Nearly two decades after Donald Duke handed over power in Cross River State to his political ally and successor, Senator Liyel Imoke, the story of Tinapa and the state’s tourism ambitions remains entangled in questions of vision, continuity, debt and the difficult economics of turning grand public projects into sustainable businesses. In a recent interview, Imoke offered his most detailed account yet of what he inherited, what he tried to sustain and why he believes the story of Tinapa cannot be reduced to political abandonment.
There was a time when the political story of Cross River State appeared almost too neat to be true. Donald Duke governed the state from 1999 to 2007, building a reputation around tourism, urban renewal and a vision of turning Cross River into a destination with international appeal. His successor, Liyel Imoke, had been more than a political ally. He was part of the circle that helped shape the political project that brought Duke to power and later became the man entrusted with carrying it forward. Today, that story is considerably more complicated.
At the centre of the unresolved history is Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort, the ambitious tourism and commercial development conceived during Duke’s administration. What was presented as a landmark investment designed to position Calabar as a regional commercial and tourism hub eventually became associated with mounting financial obligations, infrastructure constraints and questions about whether the original business model was viable.
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The debate has resurfaced with fresh intensity, with Duke arguing that Tinapa had attracted investor interest and international attention but suffered from a lack of continuity after he left office. Imoke, however, has offered a fundamentally different account, arguing that the project inherited by his administration was not a fully functioning commercial ecosystem but an expensive infrastructure whose supporting conditions had not been adequately established.
Speaking on ARISE News, Imoke said he had initially been reluctant to revisit the subject because almost two decades had passed since the events in question. But the renewed criticism, he suggested, made it necessary to explain his side of the story.
For Imoke, the roots of his relationship with Duke go back much further than their years in government. Both men were young when they first crossed paths, and their political partnership emerged from a shared desire to challenge the established political order in Cross River State.
Imoke recalled convening a group of young Cross Riverians to discuss the state’s future. From those conversations emerged an aspiration for a different kind of political leadership, and he eventually concluded that Duke could become the person capable of carrying that vision into government. It was a political gamble.
Duke came from Cross River’s southern senatorial district, and Imoke said there were concerns at the time about whether a candidate from a minority ethnic group could successfully become governor. He rejected that thinking and campaigned vigorously for Duke.
When Duke eventually won, the relationship continued. Imoke later served in the federal government under President Olusegun Obasanjo and eventually left that position to run for governor himself. The transition from one administration to the other was therefore not simply the conventional transfer of power between political rivals. It was the continuation of a political relationship that had once appeared deeply rooted in shared ideas and personal trust. That history makes the eventual disagreement over Tinapa even more striking.
When Imoke assumed office in 2007, he said he inherited a state carrying significant financial obligations. Tinapa, rather than simply being an asset waiting to generate revenue, represented a major financial commitment that had to be serviced while the state was simultaneously expected to fund healthcare, education, infrastructure, salaries and rural development.
His argument is straightforward: the state could not treat tourism projects as ends in themselves when the same public resources were needed to meet basic obligations to citizens.
Imoke said Tinapa was conceived as a free-trade shopping destination and that while impressive buildings had been constructed, the wider ecosystem required to make them commercially successful had not been adequately developed.
The distinction is crucial. A resort can have impressive architecture, hotels, retail spaces and entertainment facilities, yet still struggle as a business if the infrastructure connecting it to its customers, the regulatory framework governing its operations, the tax incentives attracting investors and the commercial partners needed to fill its spaces are missing.
That, Imoke argues, was Tinapa’s fundamental problem. He questioned how the project could realistically have achieved its projected visitor numbers without corresponding investment in transportation infrastructure, airport capacity, port facilities, power supply and the regulatory framework required for a functioning free-trade zone.
In his telling, the challenge was therefore not simply what happened to Tinapa after 2007. The more fundamental question was whether the original model had sufficiently addressed the conditions required for the project to become commercially sustainable in the first place. Imoke also rejected the suggestion that his administration simply walked away from the project.
On the contrary, he said his government continued to invest in and sustain Tinapa, including completing facilities, providing power and finding ways to generate activity around the complex. He cited the completion of the Tinapa hotel and water park, the introduction of an independent power solution, the use of the facility for conferences and government events, and efforts to connect the resort with the wider tourism and business ecosystem.
He also said his administration brought additional activities into Tinapa, including conferences, economic gatherings and entertainment initiatives, in an effort to keep the facility active while confronting the commercial challenges it had inherited. The question of Obudu Mountain Ranch reveals a similar pattern.
Imoke rejected the suggestion that his administration abandoned the tourism destination for political reasons. Instead, he described a facility with enormous tourism potential but substantial operating costs and significant infrastructure challenges.
He recalled the cost of maintaining the cable car, the difficulties surrounding access to the ranch and the need to subsidise transportation in order to keep visitors coming. His administration brought in private-sector management, invested in electricity and supported flights to the destination.
The objective, he explained, was not to dismantle what had been built but to find ways to keep commercially challenging assets functioning while reducing the burden on government.
That approach, he said, reflected a broader philosophy of governance: public projects should serve citizens, but governments must also confront the economic realities attached to those projects. It is a philosophy that Imoke says shaped his entire tenure.
He points to the continuation of initiatives associated with the Duke administration, including Carnival Calabar and the Mountain Race, while arguing that his government expanded several programmes beyond their original scope.
He cites street lighting, urban renewal, rural roads and infrastructure as examples of areas where he believes his administration continued or expanded existing programmes rather than discarding them.
“Government was continuous,” is the principle running through his account. For Imoke, continuity does not mean blindly preserving every project in its original form. It means assessing what has been inherited, determining what can work, adding value where possible and protecting public resources in the process.
That distinction is particularly important in the Tinapa debate because the project was financed substantially through public-sector borrowing and guarantees. Imoke argues that the financial burden meant his administration had little choice but to scrutinise the project’s economics while searching for ways to keep it operational.
He recalled that the state was servicing substantial obligations while attempting to sustain the resort, describing a situation in which the cost of keeping Tinapa alive had to be weighed against the state’s wider responsibilities.
His account also challenges the idea that international investor interest alone could have guaranteed Tinapa’s success. For a project of such scale, he argues, investors needed more than attractive buildings. They needed a predictable regulatory regime, reliable infrastructure, commercial incentives, transportation access and a broader economic environment capable of supporting the business model.
Without those foundations, even an internationally recognised destination could struggle. The Tinapa story, therefore, becomes much larger than the disagreement between two former governors.
It raises a fundamental question about development in Nigeria: What happens when governments build ambitious projects before the economic ecosystem required to sustain them is fully in place?
For Cross River, the question carries particular weight because tourism was never merely an economic policy. It became part of the state’s identity and development strategy.
Duke’s administration demonstrated the power of an ambitious tourism vision. Imoke’s administration confronted the financial and operational realities of maintaining that vision. Between those two phases lies a complicated story of aspiration, expenditure, infrastructure, continuity and political disagreement. And perhaps that is why, nearly 20 years later, Tinapa remains such a powerful symbol.
It represents what Cross River hoped to become, what government can achieve when it thinks beyond the immediate, and what can happen when infrastructure, economics and institutional coordination fail to move at the same pace.
For Imoke, however, the defining measure of his years in office should not be whether every ambitious project inherited from his predecessor achieved its original dream. It should be whether government fulfilled its obligation to the people.
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Looking back, he argues that political office should never become a platform for leaders to simply pursue personal visions. Public office, in his view, is a responsibility to leave a state better than it was found. That philosophy explains why he remains emphatic about continuity.
He points to the projects he says he inherited, sustained and expanded, insisting that his administration did not abandon the development agenda of Cross River but adapted it to the realities it encountered.
Ultimately, history may continue to debate the respective records of Duke and Imoke. But beneath the political disagreement lies a more enduring question about governance: Can a grand vision survive the transition from one administration to another if the financial, institutional and economic foundations beneath it are not strong enough? Tinapa was built as a vision of what Cross River could become.
Nearly two decades later, the debate over what happened to that vision is still unfolding. And with Imoke now offering his fullest explanation of the decisions made during his tenure, the Tinapa story has entered another chapter — one less about the grandeur of the buildings and more about the difficult realities of governing, paying for and sustaining them.
