We can authoritatively reveal that the three power generating sets in the U.J.Esuene stadium, Calabar, have in the last nine months received no attention, going into the events that were billed to hold in the stadium as part of the Calabar Carnival offering.
While yesterday’s planned musical performances by Nigerian act, Iyanya and co was a no show, available facts dug up by www.calitown.com show that Lilleker, the company that services the generators are owed a backlog of maintenance fees by the state government. It was further revealed that while a servicing bill for the generators had been forwarded to state governor, Ben Ayade, the bill as contained in a memo forwarded to Ayade, was not acted on, prompting Lilleker’s abandoning act.
Ken Aklah, Special Adviser, Events Management to Gov. Ayade, when contacted by www.calitown.com insisted that he had to personally intervene in the stadium to ensure that the generators were brought back to life. “Diesel was supplied after my intervention under an arrangement that we will pay after delivery and considering too that it was a public holiday. Unfortunately, when the diesel got to the stadium, the Lilleker engineers said the quality was not good and officials of the Cross River State Sports Commission on ground, insisted that we get supplies from the NNPC filling station on the highway. When that was finally achieved and delivered, the engineers had left the stadium.” Asked to inform on why the generators have not been serviced in the last nine months, Aklah declined comments and referred us to the state power ministry. No official from that ministry was available for comments at press time.
But stakeholder sources maintain that “those who Ayade has put in charge of planning this festival know little or nothing about how this festival has over the years been put together and they don’t want to learn. Monies have been disbursed and one person is taking charge of everything and propagating blunders that have taken the shine away. Shouldn’t the Sports Commission be in charge of getting diesel from wherever and maintaining the generators? Why should that function be performed by someone not charged with stadium related functions? Look at Ayade, he has more than 3,000 appointees, how many of them were at the dark stadium yesterday for the botched musical show? We are in a fix and platforms like www.calitown.com must spearhead an information revolution that should ideally free our state from this vice-like grip of several selfish persons”, one source lamented.
In the course of our investigation, we also learnt that Cross River-born musician, Sunny Neji who over the years has been instrumental in bringing A-list artists for the Calabar Festival has been shut out while local artists who normally are offered a platform to showcase their talents for a fee, have been openly ignored. Meanwhile, we were reliably informed that Davido, Flavour and others, billed to perform yesterday at the botched show at the stadium, were unable to make it to Calabar because of untidy travel plans. They will however perform hopefully on the 29th of December, 2017.
Quiet unfortunate,formally it was läck of fire fighting vehicles,now is generators ,what is next?