in Ikeja, Lagos, said the association deliberately chose to return the anniversary edition of its AGM to Lagos given the state’s central role in Nigeria’s tourism promotion architecture and its expanding waterfront economy. She disclosed that delegates and stakeholders attending the three-day event will participate in a waterways cruise and beach tourism experience as part of a structured programme designed to give industry operators hands-on exposure to marine and coastal tourism opportunities within the Lagos corridor.
Representing the Lagos State Government, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs. Bopo Oyekan-Ismaila, reaffirmed the state’s commitment to environmental sustainability and destination development. She described Lagos as Nigeria’s foremost tourism hub and underlined the need for all stakeholders to take collective responsibility for protecting the waterfront assets that underpin that standing. Tourism, she noted, remains a strategic pillar within Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s THEMES development agenda, with waterfront leisure among its priority segments.
Mrs. Joy Alexander-Oziegbe, Chairman of the 2026 AGM Planning Committee, said the conference which is being organized under the theme “Unlocking Nigeria’s Tourism Potential: Strengthening Tour Pillars for Sustainable Destination Development”, would provide a platform to reframe Nigeria’s tourism narrative. “There are many positive stories about Nigeria that need to be told. Through this AGM, we want to demonstrate that tourism remains a sustainable sector capable of generating jobs, attracting investment, and driving economic development,” she said.
Project Manager of the NATOP Secretariat, Mr. Uche Chinonso, announced that the association will formally commission its first permanent national secretariat on July 8 as part of the annual general meeting activities. The facility, a three-bedroom office complex currently at finishing stage, ends over a decade of the association operating from rented venues, giving NATOP a fixed institutional base for stakeholder engagement, industry meetings, and tourism promotion coordination.
On the waterways dimension, one of the event’s sponsors and Chief Executive Officer of Parts Central Limited, Mr. Henry Olaoluwa Onifade, disclosed that his company has signed an agreement with the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) to undertake a comprehensive clean-up of Nigeria’s inland waterways. Onifade said the initiative targets the environmental degradation that has long constrained water-based transportation, recreation, and tourism activity, and called on the Lagos State Government to collaborate with the company to drive the programme’s success.
The AGM is expected to draw tour operators, travel professionals, hospitality operators, investors, government agencies, and development partners from across Nigeria.
Nigeria Watch: When Tourism Discovers the Waterways
The announcement by Parts Central Limited of a NIWA-backed waterways clean-up agreement, surfacing at a tourism industry event, is the kind of development that deserves more than a footnote. It points to something important: the convergence, long overdue, between Nigeria’s inland waterways governance agenda and the commercial tourism sector that has every incentive to see that agenda succeed.
Nigeria’s inland and coastal waterways are simultaneously among its most neglected and most valuable assets. The Lagos waterfront alone, from the Bight of Benin coastline to the network of creeks threading through the metropolis — represents tourism potential that most peer cities would have monetised decades ago. Instead, those same waterways carry the weight of decades of environmental neglect: plastic waste, hydrocarbon discharge, illegal sand mining, and encroachment that has degraded water quality, narrowed navigable channels, and reduced what should be scenic and commercially productive corridors to hazards.
NIWA has repeatedly acknowledged the clean-up challenge. The authority has launched initiatives, signed memoranda, and articulated policy frameworks around environmental management of Nigeria’s 10,000-kilometre inland waterway network. What has been consistently absent is sustained, funded, private-sector-driven execution on the ground. If Parts Central’s agreement with NIWA translates into verifiable, systematic clean-up operations, rather than a corporate social responsibility announcement that fades after the press conference, it would represent meaningful progress.
The NATOP angle matters here for a specific reason. Tour operators are among the most commercially sensitive observers of waterway quality. When waterways are polluted, cruise routes become unmarketable. Beach tourism loses its premium positioning. The economic argument for clean waterways, which NIWA has sometimes struggled to communicate to the federal budget process, becomes self-evident when private tourism investors start losing money on dirty creeks. Bringing tourism operators into the waterways governance conversation, even informally through events like this AGM, creates a constituency for environmental protection that complements the regulatory function of NIWA and the Lagos State Waterways Authority.
The Lagos State Government’s participation through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture is also worth noting. Tourism and waterways management have largely operated in separate policy silos in Lagos, with LASWA focused on transport regulation and concession management, and the tourism ministry focused on events and destination promotion. A closer alignment between the two, such as the proposed NATOP AGM waterways cruise, isn’t just symbolic but serve both mandates. A cleaner, better-regulated waterfront is a tourism asset. And a commercially active waterfront tourism sector generates the political and economic pressure needed to sustain waterway maintenance and investment.
The test, as always, will be what comes after the AGM is over and the cruise boats return to the jetties.
Waterways News — waterwaysnews.ng
Meyer Werft’s All-Electric Cruise Ship Sets New Course for Maritime Decarbonisation
German shipbuilder targets 95% emissions cut with battery-powered vessel; no engine room, no emissions — and a deadline of 2031
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News Correspondent
German shipbuilding giant Meyer Werft has unveiled plans to construct what would be the world’s first fully battery-powered cruise ship, a project that maritime observers say could redefine the economics and engineering of green cruising and send a powerful signal to shipping nations still wrestling with decarbonisation commitments.
The project, developed under what the company calls Project Vision, is designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions by up to 95% compared to conventional cruise vessels — a target that places the concept well ahead of the IMO’s revised GHG Strategy, which mandates a net-zero trajectory for international shipping by 2050.
A Ship Without an Engine Room
At the heart of the design is a radical departure from conventional cruise ship architecture. Rather than an engine room, the vessel would house a large-scale battery facility drawing on technology already proven in electric ferry operations across northern Europe. The battery system has been developed by Corvus Energy, a firm whose solutions currently power zero-emission passenger ferries in Norway and beyond.
Project engineer Johannes Bade explained the rationale in straightforward terms: “Batteries are now in a state — with the energy density and other aspects, safety, life cycle and so on — where we say, now this is the most energy-efficient way to do cruises.”
The ship would recharge at port between voyages, functioning, in essence, as the world’s largest floating electric vehicle. Meyer Werft says the technology is ready and that the vessel could be delivered by 2031, provided a commercial contract is secured before the end of 2026.
Infrastructure: The Critical Bottleneck
The ambition, however, runs ahead of the infrastructure. Of the roughly 1,500 ports that cruise ships call at globally each year, only 41 currently have the shore-power capacity to recharge a large battery-powered vessel. Meyer Werft acknowledges the gap but points to momentum building in Europe, estimating that approximately 100 European ports could be shore-power ready by 2030.
Industry voices have also weighed in on what the breakthrough represents for the broader net-zero puzzle. Charles “Bud” Darr of Cruise Lines International Association noted that achieving net-zero by 2050 would require a diverse portfolio of solutions: “It is going to take a mosaic or bundle of solutions to get to net zero for 2050. So every innovation is something that we add to that mosaic.”
Darr identified routes in the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, the Norwegian fjords, the Baltic Sea, and the Florida-Bahamas corridor as best suited for fully electric operations, given the shorter distances between port calls.
Nigeria Watch
What Meyer Werft’s all-electric cruise ship means for Nigeria’s blue economy
The announcement from Meyer Werft may appear distant from Nigerian maritime realities, but policymakers, port operators, and blue economy advocates would be wrong to dismiss it as a purely European affair.
Nigeria sits at a critical juncture. The country’s ports — primarily Apapa and Tincan in Lagos, with deep seaport projects at Olokola, Badagry, Ibom, Bakassi, and Bonny at varying stages of development — are being designed and concessioned in the same decade that global ship technology is pivoting fundamentally away from fossil fuel propulsion. The shore-power infrastructure gap identified in the Meyer Werft project is precisely the kind of planning detail that can determine whether a port remains competitive in the next generation of maritime trade or finds itself stranded with yesterday’s specifications.
Nigeria’s National Ports Authority (NPA) and NIMASA must begin factoring electric vessel readiness into port masterplanning now, not when the first battery-powered liner appears at the horizon. The broader cruise economy — underdeveloped in Nigeria compared to the potential offered by the country’s Atlantic coastline, the Niger Delta waterways, and proximity to Gulf of Guinea island nations like São Tomé — also deserves serious attention. A future in which West Africa becomes a cruise destination of any scale will require the port infrastructure to support it.
There is also a domestic angle. Nigeria’s inland waterway operators and short-sea shipping sector, chronically burdened by fuel costs and ageing diesel-powered fleets, have every reason to track the rapid maturation of large-scale maritime battery technology. What works for a 300-passenger cruise ship in European waters today may well define the economics of a Warri-to-Lagos waterway shuttle or a Lagos Harbour ferry concession within this decade.
The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) should be monitoring these developments closely.
The IMO’s decarbonisation clock is ticking for all flag states and port nations — Nigeria included. The question is not whether electric propulsion will transform global shipping, but whether Nigeria will be positioned to benefit when it does.
Waterways News Maritime Technology Desk
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