Demolition: Landmark Group offers fresh insights on its $200m Beach Resort

Though the demolition of a $200 million beach resort in the Oniru, upper Victoria Island area of Lagos raised enormous uproar in the tourism investment market in Nigeria, Landmark Group which owns the resort, says it was a rude shock, but it has taken the incident in its stride and moved on.

The multi-million-dollar Beach Resort, which was home to over 80 start-up businesses, was visited and reduced to rubbles by the federal government’s bulldozer in order to create right of way for the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway construction, raising concerns on the safety of investments in Nigeria.

Landmark management says it cannot question the decision of the government to demolish the resort, because, according to Paul Onwuanibe, the Group’s chief executive, “government has the right of eminent domain and so, I have never argued the fact that government has the right to take whatever it likes that is in the private sector for government purposes or for public good.

“One of the things I say to my team is you can’t look behind and in front of you at the same time. When things happen as they have happened to us, you have to find a way to recover. I believe quite strongly that everything you do in life, every experience you have, whether good or bad, is one you have to build on to your advantage in future,” Onwuanibe noted.

The real estate mogul, who spoke in an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, sees blessings or opportunities in the demolition of the beach resort as painful as it is to him. He argued that “if our properties weren’t demolished, maybe we won’t even be going through some of these exponential growth by now. Maybe we wouldn’t have had calls from different African Presidents or had the opportunity to sit with state governors.”

Read also: Landmark Group taps N30bn for W/Africa beachfront expansion

If that incident did not happen, he said, his company wouldn’t have thought in depth on how to expand and diversify to other locations, adding that they wouldn’t have been able to touch the lives of people all over West Africa. “We would only be touching lives within this part of Lagos,” he stressed.

He shared the popular saying that when a door shuts somewhere, many doors open elsewhere, noting that, in this instance, a big door was shut but many big doors are being opened as a result and the company will make proud the people who have supported them through this process.

Onwuanibe revealed that government was yet to compensate his company for the demolished properties, debunking the claim by David Umahi, Minister of Works, that what government demolished at Landmark were shanties and not developed properties.

“I have gone on record to say that if we get compensated, it will be fine because we have had serious financial struggles since this thing happened. But we’re not going to wait and rely on that. You know, they say that people can take away what you have, but they can’t take away who you are.

So, with or without the compensation, we’re going to look for a way to move forward. If we get compensated, it will help us touch more lives around us, create more businesses and more experiences. I hope it will help the various places that we will go to including where we are today, Lagos. It will create more impact,” he assured.

Onwuanibe ruled out any possibility of contesting the payment of the compensation in a court of law. His reason is that it is not easy or wise to concentrate on two things at the same time, explaining that one cannot concentrate on growth and a fight at the same time. For him, it is either you go to the site where you shake hands, move on and grow or you stay there and fight.

He cited the story of the cow, the buffalo and the storm, saying, “the cow and the buffalo can sense a storm before it comes. The buffalo, when it senses the storm, he runs towards it which means that when he goes through that storm, it’s more aggressive, it’s shaken but it gets out of it faster.

The cow runs away from the storm which means that it stays longer in the storm, it’s not as aggressive, and so only time will tell if he’ll ever get out of it. All my life, I had been both the cow and the buffalo; but this time, I have chosen to be the buffalo.”