New governors, please beware of Tinapa

In my time as a freelance investigative writer, I have covered many public projects and infrastructures across Nigeria. Late last year, I covered the states of Imo and Kano, where I made rounds of the disparate projects being undertaken by their State governors. Thereafter, I settled down to write about them all, praising some and criticizing some. It was a tale of the good, the bad and the ugly. My purpose is to flag good projects in the hope that some other State governors will copy. In the same vein, I blow the whistle on bad projects and warn our policy makers to beware of them.

This year, in fact just recently, my destination was Cross River State. There, many projects were in my gunsight; but in the end I zeroed in on project Tinapa, a supposedly flagship project of Donald Duke, a former governor of the State. Recall that Tinapa was then hailed by Duke as an innovative concept and its advertisement aired repeatedly on CNN, costing what a state government official described as ‘arms and legs’. Anyways, I wanted to know more about Tinapa that should have warranted the ‘arms and legs’ to advertise to the world. So, on the hunch, I approached state officials as well as residents for more information. I also examined official documents looking for more or less on Tinapa. All in all, below is what was revealed:

One: Donald Duke built Tinapa on a quicksand. In other words, he ignored a basic concept of building large shopping/tourist malls. That concept is called ‘anchor tenants’ and Duke built Tinapa without having them in place. That is never done with such projects anywhere in the world; otherwise the project is a toast from the get-go. It is the anchor tenants – those venture capitalists committed to leasing the mall spaces – that help most to make the project bankable; thus assuring project long-term sustainability and success as a commercial venture. It is largely because of this laxity that Tinapa eventually turned out to be dead on arrival, and continued from then onwards to constitute a drag, if not an embarrassment, to successive governors of Cross River and its citizens.

Two: I recalled that, at some time, Duke had complained that Imoke, his successor was not paying attention to Tinapa in terms of attracting large store chains to lease mall spaces. I did a fact-check on this and found that a contract with such store chains should have been in place before construction of Tinapa commenced. In this very case, there was no such contract. Therefore, Duke’s further claim that Walmart and other large store chains were coming to Tinapa couldn’t have been true. If there was, they were supposed to come during Duke’s tenure, and not after. You can’t put the cart before the horse.

Three: Contrary to what Donald Duke had told the world, I found no evidence of private sector money or other in-kind investments in Tinapa. So, the entire 450 million U.S. dollars spent by Duke on Tinapa was borrowed from financial institutions; and today it represents part of a N70bn compounded debt overhang on the necks of every Cross Riverian. I was told that former governor Imoke did very well to pay-down this debt and otherwise managed it in a way that saved Cross River a lot of money in late payment penalties and other default costs. Prof Ben Ayade, the current governor faces the same dilemma. I don’t envy him.

Finally, despite its evident pitfalls, warts and all, I saw one beacon of hope for Tinapa. That beacon lies alone with the adjacent Calabar International Convention Center, which was built by former governor, Liyel Imoke. The Convention Center appears to be positioned in such a way that will ultimately make it the anchor to Tinapa, especially with the monorail project that links the two. Still, as a stand-alone project, Tinapa should never have happened, especially with the poor conceptualization by Donald Duke. Other state governors, especially the new ones, should please beware of another Tinapa when time comes for starting any new project.

Danlami wrote from ibrodanlami@yahoo.com