It has emerged that authorities responsible for maintaining edifices in Cross River State, have seemingly elected to ignore what has come to be known as Okoi Arikpo House, a multi-purpose high rise building in the heart of Calabar, that ironically houses also, the state’s Tourism Commission and a commercial bank, calitown.com can reveal.
The building, situated on the very busy and strategic Calabar Road, in Calabar, CRS, was named after late frontline statesman and First Republic politician, Okoi Arikpo Egede, after the initial occupant of the building, the Mercantile Bank of Nigeria, was liquidated. One source spoken insists that, “the CRS government is very unfair to sit back and watch a building named after Nigeria’s longest serving Minister of Extrernal Affairs, and one of Cross River origin, defaced effortlessly with no response on her part. How do we immortalise our heroes past?”, the source asked.
Perhaps to understand better what calitown.com is pointing to, at the top of the building’s face, where “OKOI ARIKPO HOUSE” use to be boldly inscribed, the letters “OKOI” are gone, as are the first three letters of the word, “ARIKPO”, leaving the ugly sign, “KPO HOUSE”, hanging on the building. Another source who reacted to the situation told calitown.com that, “for those in-charge of fixing that eye sore, it can remain unattended to provided the other sign on the side of the building, advertising Guinness and giving them money that we never see, remains”. It is an indictment of authorities whose responsibility it is to maintain buildings in the state like this one.
“It is laughabe that this building houses the Tourism Bureau, which has in itself failed to see that before it can market the state, it must first market herself properly. Since it cannot appropriately label the building that houses her, it is a clear indication that it has severally marketed our tourism potentials poorly”, another source concluded. Attempts to speak to a few government officials on the issue, proved abortive.
