Mr Babajide Odusolu, former Managing Director, Ogun State Property and Investment Corporation (OPIC)

The recent report of how the Ogun Property and Investment Corporation (OPIC) was grown to an N60 billion company may have gotten the attention of the House of Assembly as it has invited the then Managing Director Jide Odusolu to appear before it on Monday.

Recall that Odusolu who was MD of OPIC from 2013 to 2019, had shared his success story at the corporation, and how he remitted N1.9 billion to the state government in 6 years, while leaving an asset base of N60 billion.

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According to the Assembly’s media office, the invitation was extended to Odusolu on Sunday to come before the House to throw more light on OPIC’s investments, assets and other housing projects.

In a recent interview with newsmen, Odusolu said that he and his team moved OPIC from a ‘bureaucratic’ corporation to a profit-making, profit-minded company.

According to Odusolu, in the about 29 years that OPIC existed before his appointment, the company had not remitted up to N100 million to the state government account.

He said that within six years with him at the helm of affairs, Ogun State Government got over N1.9 billion in remittances from OPIC.
“We went from a corporation that had assets that were undermined and undervalued to one that did a turnover of 18.7 billion within a six-year period.

“OPIC did not get subventions from the government; we had to generate resources to fund all our work. Because the government was averse to commercial loans we also could not borrow, so what we did was to invest and recapitalize all the returns we got from our various projects.

“Despite doing that, we were still able to deliver returns of N1.9 billion to the state government. He said that with a mandate from Gov. Ibikunle Amosun, he had to turn OPIC around.

“We carried out a forensic audit and found out that over 500 hectares of our land had been basically grabbed by people who had not paid for them.

“Working with the state government, we had to conduct massive security sweep in Agbara and restore sanity.
We were able to deliver Orange Valley Estate, which was the first gated community in the whole of Ogun State. There we delivered 66 semi-detached duplexes between 2013 and 2014.”

The former OPIC MD added that about four multi-million dollar industries came in due to the intervention of his administration.
Odusolu also pointed out that the track record of OPIC spoke for it as the corporation was invited to handle a series of other contracts.

The former oil and gas worker as well as legal practitioner said that at the end of his tenure, the corporation which was barely recognized had a total asset of about N60 billion.

“Until we came, OPIC just took land without improving it and sold it as it was. By the time we were leaving office in May 2019, if you valued the total assets of OPIC, it was a 50 to 60 billion naira corporation.

“We had lands we had recovered and fenced and were available to developers. We also had the Mitros Residences which is a massive investment and a very profitable one for the state government,” he said.

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