Kingibe’s tonic for Tinapa’s operation

Babagana KingibeSouth South Bureau Chief, John Ogbedu, reports that the reason for the recent visit by Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, to Tinapa Business/Leisure Resort was most probably because the Federal Government is ready to put it on the path of success.

As the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, visited the multibillion naira Tinapa Business/Leisure Resort in Adiabo, Odukpani Local Government Area of Cross River State, on the outskirts of Calabar, the state capital, recently, there is a glaring hope in the horizon that the dream of establishing the project would not remain a mirage forever.

The visit by the SGF, one of the topmost government functionaries in Aso Rock, the seat of power in Nigeria’s federal capital, Abuja, followed closely similar visits to Tinapa by some federal ministers in Abuja, encouraging positive comments on the project. These visitations clearly show a bright light at the end of the tunnel.

Kingibe’s visit has gladdened not only the heart of the energetic and industrious Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the resort, Mr. Bassey Ndem, but also those of the people of Cross River, who have been looking forward to the day Tinapa would begin to function optimally and about 12,000 people would be employed by the organisation.

Though the SGF’s visit was brief, it was momentous for Tinapa’s management. Actually, it signaled the beginning of the end of the non-utilisation of the Tinapa project since it was 95 per cent completed and inaugurated in April 2007.

Accompanied by top officials of the Cross River State government, led by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mr. Fidelis Ugbo, who is a former Commissioner for Finance in the Donald Duke-led administration that pioneered the Tinapa project, the SGF went round the facilities in the resort. He was conducted round the facilities by Mr. Ndem.

From the way the SGF’s entourage breezed into the office of the Tinapa chief executive on that day, it was obvious that the facility visit was impromptu. Ndem was literally hijacked from his executive seat to take the visiting team round the project.

Despite the obvious non-receipt of prior information on the visit, Ndem was equal to the task. He appeared to have resolved to take the opportunity offered by the SGF’s visit to strengthen earlier appeals to the Federal Government and the National Assembly to enact the necessary legislative instruments to formally legalise the operations of Tinapa.
Ambassador Kingibe had sought to find out specifically from the project boss, Ndem, what was holding back its operational take-off.

“The absence of the legal instrument detailing the operational guidelines of Tinapa is holding back its proper practical take-off. Once this hurdle is crossed with the expected quick action from the Federal Government and the National Assembly in the enactment of the appropriate legislation on Tinapa, the sky will be our limit,” Ndem said.

Of course, the sky would be the limit not only for Ndem and Tinapa, but also for all conscientious Nigerians, especially those in Cross River State, who would be direct beneficiaries of the project.

The visit by Kingibe, on whose table the draft guidelines, as prepared by stakeholders in the project, is still gathering dust, is a pragmatic way of showing the Federal Government’s renewed resolve to step in seriously to actualise the dreams of the founders of the Tinapa project. Perhaps, the visit was designed to fast-track the actual commencement of serious business at the project site. This measure by the Federal Government is also probably aimed at ensuring that a similar project being envisaged by the Ghanaian government, with the support of United Arab Emirate’s and Malaysian governments, obviously to challenge Nigeria’s Tinapa in the West African sub-region, does not overtake Tinapa Africa’s premier business and tourist resort.

Further delay in resumption of full activities at Tinapa would surely open a lot of windows of opportunities for the Ghanaian government of President John Kuffour, a close ally of the Nigerian president, Alhaji Umaru Yar’Adua, to really hasten its own resort project, which the Nigerian Tribune gathered from reliable sources in the business world would be designed to clear goods destined for the proposed Tinapa site “within 24 hours.” This sounds somewhat strange in Nigeria, where it had been said that it would take, at least, one week to clear such goods for the nation’s Tinapa project.

Impressed by Kingibe’s less-than-one-hour official visit to the business resort and his obvious impression that the project should be allowed to see the light of day, there are high expectations within the Cross River State government circle and the state generally that within the next few months or weeks, the necessary legal machinery would be put in motion to ensure that gets a new lease of life.

It is also hoped that the administrative bottlenecks at the federal level, specifically between the Federal Ministry of Finance and Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on the one hand and the Presidency in Abuja on the other hand, over the appropriate operational guidelines for the Tinapa project would be quickly resolved. Doing so would hasten the proper functioning of the project that Ndem said had consumed over N100 billion, with much of this amount obtained through loans that are yet to be serviced as and when due.

There is no doubt that Tinapa has come a long way and gone beyond mere rhetoric. Though some social critics, including well-placed indigenes of Cross River State, where Tinapa is sited, recently described the resort in the state as “a white elephant project,” the current moves by the federal authorities, with the support and cooperation of the Cross River State government, to put finishing touches to the legal framework to give bite to the project makes such criticisms misplaced.

As Ndem told the Nigerian Tribune in his office shortly after the departure of the SGF, the state government will continue to push for necessary intervention by the Federal Government.

“We will not give up on this viable project. I assure Nigerians, especially the people of Cross River State, that the days of waiting endlessly for when Tinapa will really take-off are, indeed, numbered,” Ndem said.

He also said the project had “great potentials for changing the economic fortunes of Cross River State and Nigeria as a whole; and so, the visit of the SGF to our site today, his positive impression of the project and its facilities and his desire to see it being functional within the shortest possible time are indicators of the viability of the project, acceptance by the Federal Government and a sign that its endless wait for proper take-off will soon be over.”

During the inspection of the project by the SGF, he had moved to the 1846-established VLISCO shop to peep into it. Conspicuously pasted on the shut glass panel door at was a public notice from the shop’s management lamenting the suspension of its services (sale of clothing materials, dresses, etc.), attributing its action to “the activities of the Nigeria Customs Service.”

The one-page terse public notice read: “Dear Customers, we are unfortunately unable to sell you any goods. We have been closed by the Nigeria Customs Service due to the non-gazette situation of Tinapa Shopping Centre as a whole. We are assured by the management of Tinapa that the situation will be resolved very soon.”

Taking a quick glance again at the notice, the SFG nodded his head intermittently and with an encouraging smile that portended the good things to come soon to the Tinapa, he walked away to inspect other facilities. These included the theatre halls, film studios, the five-star hotel currently being furnished with mainly imported materials, the beautiful waterfront with its artificial lake created from the nearby Calabar River by Julius Berger Nigeria Plc., etc.

Why would the Tinapa management and the NCS engaged in a crisis over Tinapa’s operational guidelines which is now denying the project its proper functioning? Why would the Customs continue to disagree with its supervisory ministry, the Federal Ministry of Finance, over what should be or should not be in the legislative instrument setting up Tinapa? Is this crisis which had reared its ugly head in the Calabar Export Processing Zone (EPZ) at its inception another ploy by powerful forces in the nation’s Presidency to frustrate the proper take-off of the Tinapa project simply because it is sited in a minority state in the country?

These and other questions were provided answers to by Ndem. He disagreed with the ethnic-motivated fear that the Tinapa project is yet to be fully functional because it is located in a minority state. He stressed that Tinapa “will never go the way of the fumbling and wobbling” Calabar EPZ. He said the feuding parties were already putting heads together in Abuja to clear these grey areas so that the required “Cross River State Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort Bill” (or whatever it would be titled) would be sent to the National Assembly for enactment into law, with the President’s assent expectedly coming not too long after its passage by the parliament.