Date Published: 05/18/10

Sir,

Ibom Tropicana: The Stinking Mess of a Project

Ibom Tropicana Entertainment Centre is a project initiated by Governor Godswill Akpabio aimed at changing the landscape of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. The prototype of the project by the consultant (Silverbird Galleria) was inaugurated by late President Yar’Adua in 2008.

In a published interview with The Nation of May 18, 2009, page 14, Governor Akpabio announced that he had already released N11billion out of N33billion he said the project would cost. Few days after then, the newspapers were awash with an open letter by his predecessor in office, a seasoned town planner and accomplished architect, Obong Victor Attah, in which Attah enumerated everything wrong with the project. This ranged from wrong location and size of land for the project; no proper designing; no Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA); no Soil test, etc. In an attempt to defend self, Akpabio employed all manner of people to insult the good counsel of Attah. He followed this up with an advertisement in Saturday Vanguard of September 19, 2009, therein promising to deliver in the first quarter of 2010 a section of the complex that would provide 5,000 jobs for Akwa Ibom youths, as he declared “This is just the beginning for my people” but this failed.

Akwa Ibom Citizens Rights Group in recent paid advertisement in many Nigerian newspapers drew the governor’s attention to unfulfilled promises and demanded to know what went wrong, but the governor passed on the matter to Silverboard Galleria, the handlers of the project, to explain. Instead of giving satisfactory reply, Silverbird threw up more controversies hitherto unknown to the public.

Silverbird’s confession infers that the governor paid out the N11billion without proper design of the project and also no EIA and Soil test, etc. All those were carried out later probably after Attah drew attention to them. What an irony? The governor still has some explanations to make to the public and these include, among other things, what is the new cost of the project and when is the new delivery schedule?

Mr. Sunday Isong

88 Kehinde Street, Agbara, Ogun State