WRITERS’ RESORT SET TO REDEFINE
ABUJA TOURISM LANDSCAPE
By VICTOR NZE
Nestled in-between two scenic hills,
the Mamman Vatsa Writers’ Resort in Mpape could well redefine the tourism
landscape of Abuja before the end of the year.
Spanning over 30 hectares of pure
nature, the resort has all it takes to corner the leisure and adventure tourism
market in not just the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) but also the country, as
it offers much more to meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE)
aspect of tourism as a destination.
Sitting on a location barely 40
minute-drive from the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, and less
than 25 metres from a Nigerian mobile police (Mopol) major facility, the resort
is ideally a one-stop centre for not only literary enthusiasts and scholars who
may come to hibernate, but as well as tourists, extreme sport seekers, for whom
every part of the landscape represents a thrill.
Owned by the Association of Nigerian
Authors (ANA), the resort excites members in terms of the huge savings on
accommodation and conferencing running costs incurred annually on account of
the group’s national programmes, this is also the private sector is taking
sneak previews on the project’s untapped goldmine.
This is so because it was not up
until two years ago in 2017 that active construction commenced on the site as a
broadened vision by members informed the need to mine the location’s many
opportunities, which included self-sustainability, among others.
Positioned to house the
association’s national headquarters complex, the resort has designs for
residency chalets, a 500-Seater auditorium, e-libraries, ANA state offices,
archives, depositories and many other facilities in the direction.
However, as a tourist resort, the
multi-purpose facility boasts of a 50-room key hotel, a three-storey coliseum
and amphi-theatre, shopping malls, banking halls, its own dedicated power
supply substation complete with green areas, as well as hiking ranges situated
in the surrounding hills.
The steam in members to actualize
this dream of a befitting resort for writers is also strengthened by the drive
to prominently play a major role in filling the vacuum created by the void in
adventure tourism in the country.
Speaking when the group hosted a
project media tour/press conference, last Saturday, in Mpape, President of ANA,
Mallam Abdullahi Denja, who first pointed out that before 2017 there was no
meaningful activity on the site, said the expedited action by his executive
council towards realizing the facility was to give members a ‘resort to be
proud of, after many years of battling activities of land grabbers at the
courts.’
For Denja, who also doubles as a
senior director at the National Council for Arts and Craft (NCAC),the resort is
purely and essentially a business venture which will be operated by a third
party to ensure professionalism and guarantee investors of good returns on
investment (ROIs).
“It was the dream of this present
National Executive Council of ANA initially to complete this project in its
entirety, at least the first phase or commission some structures into full
functionality. It was a commissioning ceremony we had thought we would do
before we quit office in November, 2019.
“Based on this and in agreement with the
developer, we set out well thought-out developmental timelines in black and
white, which the vagaries of climate, Abuja land development bureaucracy,
engineering hitches and general harsh economic environment have made impossible
to meet,” Denja said.
Continuing, Denja said: “We have a
renewable MoU with the developer under a build, operate and transfer (BOT)
arrangement. So after construction, the developer is in-charge of negotiations
with investors and other private interests to run the facility. ANA is not the
operator. It’s a business arrangement which will be run as such.”
Secured back in 1985 through the
support of the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Major General
Mamman Jiya Vatsa (now late), actual development of the site took off around
August 2017 with a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ANA and an indigenous
firm, the Korlie Mobs Ventures Limited (KMVL) in 2013 to develop a 5-hectare
space for a national headquarters and other structures for the association.
Speaking exclusively, boss of KMVL,
Col. K. K Shaw (rtd) confirmed the deal saying the entire project should have
been delivered by now as agreed under the MoU, but explained that climate
issues have necessitated adjustments in the delivery date for the project.
According to him, logistics
drawbacks occasioned by inclement weather conditions which forced construction
work to halt for weeks on the site, was largely responsible, this is as he
assured that all the challenges had now been sorted out, as he fixed a December
date for the delivery of the major conference centre, while other projects on
the site ‘will come on stream in 12 months’ time.’
Shaw, a former Managing Director of
the Nigeria Army Housing Scheme, who said his company has been in operation
since 1995 having acquired vast experiences in handling similar projects across
the country, admitted that the writers’ resort project was his most challenging
on account of the terrain.
“We have prosecuted a lot of
difficult projects but this writers’ resort will amount as the most difficult
in handling not in terms of funding, but rather topography,” Shaw said.
The project commissioning, it would
be recalled, has once been postponed.
Indeed, a difficult topography and
terrain may pose challenges to builders, it however brings a smile to the faces
of adventure tourists and extreme sport seekers, who expect to exploit the
thrill and challenge of hiking and trekking at the resort to the maximum, which
is why the writers’ resort is expected to be boom to tourism.
“I think this place is going to be
the pride of all literalists in Nigeria. I’m not physically strong as that but
I have personally taken it upon myself to do this tour to see for myself this
expansive structure. There was nothing here before now but I’m really proud of
this. We sincerely have to finish this, and leave something behind for future
generations,” said United States-based writer, Dr Adewunmi Oluwadiya, who was
part of the tour.
The story of the ANA land, according
to Denja, ‘has been a tale of flight away from here, hotly pursued by maximum
rulers; it has been a story of lack of capacity, failed promises, betrayals,
revocation, re-allocation, long-drawn litigations and brazen trespasses.’
“It will interest you to know that what we
have left today from the original 60.9 hectares is about 36.9 hectares. The
story between the first and the second figures is also a well- known one in our
association, and if you had look around very well, you may have caught some
glimpses of it,” Denja explained the shrinking of the project site.
However, tourism experts in the
country have remained upbeat that even on its present 36 hectares, the resort
should comfortably corner the tourism industry leveraging on its
well-documented pluses, even as they also express optimism that a 50-room key
added to the Abuja hotel rooms will still positively make an impact, against
the backdrop of the fact that the facility is expandable from the 5-hectre
space occupied.
Furthermore, adding more rooms to
the Abuja and by extension the Nigerian hospitality market appears to be
profitable now against the backdrop of the sustained growth in revenues
declared by hotels in the continent.
For the experts, now is the best
time to invest in hospitality and tourism in Africa.
A recent report by the STR Group
showed that revenue per available room (RevPAR), the key hotel industry
performance metric in Nigeria, as well as other top tourism destination in
Africa, has grown for 87 consecutive months amid a period of low supply growth
and strong demand.
According to STR director Thomas
Emanuel, in his presentation at the recently-concluded Africa Hotel Investment
Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, using a 12-month moving average and
U.S. dollar constant currency to remove the impact of currency fluctuations,
Africa’s RevPAR was up 6.4 per cent to US$67.10 as of August 2019. Average
daily rate (ADR), up 3.3 per cent, has had more of an impact on that growth
than occupancy (+2.9).
“Africa has shown one of the better
supply and demand balances on a global level. The continent’s industry
continues to expand alongside rapidly developing economies and infrastructure,
so there is definite investment opportunity even though finding the right
opportunity is challenging. The prospects of greater supply growth as well as
political and economic instability can also create difficult situations for the
region’s hotel industry moving forward,” Emanuel said.
Other highlights from Emanuel’s
presentation include that: Despite its massive geographical area, Africa has
just roughly 5,000 hotels with only four countries in Africa offering more than
50,000 rooms, which include; Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa.
Denja, therefore, used the
opportunity of the media tour to woo investors into the project, explaining
that good ROI is awaits them.
