Beyond Oil: Bonny Moves To Build Nigeria’s Next Tourism Hub

After centuries as a historic maritime and trading kingdom and decades as one of Nigeria’s important oil and gas centres, Bonny Island is now setting its sights on a new economic frontier — tourism.

The Bonny Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture has unveiled a three-year strategy aimed at turning the island into a premier tourism destination and attracting fresh investment into its heritage, culture, hospitality and natural attractions.

The initiative, tagged Discover Bonny, will take centre stage at the Bonny Island Tourism and Investment Summit scheduled for August 18 to 20, 2026.

President of the Chamber and Executive Director of the initiative, Dr Constance Nwokejiobi, said the strategy was designed to ensure that Bonny’s economic future was not tied exclusively to oil and gas.

She spoke at a press conference ahead of the summit.

Nwokejiobi said Bonny had the historical assets, cultural identity, natural environment and growing infrastructure required to develop a competitive tourism economy.

She described tourism as an opportunity to build a second economic pillar for the island, stressing that the objective was not to replace oil and gas but to create a sustainable economy capable of surviving beyond the lifespan of individual resource cycles.

The Discover Bonny Initiative will include a Tourism Concierge Platform, a structured investment partnership framework and a privately driven Tourism Centre.

According to her, the private sector must remain central to the initiative if tourism is to become a sustainable commercial industry rather than another government-dependent project.

The initiative will promote a broad range of attractions, including the Perekule Royal Palace, Ikuba Nungo ancestral square, St Stephen’s Cathedral, the New Bonny Consulate Building, Finima Beach, Finima Nature Park, the Old Market Square and the Commonwealth Cemetery.

Cultural attractions such as the Okoloama Fungumini Festival, Bonny Boat Regatta, Bonny Island Marathon and Ukemkpa Festival will also form part of the tourism offering.

The Chamber has submitted the island’s tourism portfolio to the Federal Ministry of Tourism and the Nigeria Tourism Development Authority for national recognition and inclusion in domestic and international tourism campaigns.

Nwokejiobi said the Bonny-Bodo Road had further strengthened the island’s tourism prospects by providing a road connection to the Nigerian mainland, complementing the island’s air and sea access.

She said the Chamber was already testing tourism experiences, including heritage walks, hiking routes and ecotourism excursions at Finima Nature Park.

The New Bonny Consulate Building, rebuilt with the support of NLNG and Renaissance Africa Energy Company Limited, is also being positioned as a heritage and tourism asset, with a museum, library and cinema incorporated into the facility.

The summit will also feature investment and partnership discussions involving government agencies, investors, tourism experts, traditional institutions, community leaders and private-sector operators.

International opportunities are also being explored, with the Chamber engaging Caribbean markets through an Afreximbank-supported Caribbean corridor and bankability review.

Nwokejiobi said the objective was to develop trade and tourism links between Bonny, Nigeria and the Caribbean.

The summit will open on August 18 with arrivals and courtesy visits, followed by plenary sessions and the launch of Discover Bonny on August 19.
The final day will feature a golf tournament, tourism tours, the Okoloama Fungumini Festival and the closing ceremony.

The Chamber said the festival would provide a particularly important showcase of Bonny’s living culture, demonstrating that the kingdom’s heritage is not merely preserved in historical records but remains an active part of community life.

Nwokejiobi urged Nigerians to visit Bonny and called on international investors and tourists to consider the island as a destination for investment, leisure, culture and heritage tourism.

She said the summit represented the beginning of a broader campaign to put Bonny on the national and global tourism map.

With its oil and gas wealth already established, the Chamber is betting that Bonny’s next big economic story could be written not in crude oil, but in culture, heritage, hospitality and tourism.