One of Africa’s leading investment coaches, Dr. Stephen Akintayo has said that there is need for the people of means in Nigeria to focus on capacity building rather than running into politics.
Akintayo who is the Chairman of Gtext Holdings, a multi-billion Naira conglomerate spanning real estate, digital marketing, and philanthropy said this during the week at a press conference to announce the commemoration of the firm’s 16th anniversary. He said: “If we must change the narrative of Nigeria from being an underdeveloped country, we need to raise men like institutions.”
Speaking on the 16th anniversary, the philanthropist revealed that the passion to empower people is the major factor behind the growth of Gtext Holdings which gave birth to the Steven Akintayo Foundation that focuses on community empowerment, education and agriculture.
Akintayo said: “As part of our commitment, the foundation will be giving out N16 Million as grants to help families start up small scale businesses.”
Addressing the challenges around the feasibility of affordable housing in the real estate sector in Nigeria, Akintayo who noted that everyone needs to be involved in some form of real estate investment said, “the truth is affordable housing anywhere in the world is not the job of the private sector but the government. Affordable housing comes with partnership between the private sector and the government.
No private sector can achieve affordable housing projects especially with the fall in the Naira and Dollar and cost of building materials in the market also rising unpredictably. This is why we have shifted our priority on land acquisition rather than building in Nigeria as the total cost of building keeps doubling within a few months. However, we still build for clients who understand the challenges.
Outside the shore of Nigeria, we are now expanding houses. In Houston, We have recently launched 21-acre land where we’re going to be building 60 units of single-family homes, ranging from $600,000 to $1 million for each of them. The target is to aggressively expand in the United States and Canada in the next five to ten years, and then be able to repatriate some of our profits back to Nigeria to accelerate building more houses. This is because it is easier to access funding in these countries than in Nigeria.”
