Competent insider sources in Abuja and Calabar, the Cross River State capital have tipped www.calitown.com about hidden from the public moves by the Cross River State government to lobby for the return of the Super Eagles, Nigeria’s senior men’s football team, to the U.J.Esuene Stadium, Calabar.
While some top officials of the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, are thought to have been contacted and will be lobbied to get the Eagles football matches back to Calabar, it appears the state of the stadium may dash the hopes of several residents of the state hoping to watch live Super Eagles’ matches at the stadium.
“The U.J.Esuene main bowl has a seating capacity of 10,000. The main bowl has to be regrassed and brought up to date; right now it is in shambles and no national team can play there”, one source maintains.
Investigations by www.calitown.com also showed that several construction works at the stadium have either been abandoned or are the subject of on-going litigation. Work on the swimming pool and the indoor sports hall has stalled because of litigation, but like several other persons that we spoke with, we are yet to see reason why work on the 50-room hostel in the stadium has been abandoned after a whooping N69 million has been sunk in.
We gathered further that the N69 million remitted, took work at the hostel to 64%. Government appears not concerned with paying up a balance thought to be around N30 million to complete work at the hostel. “The rooms are all ensuite and if government completes it, we will have another revenue spinner on our hand. We can have people stay there during festive periods for an agreeable fee to help reduce the cost of governance and help too in the camping of our athletes”, we were told.
At the Accountant-General’s Office, Calabar, our source there said he overhead the A.G pleading with a man, he suspects to be a contractor, to give them a little time to sort things out. The contractor is believed to have told the A.G that his last payment was in July, 2018.