Hope, seems to have returned to the much-talk about Tinapa Business Resort, conceived, constructed, nurtured and launched by the former Governor of Cross River State, Mr. Donald Duke which has now become a forest. However, Cross River State Governor, Bassey Otu during the 7th Executive Council meeting held recently at the Governor’s Office Complex, Calabar, approved ₦18 billion as investment in sustainable tourism transformation initiatives, includingTinapa Business and Leisure Resort, as well as the rehabilitation of the Amber Tinapa Hotel and Studio Tinapa.
On a recent visit by our correspondent, the entire sprawling resort has been overgrown with weeds. The emporiums, the vandalised 242- room hotel, the Nollywood cinema complex, and the water park are now inhabited by snakes, wild lizards and rodents. Reptiles are a common sight even as it has also become a den for criminal elements which seem to launch out from there and return without the knowledge of the police post far away, which often is without personnel or electricity.
Tinapa was conceived as a one stop centre for international commerce with a status of a free export zone and this was the reason several emporiums (mega shops) were constructed, alongside the 242-bed international hotel, Nollywood cinema centre, artificial lake which was dredged to empty into nearby river.
The resort used to have state-of-the-art facilities like pre-built retail and wholesale accommodation on an excess of 65,000m2 lettable area composed of four emporia of 10,000m2 each, several line shops, warehouses; an open exhibition area for trade exhibitions and other events; an entertainment strip with spaces for a casino, an eight-screen digital cinema, international standard restaurants, a night club and pubs; an entertainment centre with a functional games arcade and a mini amphitheater, a movie production studio christened Studio Tinapa, among others.
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The grasses have grown to become mini trees. These trees have blocked access into most of the places. Any one that is courageous to enter Tinapa now, will shed tears at the sore abandonment. Such a person, will literally see the over $600m spent in 2004 from conceptualisation to completion in constructing it as having been burnt away.
The cost of building the resort was a loan obtained from assorted sources by Donald Duke who was determined to bring it to life. Largely, he succeeded. He had put in his all, including political will and international connections. In building the resort, Duke’s aim mainly was to turn the state into an international tourism destination of note. At the height of its popularity when Tinapa was the beehive of all activities, the emporia were all rented at exorbitant costs by different big time firms for sale or display of their goods.
It was deliberate in order to attract decision makers who came for their annual general meetings. It turned out that blue-chip firms had to compete for space at Tinapa. Tourists, business people, visitors, holiday makers, fun or pleasure seekers, and sports persons came in from all states of Nigeria and countries to relish the resort.
A visit to Calabar is not complete without a tour of Tinapa. It had brought glory to Cross River. But today, politicking and red-tapism have killed the thriving resort. In one of the interviews he granted journalists on the state of the resort and how succeeding governments did not put in such verve he displayed, former Governor, Donald Duke said his heart bleeds whenever he thinks about the resort he invested a lot of resources to put up.
“Truly, I would be a liar if I tell you that I am happy about the state of or abandonment of Tinapa…”, he said.The resort was abandoned largely due to alleged heavy indebtedness and federal government policy that do not allow it to function as a free trade zone since there is a federal government free trade zone in Calabar. Investors and business owners that initially rented the big shops at cut-throat prices regretted and closed shops when the expected patronage drastically dropped.
Duke’s successor, Sen Liyel Imoke, could not put in the same verve, commitment and enthusiasm into Tinapa, and so the envisaged massive potentialities waned, leading to intervention and take-over by Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON). Before now, the state government was said to have entered into private arrangement with some consortiums which reason the Tinapa Lakeside hotel and waterpark were still providing skeletal services.
All that was gone during the October 2020 #EndSARS protest, which was allegedly hijacked by miscreants. The hoodlums took time without any restraint to vandalise and completely clean out the entire three- storey Lakeside hotel. The emporia, especially those that still had some wares in them, were all ransacked and vandalised. The mono-rail, which the government of Senator Ben Ayade came to revive in order to convey visitors from the resort to the nearby massive Calabar International Conference Centre (CICC) built by Duke’s successor, Liyel Imoke, was also vandalized.
One of the investors at the resort, Eze Obina, said that the moribund nature of Tinapa is caused by the Nigerian Customs Service whom he accused of illegally imposing import duties on goods coming into Tinapa, which was supposed to be a free trade zone.He claimed to have lost millions of naira on demurrage due to the non-clearance of containers coming to Tinapa at Onne Port.
He said: “The laws establishing Tinapa Business and Free Zone Resort recognises the fact that Tinapa is the transit hub for goods within the sub-regional Africa and the existing gazette says Tinapa is 100 per cent import duty-free.“Customs has no right to hold any consignment coming to Tinapa. For Customs to come and ask us to pay duties in Onne is a total violation of the law establishing Tinapa. Nigerian Customs is frustrating us.
“We are indeed shocked and bewildered why customs at Onne command stopped the processing of investors’ consignments which are on transit to Tinapa Free Trade Zone.” Meanwhile, former Governor Ben Ayade had lamented that the lingering heavy debts which accrued from the construction of the resort had weighed him down. He told journalists that he had not been able to break because the debt was claiming over 80% of the federal allocation to his state because it is deducted at source.
“All the Tinapa debts, all those loans have crystallised on me. And they are deducting the money at source…”In an interview with Mr Francis Ekom, the then general manager of Tinapa Business Resort, he said they could not completely function as a free trade zone as envisaged because they did not have all the basic requirements, including a conducive environment for government agencies, to enable them to operate as such.
He however said before the impact of the endSARS weighed so heavily on them, they had submitted proposals and reports and were also working with appropriate authorities regarding activation of the free trade zone status.He alluded to the fact that Tinapa has lost substantially. “The so-called #EndSARS protest completely devastated Tinapa and even the third party shops and their goods. I can say that what we have lost so far runs over several Billions of Naira, and may yet take several years to fully recover.”
“The 242 rooms in the hotel were completely looted. 24 transformers, not usual run-of-mill ones, were all destroyed and their cables stolen. About 10 containers of fabrics and other goods which were ready for export got vandalised. Speaking to journalists in Calabar, former Governor Donald Duke regretted that the infrastructure had been allowed to waste, saying the non-usage of Tinapa was the greatest disservice his successors have done to the state.
Tinapa has not been put to use and we have shot ourselves on the foot when we did not put it to use. Government is continuous and the successor is always smarter than the predecessor,” he stated.He said so much was expended on Tinapa and was supposed to be the pride of the state, but said the place had been left to rot because his successors did not understand the concept.
The saying that ‘when the owner or originator of an idea or a business is no more, the idea goes with him’ seems to be very true of the Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort Ltd. When he held sway as governor of Cross River State, especially during his second term when he conceived and built Tinapa Business Resort and Leisure Ltd, Mr. Donald Duke passionately nurtured it to global prominence.
Duke constantly used local and international media outlets to publicise it. At its peak, its fame grew globally to the extent that TINAPA was not only a beehive of activities but a must-visit place. It hosted conferences almost round the clock. Tourists and fun seekers flooded the place.Tinapa was supposed to be the first Free Trade Zone having been gazetted as such but it never actually achieved that status because of several governmental bottlenecks and increasing taxations on goods coming into the resort.
It is a massive and structurally imposing business concept by the former governor of Cross River State to complement his idea of tourism, which was the focal point in the second term of his administration. Many believe that some federal government agencies such as the Nigerian Customs Service have a hand in the plight of the resort. It is believed that the many stringent measures and taxes at seaports on importers of goods meant to go to Tinapa discouraged investors and business owners.
As if that was not enough, the citing of a similar concept few metres away – the Summit Hills Estate which houses array of leisure and business outfits, including international golf course and the Calabar International Conference Centre (CICC), by former Governor Liyel Imoke compounded the challenges of Tinapa. It pulls traffic of conferences away from Tinapa.
Critical stakeholders in the state, continue to asked why Imoke couldn’t channel the massive funds used in building another events centre into Tinapa. However, with the interest the present government under Prince Bassey Edet Otu has, it is hoped that life will soon return to the much talk about resort and business center, the TINAPA.
