Mercedes Benjamin @BenjamiMercedes - Twitter Profile

8 days ago

An Igbo man invested $200 million to build a resort in Lagos called Landmark Beach Resort and Landmark Beach in 2018. The resort covered approximately 30 hectares of land in Lagos, featuring a beach, hotels, restaurants, recreational facilities, and other businesses that attracted tourists and created jobs. 2023, five years after the multimillion dollar business opened The new Nigerian government decided to embark on one of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure projects called The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway. While Dubai builds futuristic cities, China expands its high-speed rail network, and Saudi Arabia builds gigantic tourism projects, The Nigerian government decided to build a coastal road from Lagos to Calabar 👏 The proposed 700-kilometre highway, designed to run along Nigeria’s coastline through several states, was estimated to cost about ₦15 trillion ($10 billion) And guess what? That road must pass through a $200 million resort. No warning that gave the investors enough time to prepare. No consideration for the investment. No regard for the people who had put their money into building something valuable. According to the founder of Landmark Beach, guests were still lodging in the hotel when the demolition began. They didn’t even have enough time to move many of the resort’s equipment and appliances before the destruction started. Now why should we care? The government decided right Now, almost two years later, the road has been diverted. The Minister of Works, said the road’s original route had to be redesigned to avoid destroying existing infrastructure. But somehow, the revised route affected a $200 million tourism investment And now, sections of the coastal highway are being diverted elsewhere. So, why couldn’t the route have been reconsidered before the destruction began? A man’s $200 million investment was destroyed, and the very road that supposedly made that destruction necessary has now been diverted. What happened to the investors’ money? What happened to the jobs? What happened to the businesses that depended on that resort? Perhaps if this man were politically connected to the ruling party, things might have played out differently. Perhaps if he had the right people in the right places, someone would have listened. Perhaps if he had come from a Favorable part of the country the destruction might not have have happened I don’t know. But what I know is that nobody should lose an investment of that magnitude without a serious public conversation about accountability and compensation. I believe that one day, the Federal Government will have to answer questions about this destruction and pay a compensation that is legally due. There are things happening in this country that we don’t talk about enough. We shout about politics, we fight over political parties, and we defend politicians as if they are our family members. Meanwhile, somebody can invest $200 million in this country, build something beautiful, create jobs, and watch years of hard work go down the drain. And we are expected to move on as if nothing happened. This is not how a country encourages investment. This is not how you build confidence in an economy. And this is certainly not how you treat people who are trying to build something in your country. This is a terrible way to treat an investor in a country where 150 million of its citizens are struggling with poverty.