Sustainable Development Plans for Caves in Southeast Nigeria for Tourism

Abstract

Tourists are most of the times motivated to visit natural attractions to appreciate wonders of nature. Developing these natural attractions for tourism and other socio-economic purposes has become an issue in some parts of Nigeria. The nation has abundant natural attractions of which many are either unharnessed or not harnessed sustainably. There are so many caves in Nigeria and most of them are abandoned with their tourism potentials neglected. Some of these caves in most cases are seen as a mere trip of sand with less relevance to the socio-economic aspect of a people. With emphasis on Ajalli cave, this paper looked briefly at the origin of caves with emphasis on myths and science; give a clear picture of the Ajalli cave by studying its features, problems and prospects. The paper equally unveils various sustainable developmental strategies for Ajalli cave which are applicable to similar caves in Southeast Nigeria.

Keywords: Sustainable development, Tourism, Natural attractions, Cave, Socio-economic development, Strategies.