M-A-S-T-E-R S-E-R-I-E-S
D-E-B-U-T!
[S-P-O-N-S—O-R-E-D P-A-G-E]
“THE CHINESE,UNITED ARAB EMIRATES AND SOUTH AFRICAN REAL
ESTATE EXPERTS ARE READY TO COME TO HELP DEVELOP NIGERIA”
INTERVIEW BETWEEN MR STEPHEN OGUNDUYILE,CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
OF MERCIFUL HABITAT PROPERTIES GROUP AND THE MANAGING EDITOR OF PAEDIA EXPRESS
MULTIMEDIA,ABDULMUMINI ADEKU ON HIS EXPERIENCE AS A BUSINESS TYCOON AND
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY THROUGH REAL ESTATES
1]How did you start up business in a tough terrain like Nigeria?
Business activities are always dependent on personal ideas
and knowledge , when I retired from service I decided it was time to do
something very urgent as I believed that I had a lot to offer the society in
terms of value added.
When you do not lack ideas you can start up from something ,
we have been into various businesses like
fashion, salon, transport, supermarket among other forms of entrepreneurial
pursuits.
But at the end of the day I decided that I had to get back
to the drawing board and I went back to
the University of Lagos where I bagged a certificate in Business and Industrial
law.
2]What did you start business with ?
When I left government service I saw an opportunity with the little capital we raised we started
a supermarket business
3]Were there any form of frustrations in the process?
Severally, I was under a lot of family pressure but with a lot of personal
discipline I survived in my chosen
vocation.
4]How much will you project your fixed assets presently?
We are averagely okay
5]Where are your land presently?
We are almost everywhere in the South West axis
6]Is it just in lands you have investments ?
We are also into agriculture commercially ,we are into net
production of fruits as we have several orchard farms in Ogun and Ondo state
respectively at the moment.
We are also hopeful of boosting our productions at our
Banana Estate which is around 20 hectares
presently.
We also manage warehouses , malls, in fact we are presently
constructing a full blown private estate to be called Merciful Estate at Abule
Onipanu in Eti –osa Local Government Area here in Lagos state.
We will be doing same in Ondo state as we have gone into a relationship with a
Chinese Firm to replicate same.
7]Are there things that are not well done in Nigeria’s real
Estates sector as compared to Overseas
which you have noticed sir?
The real estate trade in Nigeria depends on you dictating
the price value but this is wrong and should not really be so.
In the advance world housing is not left to the private
sectors alone ,Lagos state government is now coming up with a lot of real ideas
to curtail the excesses in real estate development .
You see some communities now that ordinarily should be
resettled ,if you compare the prices of properties in Ogudu Central and the
Government Reservation Area within the same Ogudu it is not the same. Nigerians
have a lot of bright ideas but the
society has not helped them to develop
How much has the Sector contributed to the Nigerian Economy
in terms of the Gross Domestic Product?
Real estates have really done much in the area of developmental
antecedents and now they are the trailblazers ,so in terms of its contributions
to the GDP it will run into several trillions
of naira and in terms of income per capita you cannot even quantify.
8]So in a nutshell what is the future of real estates in
Nigeria?
Merciful Habitat is now trying to do business with some
foreign partners and may be after the
elections our dreams will come true. The Chinese, United Arab Emirates, South Africans are actually willing to come here to
work with us and help us develop our real estates
In Dubai for example you have a lot of skyscrapers and we can
replicate those types of landmarks here in Nigeria
9]Do you have bankers you work with presently?
We work with Ecobank Transnational and they have been really
wonderful till date
10]How do you fight the fraud in the system?
Like every sector ,we have our own bad eggs, but I believe
that what Lagos state government has started to do will check the activities of
fraudsters .we have a lot of stakeholders who have been holding meetings with
state officials and all of this will become a thing of the past with careful
monitoring mechanism put in place.
Land speculators otherwise called Omo-Onile caused a lot of
crisis in the past but with the presence of highly vast lawyers in the field of
real estate we are sure that fraud can
finally be checkmated .
A lot of caveat is now been published ,it is also key that a
client makes sure that he or she pays through the bank and not directly so as to check cheating.
11]Do you insure your activities ?
We always advice our clients to go for our type of insurance
policy and we have had a very strong and
robust relationship with Cornerstone Insurance and Mansard Insurance. We actually
started with the British American Insurance Company in the past .
Our name, advertisement and believe in transparency has sold us out in the market place and this
we can only thank God for.
12]On a lighter tone,how long have you been married sir?
I got married by the special grace of God in 1981 and
today after about 34 years
I give thanks to God.
My eldest child is even married and I have a lot of other
children as well.
13]What have you learn t in marriage?
It is an institution ,the house is a nucleus source which if
well managed will have its effects on the larger society and the nation as well.
By the time you marry a lot of things the society will be very okay,why we seems
to have problems now is that many are from broken homes .
Since we started our ministries we decided to train those that are broken hear ted and then we helped to develop them
by empowering them so that they can become better people
We made it a point of duty to affect positively about five families every year and
we give them as much as N200,000 each on an individual basis.
We also pray for Nigeria as nation and not just ourselves any time that we
worship as a congregation ,we have also prayed and discussed with the Nigerian
Police.
14]Why is Nigeria still crawling after 54 years of
Independence?
I think the problem is that our leaders are not prepared for
the role that they under take for themselves, once our leaders get to positions
of public trust they forget the people.
No comments:
Post a Comment