From Godfrey Agboeze
It is very timely and good that the Enugu State Government has cleared the air on the rumours making rounds and fuelled by the oppositions' social media purveyors of fake news that the Presidential Hotel Enugu has been put up for sale by the state government. In its public statement,
the Enugu State Government dismissed reports that it has put up the Hotel Presidential for sale, stressing that the hotel will never be sold.
The government, in a statement by the Commissioner for Information and Communication, Aka Eze Aka, said it only gave the Enugu State Housing Development Corporation (ESHDC) approval to take over an undeveloped part of the premises to raise funds for public-oriented infrastructural development projects.
"The purported sale of Hotel Presidential is not true. Contrary to the reports, the government is in the process of partnering with private sector investors to restore the hotel to its glory as the premier three-star hotel East of the Niger.
"The government only gave approval for the ESHDC to sell an undeveloped area of the hotel lying fallow for more than five decades without adding any value to the hotel.
"It should be stressed that the present landmass of the hotel exceeds the minimum acreage for a three-star hotel.
"Government has decided as a matter of policy to dispose of moribund and unusable assets at the current market values and deploy the proceeds to critical infrastructure and housing projects beneficial to the masses. The empty plots at Hotel Presidential are among such disposable assets, and others will be made known to the general public subsequently."
"But for the avoidance of doubt, Hotel Presidential has not been sold and will never be sold," the Commissioner stated.
The Information Commissioner said the government had been inundated with credible security reports pointing to the use of the undeveloped area now marked for sale as a hideout for criminals, adding that a shrine for initiation of cultists was also recently discovered there.
There is no doubt that with the above lucid explanations and clarifications by the Enugu State Government on the issue, the fifth columnists and meddlesome interlopers, who usually find joy and happiness in peddling false, inciting and malicious information, news and articles against Governor Peter Ndubuisi Mbah government's policies, programmes and projects in the name of opposition politics and criticisms to bury their heads in shame.
In case, these armchair critics and social media mountebanks have forgotten, both the Hotel Presidential and the empty plots adjacent to it that were approved for ESHDC to sell by the state government belong to the state government, hence the state government has the constitutional powers and rights to take decisions about it.
With the shocking disclosure by the Enugu State Government that the bushy empty plots have for long became safe abode and hideouts for criminals and cultists and shrines they use for initiations and other heinous activities, why were social media busy bodies and ignoramuses raising false alarm over Enugu State government's genuine, transparent and sincere move to sanitise and develop empty plots there? Are these alarmists and scaremongers aware of the presence of two powerful shrines there that those clearing the bushy place are scared of removing without appeasing them?
Of what gain would it serve to Enugu State Government and people of Enugu State to leave the empty plots fallow, unoccupied and unattended, only to be serving as criminal hideouts?
From the government's explanations, the empty plots in question have nothing to do with the Presidential Hotel. I am quite aware that there is no way the state government can sell the Presidential Hotel taking into consideration its prominent place in the state and the legal encumbrances on it that arose from the concessions entered by Sullivan Chime's administration that went awry and has remained a subject of litigation for a while now.
Just as promised and assured by the Enugu State Government that the hotel will be revived, it is certain that this would be done immediately the legal encumbrances is removed totally.
