Paul Onwuanibe, is a troubled man at the moment. The man behind the famous Landmark Beach Resort in Lagos Nigeria, has just been given a quit notice for his enterprise.
The reason for his troubles, are the ominous signals he has received to vacate his money minting business, to allow for the construction of a coastal highway.
Landmark Beach Resort, with a reported enterprise value of $200million, is situated along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in the Victoria Island area of the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria.
The Nigerian Government has decided to go ahead with construction of a new 700-kilometer coastal highway, that would run from Lagos to Calabar in the extreme south of the country.
Landmark has been told their business sits right along the new path of the highway, and will be torn down.
This strange development has led Onwuanibe to give an interview with the American media house, CNN, in an effort to generate publicity, and try to make the Nigerian Government have a rethink, on the proposed path of the coastal highway.
Onwuanibe told CNN that he bought the land legally in 2007, before any plans for the highway were even considered. The demand notice he received from the Nigerian Government urged him to file a compensatory claim for any losses.
However, demolishing the resort might have a lot of economic consequences for both the Federal and Lagos State Governments.
Onwuanibe explained that Landmark is currently home to over 80 businesses, that are responsible for over 4,000 jobs in the resort and complex. The annual tax revenues from Landmark are over $1.5 million for both strata of the Nigerian Government.
He explained that the company is still paying off loans which they took on to fund the project, and that creditors were already panicking following the quit notice received by Landmark.
Landmark is also a major crowd pulling resort, with annual visitations of over one million persons in the 13-hectare complex.
For these reasons, Onwuanibe is appealing to the Nigerian Government to divert the highway from this new path which traverses the Landmark complex and switch to the original plans which places the road on an alternate route.
The Lagos State Government which is the primary authority in the area, has actually been very aggressive with demolitions of structures and houses along the corridors of the Lagos Island and some parts of the Lagos Mainland, in the last couple of months.
Will this new demolition threat, which has now taken an international dimension, be any different?
Foreign and local investors would be watching carefully how this plays out.
Common sense and economic realities must be allowed to take the forefront in the resolution of this matter.
