Like the fabled Cheshire cat in Lewis Caroll’s literary classic, Alice in Wonderland, Tony Elumelu’s Transcorp Hotel project in Ikoyi, Lagos, is becoming a white elephant project after all. Few people will forget the buzz generated by news of the hotel’s emergence in the highbrow hospitality sector some years ago.
Estimated to gulp a staggering $110m, the Transcorp Hilton, Lagos, was proposed to be a 300-room hotel located in the heart of highbrow Ikoyi. The 20-storey hotel tower and 21-storey office block was designed by the iconic Perkins Eastman, an international architecture, interior design, urban design, planning, landscape architecture, graphic design, and project management firm headquartered in New York City, which boasted then that the hotel’s design will ‘add verve to the Lagos landscape.’
Among other services, the hotel planned to offer conference facilities, meeting rooms, gym, spa, swimming pool, restaurants and bars, ballrooms, fitness spaces, business centre and meeting rooms, and five levels of above-ground parking.
Speaking at the official signing of the management contract, Tony Elumelu, the chairman, Heirs Holdings, boasted, “The new Transcorp Hilton Lagos will not only present an additional world-class venue for the increasing numbers of investors, businessmen and tourists to Nigeria, but is creating much-needed jobs for our citizens, enabling their social and economic development.”
The Transcorp Lagos is a joint project between global hospitality company, Hilton Worldwide, and Heirs Holdings, the Elumelu family-owned investment company committed to improving lives and transforming Africa through long-term investments.
The development board for the project went up on September 17, 2013, while light site clearing and piling commenced thereafter. Almost a decade after, construction is yet to start on the site. This has understandably aroused curiosity and questions from keen watchers and followers of Elumelu who know his trajectory as a daring businessman who has succeeded in many of his endeavours. Has the end come sooner than expected for the ambition of Elumelu to play big in the hospitality industry? Money, obviously, cannot be the issue considering that Elumelu’s HEIRS Holdings is the parent company of one of Africa’s largest banks, UBA.
Privileged sources are pointing in the direction of the Lagos State government. Indeed, surviving the tempest and treachery of a high-profile business circle requires some form of robust government patronage and access. Elumelu is not oblivious to this. It is safe to assume that his relationship with federal and state governments and political stakeholders and office holders has done him a lot of good over the years. Is he now experiencing the other side of a relationship gone awry with the government?
Perhaps that was why the Delta State-born billionaire businessman said in a 2018 interview; “We are planning to build a 25-storey hotel in Lagos… we will see the governor and discuss with him on how we can get their support. We want to do this project to further create jobs for the people of Lagos state.”
The innuendo could not have been missed by those who know his frosty relationship with the Lagos State government, which became even more glaring during the administration of Akinwunmi Ambode.
Sometime in 2015, the Ambode administration terminated the 50-year concession contract granted HEIRS Holdings for the re-development of the Falomo shopping mall because it only paid a paltry N50 million, which the government stated was “grossly detrimental to the interests of the people of the state.”
The investment conglomerate had planned to redesign the old shopping complex into Falomo Towers, a contemporary development focused on sustainability and sustainable building practices and designed to deliver a greener environment while deploying cutting-edge technology-enabled design to create an architectural masterpiece.
Afriland Properties Plc, the property investment arm of the Heirs Holdings Group, which entered into the joint venture partnership with the Lagos State Development and Property Corporation, to Build, Operate, and Transfer (BOT), strongly refuted the suggestion that the transaction was in any way detrimental to the people and government of Lagos State, stating, “We are strongly committed to creating a world-class project, which will act as an economic magnet for central Lagos, creating opportunities for Lagosians and which crucially has been structured to ensure ongoing value will accrue to Lagos State and Lagosians. The contract was negotiated transparently and in accordance with best practice.”
Keen observers of happenings in Lagos State likened the action to the biblical hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob analogy. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a two-term former governor of Lagos State and the invincible godfather of Lagos politics, was fingered as the underlying power behind that move. Speculations abound that nothing happens in Lagos State without his imprimatur. Thus, for Ambode to have confronted a billionaire socio-economic giant like Elumelu then, he must have some forces goading him on.
Several investigations did not exactly yield any result as to the root of possible bad blood between Elumelu and Tinubu but the treatment meted out to his company in the Falomo issue was a strong, inalienable pointer.
Elumelu would, however, find favour in the administration of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu which recently superintended the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Falomo Towers development in Ikoyi, Lagos. The symbolic ceremony ended years of disagreement between the state government and Afriland Properties.
Governor Sanwo-Olu alluded to this in his remarks, saying the flag-off ended a decade-long discussion with the developer to revive the project and build iconic towers that would turn around the fallow land for the benefit of the public. He added that when the project is completed; it will become a highly sought-after destination for work, life, and play, thereby accelerating the state’s economic growth.
It is not clear for now if the Transcorp project will find such favours.
