Rear Admiral Geoffrey Yanga is a retired Naval Officer from Sabagreia in Kolokuma Opokuma Local Government of Bayelsa State. In this interview with PAULINE ONYIBE he says tourism should be developed to prevent monocultural economy.
What is happening to Lake Effi? Two years later, nothing seems to be happening at the lake. Why?
Number one is the will to do it. Number two is ignorance. People don’t know the value of Tourism. Everybody is pursuing oil money and SSA Tourism; everybody is pursuing money that comes from the government in terms of allowances and so, I will attribute it to ignorance even the political leaders don’t appreciate tourism sites. Go to Obudu, now they have run it down. The Mambella in Plataea, fantastic place but the political leadership is not interested in all those things. How much are they sharing in Abuja? That is what they are interested in, otherwise it is not a big deal in the Niger Delta, in other places they make an effort. I was in a place in the Caribbeans, their mainstay there is Sugarcane. Sugar cane is something that can grow here and it is not flood sensitive. But yet we cannot, maybe if the oil dries up one of these days, we will get sense and start doing other things.
As regards this lake, who is supposed to be in charge?
The state government should take over. Tourism development is supposed to be done by the state and sometimes run by private people, but you must provide the lead as a government. Why can’t we have a place like this and hold conferences around the lake but instead of that, we prefer to go to London or Paris. There are Tourism friendly places in Nigeria than France, England, and even America but our leadership would rather prefer to go to London. I heard that people even go to hold political meetings in Dubai. People built those places. Their government built those places and made the place attractive for others. But our own case is the opposite. Election is over in Bayelsa State and your Brother, Governor Douye Diri has won again to continue for another four years and you have said that one of these days, oil will dry up and we will rest. What do you think can be done by the new administration? No, we can’t rest. If oil dries up, that is when we start working. Now we are not working. We are resting, waiting for the oil to dry up. When it dries up, then we will start working.
But there will be no money then?
The work that time will be about looking for the money to do what you need to do and that is when real work will start. You will know the importance of every economic activity that you overlooked and then you will value it.
Let’s talk about the security of the country. In your own term, how will you describe Nigeria economically, politically and otherwise?
Which Nigeria? Are we in Nigeria? I think it is not a kind of fair question for anybody who lives in Nigeria now because I believe that everybody knows what we are passing through in the past several years, not just now. We were here when we were buying money with money and people were still winning elections. So I don’t think it is a fair question to ask somebody who is living in Nigeria how he or she feels about Nigeria. During your time, what did you people do that made the country inhabitable and what do you think that they are doing now that made everything scatter? I don’t think that we did anything that was spectacular, this deterioration did not start suddenly. It is not a Tsunami. The degeneration has been gradual over the years and what has brought the degeneration to this level is the unitary system of government where people of different tribes, orientation have become mutually suspicious of one another. Now at the beginning, there was no crude oil money that they were sharing so people were working.
