Swiss Spirit Hotel and Suites in Port-Harcourt
It was only Thursday – two days to the showdown – but hotels in
Port Harcourt were so occupied that visitors who arrived ahead of
Saturday’s national convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are
at the risk of being stranded.
A PREMIUM TIMES survey of both luxury and budget accommodations in the Rivers State capital shows that presidential aspirants have booked virtually all rooms accessible in the metropolis, and many who only arrived between Thursday afternoon and evening have not been able to find anywhere to check into as of 8:50 p.m. Thursday.
Hotels association executives gave PREMIUM TIMES an estimated 520
hotels in Rivers State, with over 80 per cent of them concentrated in
Port Harcourt.
The PDP is holding a national convention on October 6-7 to choose
its presidential candidate at Adokiye Amiesimaka Stadium, about 12
kilometres north of Port Harcourt city centre.
The 12 candidates are: Atiku Abubakar, Ahmed Makarfi, Aminu
Tambuwal, Datti Baba-Ahmed, Attahiru Bafarawa, Sule Lamido, Bukola
Saraki, Sule Lamido, David Mark, Jonah Jang, Kabiru Turaki and Rabi
Kwankwaso. They have all expressed confidence in their individual
abilities to clinch the ticket and face President Muhammadu Buhari as
the main challenger in the general election next February.
Bringing the event to Port Harcourt was fiercely debated by party
leaders within the past two weeks, sparking a major row between Governor
Nyesom Wike and other aspirants. On September 26, the governor insisted
that Port Harcourt is the only venue suitable for the convention,
threatening that any other town or city would not have his support and
would in fact, nudge him into working against the PDP presidential
nominee.
None of the aspirants was willing to openly push back against Mr
Wike following his comment, but on September 28, the governor was
compelled to apologise at a national executive meeting in which it was
decided that the convention would indeed be moved to Port Harcourt,
PREMIUM TIMES reported.
Multiple sources at the meeting told PREMIUM TIMES Mr Wike
regretted his comments and sought a pardon after aspirants protested at
the meeting and other party leaders weighed in with their condemnation.
Still, the development was largely seen as another victory for Mr
Wike, whose influence over PDP affairs has become more pronounced over
anyone else’s, especially following the role he played in getting the
chairman, Uche Secondus, elected last December.
Lodging Frenzy
But as aspirants and their crew flood Port Harcourt, with a huge
presence of journalists and observers, getting a place to stay during
the days of the exercise has become more tasking than most anticipated.
The rumour mill around Port Harcourt says Mr Abubakar pre-booked
most of the rooms, but PREMIUM TIMES could not independently corroborate
this after concerted findings from hoteliers. In fact, many of Mr
Abubakar’s campaign staffers and surrogates were also searching for
accommodation as of 6:00 p.m. on Thursday.
Some of them were later accommodated at the staff quarters of
Intels, a logistics giant in which the former vice-president owned
significant share.
It is difficult to determine the number of hotels paid for per
aspirant. Hoteliers and front desk officers at 18 hotels visited by
PREMIUM TIMES between 3:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Thursday told PREMIUM
TIMES the rooms were paid for by politicians for the convention, but
were reluctant to disclose which campaign issued what cheques.
In some hotels like Swiss Spirit, along the famous Ken Saro-Wiwa
Road in commercial Rumuola neighbourhood, some of the 12 candidates
dealt directly with hotel owners or management rather than front desk
officers or supervisors.
“We do not know who booked the rooms, they did not come to us
to pay, they discussed with our management and paid to them directly,” a staff member at Swiss Spirit told PREMIUM TIMES Friday morning.
Boma Briggs and Roland Ekpa, who live and work in Port Harcourt,
said they have been looking for rooms for their friends coming in from
Abuja and Kano for the convention since Tuesday, but were told there
would be no accommodation from Friday when their friends planned to
arrive in town.
“We have been to everywhere in this same Port Harcourt where we were born and have lived and worked all our lives,” Mr Briggs said outside Echelon Heights Hotel Thursday night. “This one is shocking to us because our friends who must come for this convention may not be able to find a place to stay.”
James Onafowokan, a political consultant, said he went to sleep at a
Methodist Church in D-Line because he was unable to find a hotel since
his flight arrived from Lagos Thursday afternoon.
“I cannot go back to Lagos because what I came here for is very important,” he said. “And I cannot do anything because there is no place to connect my laptop.”
Through The Roof
Some hoteliers are already cashing in on the glut, selling out rooms at increased rates of up to 50 per cent in some cases.
“I have sold two of these rooms for N50,000 today,” a hotel staff member said, pointing towards a N32,000 room on the rates frame. “The amount you see on our official rates no longer applies, we now use our own discretion to accommodate people.”
A staff member at a hotel in G.R.A. said management tweaked its prices from base N12,000 to N18,000 from October 3 to October 8.
“Our N22,000 rooms are now N35,000 and some are even willing to pay N40,000 if we could forcefully check people out for them,” the staff added.
Although it is the commercial centre of Nigeria’s oil-rich
South-South, with the headquarters ofsomr international oil exploration
and servicing firms concentrated here, Port Harcourt hardly has an event
so big finding rooms to sleep even in budget hotels would be so
difficult, said hotelier Eugene Nwauzi.
“This convention coming to Port-Harcourt may be the best thing to
have happened to hotel business around here in a long time,” Mr Nwauzi,
South-South zonal vice president of Federation of Tourism Associations
of Nigeria (FTAN). “We appreciate the governor and others who
contributed to move the convention here, they have been wonderful.”
Mr Nwauzi, who works at Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt’s
equivalent of Transcorp Hilton, said there are over 520 rooms in Rivers
State, with four out of five situated in the capital Port Harcourt.
The hotelier, who said Mr Abubakar did not take the rooms at Hotel
Presidential, said tourism in the state has a greater potential, which
could effectively maximise opportunities for hotels.
“But the electricity sector is the enemy of hotels business, and even other businesses, in Rivers State,” Mr Nwauzi said. “The tariffs they are imposing on us here in Rivers State are too much and illegal.”
“They are forcing us to pay N48.5 per kilowatt while in Lagos
they are paying about N31 or N31 per kilowatt. But everyone will not go
to Lagos to invest,” he said. “Some hotels are paying up 16
million per month in Port Harcourt. This is wrong, this is what is
crippling business in the Niger-Delta.”
A Low-hanging Fruit
Austin Tam George, a former information commissioner, said the
accommodation crisis brought by the convention underscores the lurking
tourism advantage for Port Harcourt.
“This is the first time Rivers State is hosting a political
convention of such magnitude, with many heavyweight presidential
aspirants and thousands of party delegates, observers, and media
correspondents from across the country converging in Port Harcourt,” Mr Tam-George, who resigned from Mr Wike’s cabinet in June 2017, said.
“The hotel accommodation crisis experienced by the visitors
points to a need to develop the long-neglected hospitality and tourism
sector of the state. There is a huge potential for growth there.
“Rivers State also needs a modern mass transit system to
replace the current disorganised and ramshackle fleet of private buses
and taxis. A strategic and sweeping urban renewal plan is needed in Port
Harcourt,” he added.
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