By Jonathan Ugbal
The Speaker of the Cross River State House of Assembly, Honorable John Lebo has said that the Federal Government is scared of the concept and vision of the Tinapa’s Premier Business and Leisure resort.
The USD470 million project commissioned by former Nigeria’s President, Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007.
Now, Mr. Lebo took to Facebook to express his opinion on the facility which has been deemed a white elephant by critics.
As earlier reported, the conversation began on the timeline of Mr. Prince will Odidi, a Cross Riverian based in the United States and Mr. Lebo while replying to a question posed to him, explained the choice of location and how federal parastatals deliberately frustrated its growth.
“Tinapa is located within the Free Trade Zone. Donald Duke got it so right. The idea was to situate the project within the zone and make it easier for the investment in Tinapa to serve free trade zone infrastructure to engineer the economy.
“But, because the federal government feels threatened by the vision and concept, it singled out Tinapa from the other companies in the free trade zone and imposed it’s draconian tax on all the investors and shops.
“Several containers of goods meant for Tinapa are confiscated in Port Harcourt, when the investors complain to customs, they advice them to relocate to Lagos or Port Harcourt.
“Right inside Tinapa, the morbid presence of federal government agencies like Customs, Immigration, FIRS, export promotion council were a complete demobilization crew against Tinapa investors.
“So, one after the other all the companies and investors closed shops in Tinapa and relocated to Lekki and Onne.
“To now blame Donald Duke, Liyel Imoke and Ayade is a clear lack of appreciation of the core issues,” he wrote.
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4 commentsOn Federal Government Feels Threatened By Tinapa’s Concept – Cross River Assembly Speaker, John Gaul
This is why the whole of the south-south must stand up for restructuring or nothing. The way the country is currently structured will forever stifled development in the south. It is in the interest of the south west and the core North for Tinanpa to fail, and they are actually achieving that. I am greatly disappointed as to the non existence of any tangible debate about restructuring in cross river state. None of the parties in the state can claim to be working for the interest of the people. we are just kissing ass and accepting anything thrown our way. Will Obasanjo have been able to cede any part of the core North to Cameroon? Obviously not but, CRS kept quite and allowed it to happen. Now, we are no longer an oil producing state and all revenue that should have been derived from it vanish. It seems we just go with the flow, regardless of whether we are been cheated or not. About time people stand up and ask questions rather than accepting the status quo.
since we now know that the FG is never in support of the project, can’t we find a way around it, and tweak the concept a little bit rather than still holding unto the original concept. The place can be put into other uses, rather than just allowing it lie fallow and waste away waiting for FG to approve the free trade zone agreement which the FG has been pussyfooting all this while. sell the shopping malls to companies like shoprite, wall mart or even t-mart, just like we have the calabar spa.
what’s the way forward Mr speaker, having identified the problems and why has it taken this long for solutions to be proffered considering tinapa’s economic importance to cross River State.
My brother! The Yoruba people will rather die than to allow any policy that will decentralise the Lagos Sea Port.
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