Nigeria's Tinapa: new Dubai or white elephant?

By Estelle Shirbon

TINAPA, Nigeria (Reuters) - In the minds of its creators, the Tinapa resort in southeastern Nigeria will rival Dubai or London as a shopping and trading paradise for rich and enterprising Nigerians.

In reality, about $340 million has been spent since 2005 but 80,000 square meters of pristine retail space lie empty, the silence broken only by the footsteps of a few security guards.

The 243-room hotel with a river view is not quite finished. Neither is the water park with its giant snaking slide and wave pool, or the movie theme park -- though a King Kong figure already tops a golden dome.

Originally set for 2006, the launch keeps being postponed, and many fear that inertia is setting in, both because of construction delays and bureaucracy.

Nigeria is Africa's top oil producer, but decades of misrule and corruption have left most of its 140 million people stuck in poverty and its infrastructure in decay. In that context, Tinapa is a bold experiment -- visionary to some, foolhardy to others.

Nigeria's biggest banks have invested in it, though the state of Cross River where the resort is located and the federal government have contributed more and are now heavily in debt.

"The investors knew it would take time for the vision to take hold," said Donald Duke, the former Cross River governor who masterminded the project, in an editorial this month.

He predicted that three years after completion, Tinapa would be drawing 3 million visitors a year and generating an annual 300 billion naira ($2.5 billion) with an enormous multiplier effect on the economy of Cross River and Nigeria as a whole.