Looking at the ruins of Durbar Hotel, Kaduna, it hurts to recall that it was one of the best hospitality facilities in the region. It sprang up in 1977 inspired by the ambitious Festival of Art and Culture (Festac) of that year. Created, as it were, in the image of that grand feast, the hotel was built to accommodate Festac’s high-profile horse riders. But soon after, its classy facilities and services caught the fancy of other lodgers with taste, attracting dignitaries even from overseas. Naturally, it was named Durbar Hotel, after the horse race.
Located strategically along the ever-busy Independence Way in the heart of Kaduna, the Kaduna State capital, Durbar was clearly the best hospitality outfit in the state. It has since become a shadow of itself, providing shelter not for celebrities but reptiles and other creatures. Part of the premises has been converted to a motor park for visitors to the headquarters of the Nigeria Air Force training school.
The Nation gathered that the Obasanjo military regime built the edifice occupying a land area of about 400 by 600 sq. meters in two months at the cost of 100,000 pounds. It was built at the same time as the FESTAC Hotel, Lagos, which was called Durbar Hotel before it changed name. The hotel is now a complete wreck.
Investigation revealed that after the national fiesta, Durbar Hotel was handed over to Arewa Hotel, a conglomerate of New Nigeria Development Company (NNDC) to manage. The hotel functioned well during the military era, providing first-class accommodation for government’s guests and others up till the Third Republic when it was sold under the government’s privatisation and commerciali-sation plan of the Babangida regime.
The late Kano-based business mogul and airline operator, Alhaji Muhammadu Adamu Dankabo bought the hotel in 1992 from the Technical Committee on Privat-isation and Commercialisation (TCPC) led by the late Dr. Hamza Zayyad. Kabo, as he is popularly called, paid N90 million for the hotel. Some say he did his best to put the hotel on the road to success. Still, Kabo’s efforts fell far short. Sources close to his family told The Nation that Kabo was to sell 40 per cent shares of the property to the public with over 70 shareholders subscribing.
He was again to sell his shares, in 1996, to Nasimatume Investment Limited which took over management of the hotel in 1997 after the deed of transfer was completed between Kabo Holdings and Nasimatume. Mohammed Abacha, chair of the company and son of General Sani Abacha, who many believed owned Nasimatume, engaged a management team to run the hotel.
At its closure, the federal government moved to recover the hotel from Nasimatume. Many people saw the move as part of the Obasanjo administration’s onslaught against the Abacha family. The government sited irregularities in the sale of the property by the TCPC. They also claimed that Kabo Holdings which bought it from the government only paid N27 million out of the N90 million while the balance of N63 million was obtained from the Federal Ministry of Defence and passed through Kabo Holdings.
In a suit they filed, the government and the BPE alleged that Kabo Holdings or Nasimatume Investments didn’t follow due process in buying the hotel, arguing, among others, that Abacha’s company was not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission when the transfer was made, while Kabo Holdings didn’t inform the BPE before transferring its shares to Nasimatume.
Hoodlums have since stripped the hotel of all valuables, including doors, window blinds, water cisterns, toilet facilities, curtains, aluminum roofing sheets, generators and others. Who sent them, if any did, is hard to tell.
After the vandalism, the Abacha family filed a law suit in Kaduna challenging the seizure of the hotel. In 2005, it was determined that the BPE and the government could not prove that the sale and transfer of the shares didn’t follow due process. The judgement gave a sigh of relief to workers of the hotel who hoped that all the controversy was over. Nothing happened.
Alhaji Tajudeen Tijjani Ajibade, a veteran journalist who covered the commissioning of the Hotel and FESTAC ’77, said the Durbar story is an irony. He said, “There was nobody in Nigeria who was somebody at that time, from the FESTAC time to the First and Second Republics, Buhari and Babangida regimes that didn’t know about Durbar Hotel. It was at Durbar Hotel that I first interviewed the late Chief M.K.O Abiola when he came to Kaduna with his children. It was also at Durbar Hotel I met the late Chief Toye Coker, the Agboko of Egbaland, a lawyer. It was also here I met the late Ahmed Kusamotu who later became the national chairman, National Republican Convention (NRC). It was at Durbar Hotel we met ministers coming in; in fact, it was in this same place I met the late Group Captain Tony Ikhazobor. These are the people we met.
“I’m talking about the 70s and 80s. So, for Durbar Hotel to have become like that is unfortunate. It was in Durbar I met the late Inusa Oshiogwemoh even though we first met when we were young men at sea. He was a sailor and I was a maintenance officer there. At that time, they took us to many places. When he came back to Durbar Hotel he became the Chief Engineer.
“It was in Durbar Hotel in the Second Republic that Chief Obafemi Awolowo addressed the largest press conference. The same Durbar you’re seeing was where Alhaji Shehu Shagari was picked as the presidential candidate of National Party of Nigeria (NPN). So, we know Durbar, in this same hotel Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe met with the late Isaiah Balat and Madaki Ali to bring about the NPP. ”
He said further that everything that was going on in Kaduna, the North and indeed Nigeria politically at that time after the military left, took place in Durbar Hotel.
“It’s a sad memory when people like us now drive past Durbar Hotel to see it like this]; I laugh to remember that once upon a time there was a place called Durbar Hotel. Today I’m still alive to see Durbar in this deplorable condition and I weep for my country. We started the story of this one buying it today and that one buying it tomorrow. Suddenly, Durbar Hotel started losing the glamour it used to be known for. At the end of the day, the case of who owns Durbar went to court and up till today, nobody has come out to tell us whether Federal Government owns Durbar Hotel or not.”
When The Nation visited the abandoned property, it was discovered that the structure was still solid, even though it has been abandoned for several years. A security guard overseeing the place claimed that strangers are not allowed into the premises. The guard who identified himself as Amos said he was employed by the Abacha family to watch over the premises, pointing out that he has been doing that for about 10 years now. Even though Amos claimed to know very little about the glorious days of Durbar Hotel, he said it was the owner of Kabo Air that bought the property from the Federal Government and after finding it difficult to manage, approached the sitting government to take back the property from him at 50 per cent of its cost.
According to him, “the Federal Government then refused to take it back. They asked him to look for a buyer on his own. That was how Alhaji Ibrahim Abacha got wind of the development and bought the property from Dan Kabo. But, along the line, the Federal Government took the Abachas to court, claiming ownership of the property. All that happened after the death of Dan Kabo, Ibrahim Abacha and General Sani Abacha. But the court later stopped the Federal Government from taking the property. So, as it is now, this hotel is Abacha family’s property”.
Amos said there was once a sign in the past that it would be resuscitated, but it never happened.
He based his opinion on the fact that a property manager office is being erected at a corner of the hotel premises. He also claimed that the presence of security guards inside the premises has prevented hoodlums from converting it to their hideout.
Speaking to The Nation on the phone, Mr Atabo, a lawyer for the Abacha family, said that his client won the case, adding that the government later appealed it.
From a facility of choice in the 70s and 80s to a controversial investment item, Durbar Hotel, which once lifted people’s spirits has been a persistent source of heartache.
