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By Duncan Odey
Just recently, precisely a day after Prof Ben Ayade, the new Cross River governor was sworn in, Obudu Cattle Ranch was the major topic of an interview granted to Thisday by Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross River. Duke had, in the interview, stated that Liyel Imoke, his successor “neglected institutions such as the Obudu Cattle Ranch which was the most developed resort in West Africa”.
As a Cross Riverian and an insider, I have personal knowledge of a few more things about the Ranch. I have been there and seen it all. I have also asked a lot of questions and got my answers from the Duke and Imoke camps. So, after reading through the said Duke representations on the Ranch, I decided it is best to now weigh-in, and publicly tell the rest of the story about the Ranch. Below is the story:
First, Obudu Ranch is more of a grand mirage, and even so, was very poorly-built from inception. Much of its splendor existed in the imagination of Donald Duke, the governor who built it and still thinks of it, to this day, as the most important legacy of his administration. Someone had, in the recent past, derisively but correctly called the Ranch ‘Donald Duke’s Alice-in-wonderland’. Yet, on assumption of office, former governor Liyel Imoke proceeded to ensure completion of the critical works left undone by Duke; and otherwise continued to do improvement works on the Ranch. Highly placed sources close to Imoke told me that the main reason Imoke tried to save the Ranch is because he saw it as one project most dear to Duke and thus wanted so much to avoid the perception of lack of continuity.
Second, during his tenure, Donald Duke has used government subsidies to falsely weave the toga of commercial and tourist viability on the Ranch. Cross Riverians never supported this Duke policy of running the Ranch on subsidies whereas the project was initially conceptualized by him as a self-sustaining commercial entity. That was part of the reason Imoke had to take the difficult decision of ending those costly and wasteful subsidies. Another is because the subsidy regime was no longer sustainable as it constituted a drain pipe on the meager resources meant for capital projects in the State. It is this subsidy stoppage that Duke has mischaracterized and continues to bitterly spin as evidence of lack of continuity.
Third, Cross River never made money from operations of the Ranch. Instead, it lost lots of money. But, given that Duke still feels that the Ranch is his all-in-all project, he should tell the world how much revenue Cross River earned from the Ranch when he was governor. Suffice it to say that the verifiable and sad truth is that, under Duke, Cross River earned nothing from the Ranch.
One vital and potential source of revenue was the expensive cable cars Duke had imported and installed but which turned out to become the lowest patronized in the world. The truth is that Nigerians never bought into it, and there was virtual paucity of foreign tourists which presumably would have patronized the cable cars. Further, Duke had, for strange reasons, built the Ranch log-cabins with imported equatorial wood from Finland. Soon enough, our hot tropical weather expanded the wood, which in turn spoilt the cabins and thus rendered them unusable.
Fourth, regarding Duke’s allegations of stoppage of flights to the Ranch, it is on public record that under Duke, Cross River State government was paying six million Naira subsidy per week for flights to the Ranch. This is an irresponsible, if not an illegal subsidy that persisted under Duke regardless of whether the flights carried only two or three passengers at a time, which was usually the case.
Further, Aero Contractors was operating the subsidized flights but stopped them, even before Liyel Imoke came to power because Cross River under Duke was owing 180 million Naira to Aero. Liyel instead renegotiated the deal with Aero in a way that made it eventually beneficial to Cross River in the sense that Aero began to pay Cross River for leasing its aircraft. This was then hailed by many as a smart turnaround by Imoke.
Above are but some of the burdens former governor Imoke quietly endured on the Ranch throughout his tenure. Suffice it to say that these burdens still persist to this day, and may as yet become governor Ayade’s dilemma, all thanks to Donald Duke.
Odey writes from Calabar