By Archibong Jeremiah
The Cross River State Commissioner for Culture and Tourism, Mr. Eric Anderson has said that “We have come to terms with the fact that we need to put in more energy into the affairs of tourism and culture in Cross River State.”
The new Commissioner also promised that he will run an open door policy in the new Ministry.
Making the assertion recently in his Okoi Arikpo House office in Calabar, Mr. Anderson further revealed that his Ministry has streamlined some strategies to revamp the State Tourism sector and that they are in phases.
His words: “We want to take it in bits, one step at a time by first of all going round, doing on the spot assessment which I started with Qua falls, Marina Resort and last week we were all on the ranch when the Governor went on project tour, I took the opportunity of finding out the state of what is happening up there.
“For us we need to know the state of our facilities and refurbish them, prepare them for the festivals ahead of us. Then the next phase, we market them all over again and then drive the policies to meet global standards.” He said.
Furthermore, he stated that: “My Ministry is a new creation and before now, we had Tourism Bureau, we had Carnival Commission, Culture and Heritage Department, we’ve had Tourism Development and all of this clusters have been very independent and by the creation of this Ministry, it automatically means that we are to oversee all these clusters. And my immediate plan is to harmonize all these clusters under the Ministry to see how we can work together to achieve our goals collectively. And when we harmonize, we would be able to know our differences, work on them and strive for common goal.”
Mr. Eric added that: “We used to have Leboku festivals for few years now for the Central; Utom Obong for the South and we are embarking on the NorthFest which is a festival for the Northern Senatorial district and the festival will trickle down to Local Government levels to perk up our cultural values. But we need to put more efforts into things of our culture generally.”
He concluded by calling on all and sundry to support him in achieving set goals for the state and pledged to operate an open door policy.