Tourism is a growth industry in Africa, and Nigeria wants to cash in, but is the country a safe place to travel to?Travelling around west Africa is an unpredictable business, but if one thing is certain, it is this ? whenever fellow travellers sit down and talk, the conversation often turns to an exchange of horror stories.There are the old former-Soviet planes that used to fly passengers ? and crates of chickens ? from Ghana to Sierra Leone, stopping off at almost every country along the way whilst the liquor-soaked pilot disembarked to exchange God knows what with some bloke on the border.One experience I sometimes recall is of the Lagos-Abuja flight that waited on the runway for two hours, then mysteriously escorted the VIPs off the plane but refused to tell other passengers why, before taking off, flying shakily in a large loop over Lagos and then landing there again. It turned out the plane didn't have enough fuel to make the trip, but the airline wanted to avoid charges for cancelling the flight.The point is, getting from A to B can be a serious logistical challenge in west Africa. It pays off, of course: the rise in business-plane travel is just one of many indicators that intra-African trade, rather than the well-entrenched extraction of all African resources to other continents, is the future.But are these experiences you would really choose if you were on holiday? The UN World Tourism Organisation (WTO) thinks so, and has this week held its Africa meeting in Nigeria for this first time, in Calabar ? an old city in south-eastern Nigeria's Cross River State.The Madrid-based WTO is pushing eco-tourism, fashion, art and culture, and Nigeria's abundant natural beauty ? waterfalls, caves and national parks. For diaspora tourists, also a growing phenomenon in west Africa, Calabar's slave trading past is also a major attraction, and offers a chance to see increasingly endangered centuries-old relics from part of African history that still shapes people's lives.But is it even responsible to encourage tourism to Nigeria? The country's infrastructure ? particularly its aviation safety and security ? is worse than ever. Nigerians themselves are avoiding travelling to Boko-Haram affected northern cities, and the national youth service scheme ? which since the 1970s has placed university graduates in different parts of the country to foster national unity ? has now stopped posting people to Kano and Kaduna due to the terrorist threat.In this context, there is an air of unreality about glossy publications like Come To Nigeria , which encourages tourists to visit Kano ? centre of the 18th-century Hausa empire ? to see its old walled city, famous Kurmi craft market, Emir's Palace and dye pits, but doesn't mention the frequent bomb attacks by those un-tourism minded Islamic extremists.The WTO insists it would be an injustice to discourage tourism to Nigeria as a whole because of these pockets of instability."It is absolutely realistic to encourage tourism to Nigeria," said Taleb Rifai, secretary general of the WTO. "If you can create tourism in even more volatile areas, like the Palestinian territory, Pakistan and Iraq ? which we are helping with ? then why not Nigeria? We don't believe there is any place under the sun not open for travel and tourism."And it's true that, despite the challenges, tourists have been voting with their feet. Africa as a whole was the only region in the world whose tourism grew continuously at a double rate of growth over the last 10 years. The continent's 50 million tourists are predicted to almost triple to 140 million by 2030. No sub-Saharan African country ? where growth has been the most intense ? wants to be left out of this influx of foreign cash.Nigeria can't compete with the package holidays of comparatively tiny and more manageable countries like the Gambia or Cape Verde, or the (relatively) more reliable infrastructure of Ghana or Senegal. Nigeria's strategy seems to be to embrace its flaws and sell itself as a rough and ready product nonetheless. Advocates such as Nike Oshinowowo, a former Miss Nigeria who organised the WTO Calabar event, capture this in a typically Nigerian brand of optimist-realism."Nigeria doesn't come in a tidy box with a nice ribbon around it," said Oshinowowo. "But once you get over that hard edge that my country has, once you have passed through the airport, you are welcomed by wonderful, warm people, the food is phenomenal, the climate is constantly nice.""Yes there is poverty, but there are also beggars on the Champs Elys�es, and that doesn't deter tourists to Paris," Oshinowowo continued. "If you come and sit and eat with us you will see that we are not thieves and our girls are not all prostitutes."It's not exactly a conventional sales pitch, but then Nigeria is not going to be a conventional tourism destination any time soon.? Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfreeNigeriaAfricaAfua Hirschguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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