From Tony John, Port Harcourt
Corporate bodies and investors intending to make entry into the Niger Delta communities have been advised to copy the Alesa model developed by the Mayor of Housing and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Construction & Housing Mayor Limited, Mr. My-ACE China.
The advice was given in Alesa Eleme, near Port Harcourt, by leaders and stakeholders of the area at the unveiling of the Alesa Vigilante Group, which is to secure the area and attract investors.
This is part of a development model created by the Mayor of Housing to cause a seamless partnership between the real estate group and host community ahead of the upcoming Alesa Highlands Sustainable Smart City Project.
Daily Sun gathered that the model entails an upcoming corporate entity becoming a corporate citizen of the host community by creating a blueprint for peace, security, and social development of the area.
It was learnt that the estate developer and the community had reached an understanding and created security synergy to promote peace so that investments can flow into Alesa.
This was unveiled on December 30, 2023, at Alesa when the youths launched their security vigilante backed by sensitive equipment provided for them by the Mayor of Housing.
Most speakers called on investors and companies to emulate the Mayor of Housing and to adopt the advanced Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy as an entry and engagement policy.
Explaining the model, the CEO said his passion for housing development made him to seek ways of creating synergy between investors and host communities.
China said. “I am a real estate success strategist, and the sobriquet did not come for nothing. It is a name I got on the back of coordinating and exponentially increasing value through collaboration and innovation. And, that is what we are doing here in Alesa.
“Collaboration is what multiplies value for me. It is the way I coordinated value in Abuja that made people to start calling me the ‘Governor of Housing’. I said no, Mayor is better than Governor, because Governor is becoming common in Nigeria. It is not a political appointment. It is on the back of merit in development and collaboration.”
In terms of development, China and he sees himself as the most development savvy real estate investor and developer in Africa and the most collaborative businessman in this part of the world.
“One of the reasons is because I do not do development alone. For instance, what informed this peace project in Alesa is because I cannot come into Alesa and develop Alesa into the most sustainable smart city to come to Africa without security, and I cannot secure Alesa without the youths.
“Interestingly, youths are the most neglected and underrated segment of the populace. It is wise to tap into their latent force and use it as fuel for development.”
On his message to the benefiting Alesa community, the Mayor of Housing said: “All I can tell the community is that two things promote development and attract investment in any given location.
“The first is security that usually gives rise to peace; they are two sides of the same coin. After this, the next thing is hospitality. You can see how they have accepted and embraced us and that is why we are doing what we are doing here. If Alesa was not hospitable to us, we would probably face our company’s business in Alesa only and go; but because they were hospitable to us, they accepted us with both hands. So, that’s why we are doing this.”
According to him, any community, not just Alesa but across Africa and the world, that does not first get security, peace, and hospitality in terms of waivers and attractive packages that can attract investors, will not develop.
“They have done this to us. They have given us a lot of things that showed me they really wanted us to come in and develop the place. We are thus not doing this project haphazardly, we are doing it with our whole heart and commitment.
“On behalf of the chairman of the Construction & Housing Mayor Limited, Distinguished Senator Adawari Pepple, we are committed to not only bringing development to Alesa, but we want Port Harcourt to lead the way again in terms of development in Nigeria.”
He said the focus is to reverse the infamous Port Harcourt-Lagos dichotomy.
“We discovered a trend where workers with the international oil corporations (IOCs) work in Port Harcourt but choose to live in Lagos. To solve that is not to pour lamentations over it every day. On our part, we want to tackle that by offering the nation an alternative to Lekki by bringing in a new Banana Island to Port Harcourt to compete with the Banana Island in Lagos.
“Ours is a high-end project, meaning it will attract high net worth personalities around the country and beyond.
“That is why we are excited by the 20,000 housing project Governor Sim Fubara of Rivers State just launched. What he is doing toward Ikwerre local council area is the low-end low-cost houses and we are doing the high-end luxury houses. With the two going on at the same time in this part of the country, the world will know that Port Harcourt has bounced back in the real estate sector.”
He admitted that most companies develop and give tokens back later but that his firm is yet to start any activity in Alesa, but it has started by giving upfront to the people.
“This thinking comes from deep-rooted thinkers. I am a real estate success strategist and one of the routes to market is to warm up to your market. Any market you want to get into, do things to warm it up. You see companies doing promos and stuff like that. We deal in development and a bedrock of that is peace. It is only real estate developers like us that would invest and promote peace first in an area they want to get into. It is interesting that this development will be starting in about March 2024, but we started our collaboration and CSR way back before now.”