Benjamin Akhamere, Founder/Chief Executive Officer, DreamCity Group, is seasoned and highly resourceful entrepreneur with over two decades of business experience and broad knowledge in construction, real estate, hospitality, financial technology, and international trade. His company, DreamCity Group is a well-structured conglomerate with diversified interests in real estate development, civil engineering, mining, manufacturing, hospitality and e-commerce.

With a mission to create exceptional real estate portfolio that guarantees high returns on investments, value for money and long-term financial security, DreamCity has grown to become one of the leading and dependable real estate developers in Nigeria, over the years. Today, apart from operating in key Nigerian cities – Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Warri, Ibadan, and Benin, the Group has opened international offices in Canada and the United Kingdom.

Besides value creation, through high returns on residential and commercial investment packages, DreamCity also offers contemporary design concepts in architecture and project consulting services that range from project planning to completion and with its new entrant, the Gravy Global Holding, the Group intends to take the world of e-commerce by storm.

While reacting to his selection by The Guardian as one of the “Sixty (60) Most Inspiring, Visionary and Transformative Business Leaders That Shaped Nigeria’s Economic Growth In 2026”, Mr. Benjamin Akhamere spoke about the repositioning of the DreamCity Group as one of fast-growing Nigerian conglomerates, the company’s inroad into tech/e-commerce, opportunities and challenges in the Nigerian business environment, amongst other sundry issues. Excerpts …

Can you tell us more about the DreamCity Group’s operation, some of the key projects that defined the brand’s success and shaped the growth of the company over the past few years? 

DreamCity was founded in 2010 and what we do now is a vision of who we wanted to be. Surely, it takes time to achieve what has been conceptualized, however, since we commenced operations sixteen years ago, we have been growing from one project to another. Under the Group, we have four companies with interests in real estate, hospitality, fintech and e-commerce.

At the moment, we have built over 2,000 units of houses between Abuja and Lagos, comprising three detached building and apartments. Across our hospitality arm, we have a fully running hotel in Maitama, Abuja; two currently under construction; and two more at the planning phase. Our goal is to have 400 hundred serviceable hotel rooms in the next 24 months, in addition to other eight ongoing projects.

Similarly, we have invested heavily in fintech, providing a global and borderless digital ecosystem for day-to-day living. Our Gravy App is created to ensure users do not get stranded wherever they are in the world – from Nigeria to China, Philippines to Cote D’Ivoire, South Africa to Canada, etc.

Gravy combines financial services with digital technology and a whole other services including digital commerce and online purchase. This is different from other digital platforms that have restrictions in certain countries, Gravy users are able to integrate with business partners in any part of the world. It is a kind of super app – a platform that enables global business users have access to multiple and diverse transactions.

Now that DreamCity has built the Gravy App, what do you intend to achieve with the digital tool?

Gravy was launched officially on 1st April, 2026 after four years’ trials, modifications, and necessary approvals on Google Play Store and Apple Play Store. Presently, we still have a lot of features on the app yet to be deployed. An app is much more than the technology itself. There is a business that supports the tech’s robustness which make it truly borderless and seamless for users.

The objective is to create a multifunctional ecosystem for highly mobile individuals. Users can conduct several multiple transactions while connecting day-to-day activities. In the future, Gravy will integrate all necessary infrastructures whereby a user can buy flight ticket, book taxi, pay for hotel reservation, order meals, and many other purchases. It is going for trading, traveling, training, access to loan services, as well as allow vendors to sell their goods and services, convert currencies, under the terms and conditions of the country of use. In July 2026, we opened our operations office in Canada and by the end of the year, Gravy would be officially launched in Canada and the UK.

How does DreamCity Property approach quality control in its operations in order to ensure that every project meets the company’s high standards? 

DreamCity Group has an internal process with tremendous support from external consultants. Each project has a consulting team that we have signed an exclusive partnership with, across architectural, M&E and structural components of our projects. The external consultants are practically responsible for standards both at the design and construction phases, and ensure that every stage of the project is supervised, and approved by them.

Thus, within the company, we have projects supervisory team handling quality assurance in conjunction with the external consulting team. This is more of a water tight approach whereby no stone is left unturned – if the internal team misses a point, the external consultants comes in immediately to remedy it.

What can you say are the key differentiating factors between the DreamCity products/services and others within the industry? 

DreamCity is a company built with a clear vision of growing into an institution. A financially-stable company, with business cutting across different countries. Built from medium to very large, our vision is to become comparable to other conglomerate anywhere in the world. Right now, we are more than just a real estate company – one that has surpassed several challenges and developed into an institution.

Many companies and global brands did not start with the product or service they are now known for today. Samsung, for example, was a textile company but metamorphosed into electronics and technology products. From a small trading company into what it is today. Therefore, for us, we are in real estate today, tomorrow we can step into oil and gas, or aviation.

Looking into the future, DreamCity will be divesting aggressively into finance and tech. The reason is simple. If we can acquire a measure of knowledge, we can implement it in any other country we choose to. Thus, DreamCity is a company with a vision to grow into a blue-chip organisation and as a result acquire the requisite knowledge, stamina, and capacity needed to survive in any economic environment we find ourselves.

Real estate is one of the most difficult businesses to do in Nigeria, where inflation, incoherent government policies, unstable prices, and dwindled purchasing power, have severely reduced sales of houses. Hence, as a real estate company, what happened in the past four years has really taught us not to put all eggs in one basket. It is imperative to think as entrepreneurs rather than estate developers, who will remain static hoping for a positive outlook in the economic situation before selling. Profit has been eroded by cement, iron, and granite sellers.

What can you say inspired DreamCity Group to veer into other areas of business? 

Looking back, if I have mentorship, possibly I would not have started my entrepreneurial journey with real estate. I started with car selling before venturing into frozen foods, at some point, media services before settling into real estate.

However, I will dare say that real estate is a calling because I actually failed in other aforementioned businesses until I came to real estate. There, I discovered a passion. It is what a ministry is to a cleric, yet real estate is one of the most difficult businesses and quite challenging because it involves a number of diverse skills.

To succeed in real estate, I had to learn designs, engineering, construction, finance, procurement, legalities, etc, To survive in these critical aspects, I had to learn from the scratch without mentorship or guidance. You can imagine the pain of learning through mistakes, and all. The knowledge in real estate has built in me the grit, wisdom and understanding to succeed in other businesses.

DreamCity has diversified into other sectors because no company can survive solely on a single stream income in today’s economic environment in Nigeria. As an entrepreneur, our goal is to create a global company and we are working hard to achieve that by cutting across a number of sectors. Today, we are looking at finance and digital commerce in addition to real estate. Tomorrow, it could be oil and gas. It is doable because there are a number of individuals who have achieved same feat. In Nigeria, we have Tony Elumelu; there is a Warren Buffets having interests in over 60 companies; the Andani Group in India with interests across multiple sectors, with thousands of workers.

Thus, our goal is simple. As the Chief Executive Officer, my duty is to lead an army of men and women, trained them to create an organisation that can be rated as one of the top 500 companies in the world in the nearest future.

Apart from the DreamCity brand and the innovation being promoted by the company, given the economic situation in Nigeria, how does an entrepreneur like you navigate your way to survive?

An entrepreneur does not live life based on guesswork. Entrepreneurship itself means someone who goes through high risks, in the midst of hardship, impossibilities and obvious resistance, to create business ideas, opportunities, profit and wealth. The life of an entrepreneur is a tough one. You must be resilient and ready to forfeit sleep sometimes, simply because the information you are working with presently will expire in another few hours. Apart from financial intelligence, an entrepreneur must continue to strive to acquire new knowledge, yet there are challenges coming at each point of the way. Meanwhile, on the outside, there is a shield that masks the pain.

Generally speaking, no company has become great by operating in just one single country except China because they have that population. Even at that, each company has a serious competition to face internally. Consequently, to become a great organisation, there is the need to constantly go beyond one piece of knowledge and one geographical location. For example, the principles used to succeed in real estate few years ago have become obsolete, if you do not upgrade, you run into a huge loss. Just as obsolete education will lead to backward knowledge which in turn will stifle productivity.

Thus, Nigeria government needs to fix the education system, control social media and initiate policies whereby children cannot access social media until certain age. Children can only become responsible when they are well monitored between 5 to 10 years to their teens when they are still trainable so that entrepreneurs will not just have visions that are unattainable because there are not useful or ably skilled workforce. By fixing education, other spheres of life will be fixed – healthcare system, transportation, engineering, social relations, and the economy at large.

What is the long term vision for the DreamCity Group? 

Turning a business into a global brand is not what any random person can do without a particular mindset.
In the nearest future, I want to see multiple businesses founded and managed by Nigerians having their headquarters in key cities across different continents with branches in several countries, globally. South African companies are already doing it. To see a number of Nigerian banks competing favorably like any other entities on the floor of the US Stocks Exchange.

African businesses should not be contented with growth and that is why I am so impressed with what Dangote is doing. That audacity, we need plenty of it. Nigerian businesses should be able to chase opportunities across the world competing globally, employing foreigners, earning hard currencies. To get to that point, we have to do a lot of learnings. We have to step out of our “comfort zones”.

Is there any way you and DreamCity are giving back to the society through CSR, philanthropy, etc? 

Some years ago, we launched a foundation which I named after my late father and the focus on “Kids Without Fathers”. This platform is aimed to cater for and equip a number of them to go back to school, support their mothers financially and with healthcare and other widows. That initiative was launched in 2023. Although, we have done a lot in that space, bit we have not done enough. Apart from that, we support a lot of NGOs, even recently did free feeding initiative in Port Harcourt