By Joseph ETTA in Calabar
A former managing director of the Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort, Chief Bassey Ndem has expressed concern that the massive investment has been allowed to rot away.
He said it was unfortunate that those in power were not imbibing the culture of continuity in governance.
Ndem made the remarks in a chat with Daybreak in Calabar. He also spoke on the Calabar deep seaport project, expressing the optimism that it would see the light of day.
Speaking on Tinapa and why it has stopped functioning, He said the resort may have died because the extant laws were not followed. “If you have your entity that has a gazette which is a law that enables it to function and you have an arm of the federal government that decides to work against that law then you really can’t blame it on the subsequent government entirely.
“It is very unfortunate that people don’t understand that government is a continium. If you have one regime that comes in and begins a project, the gestation period for at least, let me take example an industry, gestation period is not one year, you will take one year to start looking for your land and infrastructure, another year to get things in place, the third year is when you are doing the actual building, the fourth year is when you have installed your machines and you are beginning to look for your market, it will take you another, 5,6,7 years for your products to gain acceptability in the market.
“So it is from the eight year that it begins to really take off. Anyone that enters into government and wants to build a project in two years doesn’t truly understand. Every business takes time to find acceptability so the next government that is coming has no choice other than to build on the foundation of the previous one and to take it to “the next level” having improved on what was there for the next government to come in.”
Ndem said apart from Cross River, a good number of people in government do not appreciate the principle of continuity. “Where has it happened in Nigeria? It is the bane of governance in Nigeria; but you get the kind of government that you deserve.
Architect Bassey Ndem told Daybreak that the media should be aggressive in making people understand these projects that money has been spent as theirs. “you cannot just sit down and allow it die.”
Ndem who is a former commissioner for lands in the state and currently secretary of the deep seaport commission spoke of the journey so far and the challenges ahead, before the seaport would become a reality, just as he said he would expect the next administration to continue with the project.
“I think that the next government that will come will be interested in this gigantic project but if they are not interested it will be sad for us. I want to use the example of the ranch to illustrate this.
“Obudu Ranch was discovered sometime in the 50s by some decent white folks who decided to make the place a holiday resort and nobody was really doing much about it. In the 80s, the then federal military government came in and decided to do a road all the way up to the ranch between the mid 80s and early 2000, the ranch was there but nobody really did anything.
“I think we had an administration that came in and decided to focus on the ranch now because the basic infrastructure was already there, we had the road, we had the ranch itself, we had some houses, within four years it was possible to now make the ranch a world class destination and that is continuity in action.
“So in the same way, someone has come, they’ve started even if it is just the first foundations that are done, the next government that is coming has a moral responsibility to complete this.”
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