CALABAR, 

‎Inside Calabar, there is another city.

‎It sits on 265 hectares of forest. It has malls as big as two football fields, a 242-room hotel, a film studio, conference halls and lakes. It was meant to be Nigeria’s Dubai — a place where Nigerians could shop, relax and do business without a visa.

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‎That city is Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort. For over a decade, it has been a ghost town.

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‎Now, six years after it was stripped during the EndSARS unrest, its owner and regulator are saying it can rise again — but those who destroyed it must face justice.

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‎The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA) made the call during a recent media tour of Tinapa, where journalists were shown the scale of destruction inside the free zone.

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‎Dr Martins Odeh, Head of Corporate Communications of NEPZA, who represented the Managing Director/Chief Executive, Dr Olufemi Ogunyemi, said the looting was a major setback for Cross River and Nigeria.

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‎”This story has not been told. It has been considered a political gimmick, but it is reality. We brought journalists from Abuja to see for themselves,” Odeh said.

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‎According to NEPZA, facilities worth trillions of naira were vandalised and looted in October 2020, when hoodlums hijacked the EndSARS protests against police brutality in Calabar.

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‎The Tinapa Hotel, shopping malls, light rail and conference facilities were gutted. Beds, televisions, air conditioners, tiles, doors and cables were carted away. What could not be carried was smashed.

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‎”What can be more defining than this structure, which is many times bigger than several modern shopping complexes? Today, there is no single soul here,” Odeh said.

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‎He said despite the huge loss, no one has been prosecuted.

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‎”Nobody has been prosecuted. Our law must work. We are working very hard to ensure those behind this destruction, whether at home or abroad, are brought to justice,” he said.

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‎Tinapa was the brainchild of former Cross River Governor Donald Duke. Conceived as Nigeria’s first business and leisure free zone, it was designed to focus on retail, tourism, hospitality and entertainment, unlike other free zones built for manufacturing.

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‎It was commissioned on April 2, 2007, but could not operate immediately because there was no gazette to guide its operations. By the time the gazette was issued in 2009 under President Umaru Yar’Adua, the 2008 global financial crisis had forced many anchor tenants to pull out.

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‎Still, it recovered. State governments held retreats there. Professional bodies held conferences. At its peak, it received over a million visitors in months and employed over 6,000 people during construction.

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‎Then came the EndSARS looting.

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‎For NEPZA, the loss went beyond buildings. It eroded investor confidence in a project meant to create jobs and conserve foreign exchange.

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‎But the agency says Tinapa remains viable.

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‎Odeh said the Cross River State Government under Governor Bassey Otu has cleared the ownership dispute and settled debts that had tied the resort to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), a major step that had scared investors away.

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‎He said NEPZA has beefed up security and is working with the state government and the Nigeria Customs Service to streamline operations and bring in new investors.

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‎”We have enough security in place. We are calling on investors to return. Tinapa will work again, create jobs and provide opportunities for future generations,” he said.

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‎The zone’s management says it wants to keep Tinapa clean and environmentally friendly, with focus on light manufacturing such as electric cars and solar products, as well as health, data centres and entertainment.

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‎It said talks are ongoing with investors to build a data centre that will create about 500 direct jobs, and another to manufacture vaccines. The hotel is also set for private management under a new model where government will only regulate.

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‎For residents of Calabar who once watched buses offload shoppers at T-Mart, and for the host community that gave its land for the project, the promise is that Tinapa’s best days are still ahead.