Jonathan Accuses Successors of Letting Bayelsa Dreams Decay — Best Western Plus Opens

Former President Jonathan blasts abandonment of Bayelsa hotel projects as Best Western Plus opens, exposing chronic discontinuity in state development.

Atlantic Post

October 17, 2025

4–6 minutes

AMAA, Bayelsa State, Best Western Plus, Douye Diri, Goodluck Jonathan, Governance, Infrastructure, Public Policy, Tourism, Tower Hotel

…Best Western Opens as a Symbol of What Might Have Been

Former President Goodluck Jonathan attended the grand opening of the Best Western Plus at the Oxbow Lake in Yenagoa. He used the opportunity to deliver a stinging rebuke of political short sightedness in Bayelsa State.

The former governor turned president accused successive administrations of allowing projects he initiated to stall. He argued that many projects were abandoned. The result is waste. There is also a lost opportunity and a reputational cost to the state.

His remarks were delivered at the hotel inauguration. They are a blunt reminder that a single ribbon cutting can’t erase a decade of unfinished civic ambition.

Jonathan addressed the gathering. He mentioned that his administration had seeded the hospitality sector with loans. These loans ranged from N10 million to N15 million for local hoteliers. They had awarded contracts for three major hotels. These included the so-called Tower Hotel and two three-star properties.

He said those initiatives were never followed through. Borrowers did not repay the state backed loans. This allowed the momentum to die. Those are not small details. If the loans had been managed and the hotels completed, Yenagoa have had the critical bed stock needed. This would have anchored events like the Africa Movie Academy Awards, which the city has hosted in the past.

There is veracity to the former president’s claim that Yenagoa once struggled to house international visitors. AMAA, the continent’s marquee film awards, was launched in Yenagoa in 2005 and returned there several times thereafter.

Organisers and guests have historically had to seek suitable accommodation in nearby urban centres. This situation illustrates how infrastructure gaps blunt cultural and tourism potential.

The AMAA archive and sector reporting show that the awards were a strategic vehicle for putting Yenagoa on the map. Nonetheless, accommodation shortages repeatedly undercut those efforts.

The arrival of Best Western Plus is therefore cause for optimism. Private capital, not public procurement, brought a world recognised brand to the state. It features modern rooms, conference facilities, and a lakeside setting. This development finally gives Yenagoa the product the city has long lacked.

Governor Douye Diri publicly praised the investor Dr Harcourt Adukeh. He urged Bayelsans to replicate such private commitment to the state’s economic growth. But the celebration should not obscure uncomfortable questions. We need to ask about the role of the state in nurturing or neglecting long-term projects.

This episode fits a wider pattern of political discontinuity that plagues many Nigerian states. When administrations change, projects suffer for three reasons.

First, tendering and contracting often show patronage and political mobilisation rather than durable delivery mechanisms.

Second, institutional memory is weak. Successors often treat predecessor projects as the other party’s legacy rather than a civic asset to be completed.

Third, financial instruments used to support local actors include loans, subsidies, and counterpart funding. These commonly lack enforceable repayment clauses. They also lack performance clauses. The result is a treadmill of starts and stops that absorb public resources without producing sustainable outcomes.

The Tower Hotel is instructive. It is a moniker that recurs in local reportage. It serves as an emblem of promise turned to scaffolding. Local press and investigative pieces describe it as a once ambitious five star concept. The concept halted at varying stages of completion. This occurred over different administrations. The site has become shorthand for grand projects that fall between political administrations.

To ensure Bayelsa gains lasting economic benefits from Best Western’s arrival, policymakers must tackle several practical reforms.

First, legislate continuity. A project registry and statutory handover protocol are essential. They would need incoming administrations to publish completion plans and budgets for inherited projects within 90 days.

Second, professionalise public procurement. Contracts should be awarded with bond and escrow mechanisms that protect project cashflow from political interference.

Third, crowd in private finance through matching grants conditioned on verifiable milestones.

Fourth, strengthen recovery mechanisms for state loans to private operators so that successful upgrades recycle capital back into the sector.

These are not radical ideas. They are the very governance tools used in jurisdictions where public and private investment in tourism produce measurable returns.

There is an ironies worth underscoring. Bayelsa is unique for several attractions. These include the mangrove creeks, the culture of the Niger Delta, and the legacy of events like AMAA. They gain value only when they are matched with reliable hospitality infrastructure.

A global hotel brand can raise standards and expectations overnight. But systemically closing the gap will take more than another hotel opening.

It will need political leaders who see themselves as stewards. They should not be successors who flatten their predecessor’s work to make way for new patronage.

As Jonathan departed the podium he commended the Best Western management for realising a vision he had promoted years earlier. He is right to celebrate the hotel as a vindication of that strategy. Yet celebration must be married to a sober reform agenda if Bayelsa is to avoid recycling the same disappointments.

The new beds at the Oxbow Lake may draw international guests this season. The harder test will be whether the state learns to protect and finish the next Tower. The next public investment must be completed. This way, the economy, not the headline, is the thing that benefits.