Choice Chelsea Hotel Sad tale of ill-gotten property

The three-storey building has been closed for over four years. Weeds have overgrown. In case of fire outbreak, it will be a sad tale. The fine-looking flowers and exotic plants now battle for life in the midst of bushes.When Daily Trust visited last Thursday, the once multi star best-in-class hospitality facility that hummed like a […]

The three-storey building has been closed for over four years. Weeds have overgrown. In case of fire outbreak, it will be a sad tale. The fine-looking flowers and exotic plants now battle for life in the midst of bushes.
When Daily Trust visited last Thursday, the once multi star best-in-class hospitality facility that hummed like a marketplace, was as quiet and still as a graveyard. Apparently, the place is desolate – nobody gets close to it. The gates are closed and in fetters.  
But the Muhammadu Buhari Way is ever busy: vehicles drive past and pedestrians intermittently pass by bending over as if to ask, “Why is this place like this?” The quietness there obviously scares anyone who gets close.
A taxi driver who parked his cab opposite the hotel having a rest told this reporter that valuable things had been moved out leaving only the structure. He said he knew the property belonged to the former governor of Bayelsa State.
Another man in his 20s sitting under a tree directly opposite the hotel said there is a security man inside. It appeared hard finding any human being on the premises but there was a chair far inside with a piece of clothe hung on its arm. That was the only sign that someone might be hovering around.
Last Wednesday, the Abuja Metropolitan Management Council (AMMC) announced that it would start “intensive clean up of the federal capital city”.
The council said among property to be removed are abandoned “buildings that are in serious state of disrepair and are being used by hoodlums to carry out criminal activities…” it could not be established whether this property will be affected in the clean up exercise.
It was property of former Bayelsa State governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. He was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for diversion and misappropriation of public funds to facilitate acquisition of numerous property. He was said to have paid N1.5 billion on the Chelsea Hotel. It was one of the assets seized from him when the High Court entered judgment in favour of EFCC in 2007.
Chairman of EFCC Ibrahim Lamorde last month told Daily Trust in Abuja that the hotel had long been handed over to the Bayelsa State government upon conclusion of corruption case involving Alamieyeseigha.Bayelsa State govt gives to investor
Efforts to find out why the Bayelsa State government abandoned the hotel after it had been handed over to it by EFCC was not successful. When our correspondent visited the Bayelsa State Hotels and Tourism Development Company Ltd, situated along the Isaac Boro Expressway in the state capital, Yenogoa, the media officer, Mr Samson Tanga said the Managing Director, Dr. Bribena Kelvin was not present.
It was the same story when our correspondent visited the office the second time in the afternoon the same day. However, the media officer disclosed that the hotel was handed over to an investor to manage. He would not give the name of the investor and the time the hotel was handed over to the investor. Phone calls to the Managing Director did not connect.
An Abuja-based estate agent who did not want his name disclosed lamented that the function this property was made to serve is lost. “It was to afford accommodation, office space and shopes. All this is lost.
“It may have about 150 rooms. The cheapest room there should be N20,000. Multiply that by 356 days by the years it has been closed, the loss is in billions of naira.
“It affects the economy. It affects the labour market. People that should have been employed are unemployed,” the estate agent estimated.
The Bayelsa State House of Assembly impeached Alamieyeseigha from office on December 8, 2005 after adopting the report of the seven-man impeachment panel set up by the Chief Justice of Bayelsa State, Emmanuel Igonarwari.
On 26 July 2007 he was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to six charges of making false declaration of assets and 23 charges of money laundering. He was said to have a combined property value worth millions of pound sterling.
Alamieyeseigha was governor of Bayelsa State from May 1999 to December 2005.
His trouble started when he was arrested at Heathrow Airport in September 2005 by the London Metropolitan Police on charges of money laundering.
The Bayelsa State House of Assembly served him Notice of Impeachment on November 22, 2005 for keeping foreign bank accounts while in office contrary to the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999.
Alamieyeseigha, known as Governor General in Ijaw nation was subsequently arrested by EFCC, questioned and charged with money laundering and corruption offences. EFCC won the case, making him forfeit numerous assets to government.
It was reported on March 12, 2013 that the Council of State sitting in Abuja had given him a state pardon.
Following this pardon, what remains unknown is whether the former governor can reclaim the assets he lost to the state.