It has been a while since we heard about Wole Omoboriowo, the former partner and best friend of the much-talked about billionaire oil mogul, Kola Aluko. Tall and very good looking, articulate and embodying the best of western education and exposure, Wole lived the life back in his boom time. Money meant nothing to him; it ran errands for him. Wole, the son of late Akin Omoboriowo, lawyer and politician, who was Deputy Governor of Ondo State during the Second Republic, was one of those guys that could make the Lagos and Abuja social scenes bend to his will, whims and caprices. Not even his marriage tempered his rollercoaster life. Gradually, however, Wole is striding back to the forefront of the social scene. He was in the news recently.
Omoborowo is having a serious issue with the residents of the billionaire’s haven, Banana island, Ikoyi, Lagos, over power supply. As the story goes, “The construction of the power plant, scalable to 15MW, was fully funded by GELMARK Power solutions Limited promoted by Akinwole Omoboriowo, following an agreement with the management of Banana Island Property Owners & Residents Association (BIPORAL) Lagos, who negotiated and signed the contract on behalf of the residents. According to contract documents seen by BusinessDay, in 2013, GELMARK agreed and undertook to build a plant to generate and distribute electric power for the exclusive use of BIPORAL, for 15 years under a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer, (BOOT) investment structure, which means ownership of the plant will revert to the residents after 15 years. Everything seemed to have gone well until the project was completed and then the shocker came when in a surprise repudiation of the agreement it entered into, the resident association leadership declared the contract illegal”.
