EVALUATION OF PEOPLES’ AWARENESS AND ATTITUDE TO CULTURAL LANDSCAPES IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The cultural landscapes for generations are places where people identify with their roots, a place of pride or remembrance of symbolic events. With the development of these sites as tourist centres of attraction and in most developed countries they provide employment opportunities as well as being useful generators of income through tourism. Currently in Nigeria, cultural sites in most cases are not developed, much less patronized for tourism for issues like poor development, lack of information, unattractive sites to mention a few. The focus of this paper is to investigate the reasons why these sites of ancestral heritage are being abandoned or not patronized; and also to measure the level of peoples' awareness of such sites. Alongside these are some other reasons examined to provide more information on the challenges of these cultural sites and tourism development in Nigeria. Structured questionnaires were employed to elicit information from the public using the Likert type scale. Descriptive statistic was used to analyze e the characteristics of respondents and their perception about cultural landscapes. The findings, inter alia, reflect a lack of information, poverty, and lack of development as the main reasons for the low patronage accorded the sites. Conclusions and recommendations were also offered on ways to overcome the challenges of tourism promotion of cultura