Wemabod Estates Limited is partnering Oyo State government to build an ultra-modern shopping complex that will accommodate about 4,000 shops and 20 warehouses in Ibadan, the state capital. The complex, which would be completed within nine months, is located at Samonda area of the Ibadan metropolis.
When completed, the project will boast of such facilities as a police post, banks, clinics, industrial borehole for supply of potable water, fire station, street light, toilets, worship centres and administrative block.
While laying the foundation stone of the business complex, Governor Abiola Ajimobi, said it would be a state-of-the-art shopping complex, describing it as another giant stride in his government’s urban renewal programme.
The governor explained that his administration’s partnership with Wemabod was aimed at promoting public-private participation in socio-economic activities and the development of the state.
He disclosed that the Neighbourhood Shopping Complex at Scout Camp, Challenge, Ibadan, whose foundation was laid earlier in the year, would be inaugurated within the next two weeks.
He reiterated that the transformation agenda of his administration was put in place to correct the ills of the past and strategically re-position the state for enhancement and promotion of its socio-economic prosperity.
To this end, the governor said the institutional frameworks which hitherto had been weak were now being strengthened daily, adding that very soon, the strength of government institutions would be firm, thereby creating a solid foundation for future administrations to build upon.
He assured the people that specific measures had been put in place for the realisation of the transformation agenda so that by 2015, the state would become one of the most conducive places for socio-economic activities in Nigeria.
The governor stressed that the urban renewal policy of his administration was not meant to witch-hunt any individual or group but to lift the state out of the doldrums, and assured genuine market men and women who were affected by his government’s urban renewal exercise that all of them would be comfortably relocated.
Ismail Adebayo Adewusi, chairman of Wemabod Estates, commended the governor’s urban renewal programme, saying it had transformed the state, and promised that Wemabod would continue to serve as a partner to the state in its transformation agenda, as provisions would be made for mortgage funding facilities to traders to give them more opportunities.
REMI FEYISIPO, Ibadan
