ABSTRACT
Tourism as an agent of development, leads to a lot of benefit?s, Nigeria as a country richly endowed with a wide range of cultural and natural resource?s relative to other nation?s in Africa and on a global level, most of which are largely untapped. There are many approaches to assess these resource potentials of which studies have been done in some parts of the world. but despite the availability of these potentials in Kaduna state, the level of tourist influx still remains low, which forms the basis of this study, to assess the tourism potentials, there challenges and prospects in Kaduna state. Opinion?s of experienced tourist, experts in different fields of study, were sampled with questionnaires at different potential spot?s to cover the three geographical zones of the state. Data were collected and analyzed using weighted sum model (WSM), through ranking and scaling techniques. The outcomes suggest major shortcomings are traced to inadequate infrastructures, funding, advertisement, and insecurity in these potentials among others. The study determine the potential values of different potentials site?s, and proposes clustering of the tourist spots to enhanced their potentials values and made recommendations to improve the industry in other to boost tourism industry in the state.