A year after the luxury Sunborn Yacht Hotel berthed at the Lagos Marina, it sits in complete disrepair on the quay of the Army Officer's Mess Headquarters, a mockery of what it was a year ago when it was received in Lagos.
The sparkling white paint of the vessel has faded into whitish-brown, while its lower part has started to rust away. Most of the windows on the yacht are broken, letting in the elements.An attempt to cover the damaged windows with polymer has been inadequate. Large chunks of the material have been torn to shreds by the lagoon's brisk breeze. Worse, the hotel has not operated since it arrived in Lagos.
But, Sunborn Yacht Hotel, which won the Best Hotel award in the Food and Drink category in the United Kingdom for 2005 and 2006, was never intended to suffer this unfortunate fate. In fact, the yacht was one of the iconic features of the London hospitality industry. Popularly referred to as the "Pride of London", it is the world's first custom built yacht hotel. The Sunborn Yacht Hotel was a major tourist attraction in London. A night in the floating hotel for a single room came with a starting price of £300 approximately N75,000. Estimated to cost about N4.4 billion, the floating hotel has 105 suites.
At the time he welcomed the yatch to the Lagos Marina, Tokunbo Afikuyomi, the Commissioner for Tourism and Inter-governmental Affairs, said the hotel "will be the first of its kind in Africa and it would put us in the league of the first five major cities of the world with similar hospitable facilities and tourism earnings capabilities." The hopes were that the floating hotel would revive the tourism sector in Lagos State. Mr. Afikuyomi claimed that the hotel will put Lagos on the same pedestal as major tourist destinations like Paris, New York, Barcelona, and Helsinki. He described the transfer of the hotel from the United Kingdom to Lagos as a significant achievement for Mr. Fashola.
Mr. Afikuyomi, boasted that winning the bid for the yacht, over the cities of Dubai and Doha, is a reflection of the "combination of talents, assets, resources and potentials" of the state government and private sector.
Twelve months on, however, the earlier promise of the yatch hotel has not materialised. Instead, what Mr. Afikuyomi seems to have managed to do is trigger what may become the worst public relations challenge for the administration of Babatunde Fashola, the governor of Lagos state.
Shrouded in corruption
As if this is not bad enough, controversy now seems to dog the yacht, with question marks over its ownership and the role the Lagos State government played. First, the role of the Lagos State government and in particular its commissioner for tourism in the deal is hazy. The statement credited to the commissioner of tourism, Mr. Afikuyomi is that the state government's involvement in the purchase of the yacht is limited to facilitating the deal and the provision of land for the onshore facilities.
In fact, Lagos State government officials deny putting state funds in the deal."We were not involved in any way beyond providing an enabling environment for the yacht's arrival," said Opeyemi Bamidele, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy. "What we did was just to provide logistics that geared towards the general development of tourism in Lagos State and this we would do for any other organisation as long as it is for the state's development."
But available information suggests that the Mr.Afikuyomi is involved in a much deeper capacity than the public is meant to believe. This fact was even made more evident when Demola Akanbi, a director of Multi-Purpose Infrastructural Development Company (MIDC), the company that facilitated the yacht deal said in a chat that he needed to get the permission of the commissioner before he could answer questions put across to him.
However, Emmanuel Obire, the chief executive officer of MIDC, who acknowledged that the yacht is going through a difficult phase, blamed the hotel's woes on the financier of the project, Diamond Capital, a subsiadiary of Diamond Bank. He accussed the company of planning to hijack the yacht hotel.
"We have done everything we need to do," he said. "Diamond Bank financed the acquisition of the yacht on behalf of the Lagos State government. The bank couldn't come up with the necessary funds to commence the work on the boat, and the necessary onshore infrastructure," Mr. Obire added.
According to Mr. Obire, Diamond Bank is hatching a clandestine plan to take over the boat and the land infrastructure. He said the bank is engaged in what he termed "delay tactics" by making promises of providing funds. A promise he said the bank never intended to keep. The plot to claim ownership according to Mr. Obire, came to light after nine months of empty promises, when the bank tried to claim ownership of the vessel through the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Loneseed, formed to acquire the loan for the purchase of the hotel.
"Diamond Capital is a fraud" a visibly angry Mr. Obire said. Dismissing the possibility of any legal suit on the part of the bank to acquire the yacht from the MIDC, Mr. Obire explained that because the foundation of the deal is based on a lot of irregularities, the bank wouldn't dare to wash its dirty linen outside. In saying this, Mr. Obire seemed to be admitting that he was part of a business deal that was less than kosher.He then went on to admit they did do somethings that were boderline. Mr. Obire also said that the loan cannot be traced to his company because it was signed before the company was formed. He said Diamond Bank is demanding N3 billion equity in the hotel, apart from interest for the 22million euro loan it gave. This, he claimed, was never a part of the deal. Mr. Obire threatened to go public with some dirty dealings in the bank, if it remains adamant.
The MIDC boss went on to discuss the poor state of the yacht saying that most of the disrepair was caused by the high tide in the Naval Dry Dock where the boat had been taken for repairs. He added that repair work has commenced on the yacht to put it in perfect shape and that the repairs will be concluded in two weeks time.
"We have three experts from Finland to fix the leaking roof. We are going to begin the dry run of the boat in November." Mr. Obire stated while promising that by December the yacht will be operational again.
Diamond Bank declined to comment when approached. Malachy Agbo of the corporate communications department stated that the bank does not discuss its transactions with its clients.
Who owns the yacht?
Designed by Lasse Heikkinen, a Finnish ship architectural company, the Sunborn was bought from its former owners Sunborn International, Finland. Before it was brought to Lagos, the yacht was reportedly taken to Brazil for refurbishing for an undisclosed amount. Since the yacht was built without an engine of its own, it has to be towed to whatever destination it is to be taken to. To convey the Sunborn Yacht Hotel, the services of Dockwise Yacht Transport (DYT), a yacht logistics company was sought for N80 million.
Even though the ownership of the yacht remains shrouded in secrecy, it is clear Mr. Afikuyomi, played a pivotal role in the deal and may be able to shed light on the ownership issue but he was not available to speak. Mr. Afikuyomi became enamoured with the hotel after celebrating his 40th birthday there in December 2003. That experience was what triggered the deal that brought the Sunborn yacht to the Lagos Marina.
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