Tinapa, A $450 million Black Hole For Its Investors

With its futuristic film studios, luxury shops and elevated light railway, Tinapa should be a showcase of Nigerian dynamism, a commercial hub for West Africa raking in millions of dollars.

But 10 years after it opened, the resort in southeast Nigeria is a ghost town and has become a symbol of monumental waste. Its majestic contours and avant-garde domes rise defiantly out of the bush and palm trees.

At the entrance, a giant signboard proclaims: “Tinapa back on track!”.

Apart from a few idle employees, not a soul stirs in the endless aisles of shops and warehouses that should have made the capital of Cross River state, Calabar, famous across Nigeria’s south.

“It’s empty there, we have no clients, it’s like a cemetery,” said one shop assistant in Da Viva, which sells the popular brand of wrapper skirts. “Many have left already,” he added, pointing to shuttered premises.

A huge supermarket still displays clothes, furniture and foreign-made knick-knacks but in virtual darkness: the electricity was cut off some time ago.

Tinapa, with its 80,000 square metres (861,000 square feet) of warehouses and shops, cost $450 million (413 million euros) to build.

But it has become a financial black hole for its backers.