(Special Report) EFCC’s seized Alamiesigha’s Chelsea Hotel rotting away in Abuja
A new report released Thursday in Abuja, by Business Hilights Intelligence Unit (BHIU), an independent business research arm of Business Hilights Media Group, has revealed colossal loss on the side of the Federal Government for not running seized Chelsea Hotel as business, auction or concession it for more than ten after seizure.
The rotting property is located immediately you descend from the ramp in front of Coscharis Motors to link Muhammadu Buhari Way in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
According to BHIU, “2019 will clock it a decade IU, ”
n’ after seizure on ggovernment for not running seized hotel or auction it for no the te, rather abandoned and lifeleafter the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) handed over the N2.8billion Chelsea Hotel to the government of Bayelsa State, the hitherto money-spinning edifice is rotting away in Abuja.
The hotel was seized from the state’s first civilian governor, the late Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, following a Lagos Federal High Court order for forfeiture in 2007 after the ex-governor was sentenced for corruption.
Besides the hotel, the EFCC sold other Alamieyeseigha assets in Nigeria and realised N3, 128, 230, 294.83billion; $441,000; E7, 000 and £2,000.
The money was remitted to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in accordance with the law, for onward delivery to the state government as ordered by the court.
Fact check revealed further that former EFCC Chairman Mrs. Farida Waziri had on September 7, 2009 handed over the hotel to ex-Governor Timipreye Sylva in Abuja.
Analysts’ had expected that under the administration of Sylva, the recovered edifice would be a source of revenue for the state.
However, 10 years on, the hotel has become a haven for miscreants, men of the underworld, rodents and reptiles.
Besides, neighbours report that shady activities are being perpetrated at the abandoned hotel, which poses danger to some shopping malls and banks in the Central Business District of Abuja, even as street criminals seemed to have stripped the hotel of vital materials, which has no security up till now.
In 2016, a report by one of the national daily quoted EFCC as saying that “As at the time we handed over the hotel, in 2009, the asset was worth N2.8billion. We returned the hotel to Bayelsa State with another asset at No. 2 Marscibit Street, Off Aminu Kano Crescent Wuse II Abuja which was valued at N210million.
“We took a step further by instructing Diya Fatimilehin and Co., former managers of the hotel to provide the state with detailed inventory of assets of the hotel.”
“It is unfortunate that nothing has been done in the last seven years. The land where the hotel is sited attracts either up to N800million to N1billion in Abuja. Yet the asset is allowed to lie fallow
To the source, the fate of the once throwing hotel is a typical case of how the anti-graft war is being “frustrated and rendered meaningless”
Continuing, the aggrieved anti-graft official decried that “Even as a former Chairman of EFCC, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu worked day and night to bring Alamieyeseigha to justice, the efforts have come to naught.”
