The Nigerian Hotel and Catering Institute (NIHOTOUR) has condemned what it described as the unprofessional conduct of the National Institute of Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR) over its arrest of some hotel personnel and disruption of their operations in Lagos last week over its purported pursuant of NIHOTOUR of 2022 in respect of registration of hotels and their operators.

This is as it has also called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to prevail on the Director General of the training Institute, Dr Abisoye Fagade, to put an immediate end to the farcical exercise, which it said is illegal and contravenes the professions of the Nigeria Constitution, Supreme Court judegemnt of 2013 and a court ruling arising from the case instituted by the Hotels Owners and Managers Association of Lagos (HOMAL) before a Magistrate Court in Lagos, challenging the NIHOTOUR Act of 2022.

It will be recalled that the action of NIHOTOUR caused an uproar in some hotels in Lagos last week when it compliance team accompanied by a truckload of police operatives, both in uniform and plain clothes, stormed a number of hotels and arrested some of the personnel over their failure to register. They were taken to the Zonal Campus of the Institute in Mushin and released after payment were extracted from them of them while others were forced to sign a promissory note to that effect.

In one of the incidences, a staff of one the hotels visited was assaulted, battered and bruised, with one of his eyes badly damaged. He said to be hospiltalised and undergoing treatment in an undisclosed medical facility in Lagos.

Reacting to this development, NHCI in a press statement, titled; Re: Press Release on the purported implementation of NIHOTOUR’s Act 2022 by NIHOTOUR, signed by its President and Chairman of Council, Victor Ola Kayode, noted, ‘‘We as a professional Body viewed these actions as an act that is highly unprofessional for an organisation that purportedly want to regulate professional practice in the Hospitality and Tourism Practice in Nigeria.

‘‘It is more inappropriate to have seen such a body utilising the instrumentality of government to coerce legitimate private operators in the industry to dance to its dictates notwithstanding the fact that there is a subsisting judgement on such matter from the Supreme Court of Nigeria in 2013.’’

‘‘It is clear that these actions must have been ill-advised and unbecoming of a body who claims to train practitioners for the industry. To make the matter worse are’’

This is as it stated further that the purpose for the huge sums of money demanded by NIHOTOUR is unclear when it is not the one responsible for neither the training nor recruitment of these personnel for the hotels. It also noted that it is pure exploitation just as it condemned its use of force through the Nigerian Police Force to harass, intimidate, brutalise and illegally arrest some of the operators.

NHCI’s press statement reads in part: ‘‘These, to the best of Professional practice, is absurd, crude and any other thing but unprofessional. This definitely cannot be the intent of the disputed NIHOTOURS Act of 2022 in the spirit of the Nigerian Constitution.

‘‘The Nigerian Hotel and Catering Institute (NHCI), as the foremost professional body in the industry in Nigeria therefore, decry this style, tendencies and actions and wish to state that it negates everything tourism and hospitality known to the professionals, practitioners, the people and government of Nigeria and must be stopped immediately.

‘‘We also use this medium to call on the Inspector General of Police to stop the use of the Police for such duties just as we appeal to His Excellency, the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, through the Attorney General of the Federation, to call the Director General of the training Institute-NIHOTOUR- to order; without further delay.

‘‘It is also a civilised expectation, that the management of NIHOTOUR will immediately tender unreserved apologies for the embarrassment caused the relevant operators whose staff were clandestinely arrested and detained not even in the Police Station but in a campus of their training School.

‘‘We hope that immediate actions shall be taken on this matter before it causes a breakdown of law and order in the industry and scare away the foreign investors who are willing to invest in Nigeria and create more jobs in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda of the Federal Government.’’