The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, will on Friday officially launch the Grand Resort & Industrial Park in Ile-Ife.
The Grand Resort, located beside the tollgate on the Ife-Ibadan is an expressway radar of empowerment and satellite for branding and showcasing the cultural heritage and value of Ile-Ife.
In a statement signed by his Director of Media and Public Affairs, Comrade Moses Olafare, indicated that the resort a brand new city of hubs driven by urban renewal initiatives will also serve as the hub for sustainable development, fountain of employment generation.
He said the huge investment is a legacy project embarked upon by Ooni Ogunwusi for urban renewal and redevelopment into the current smart city global requirements.
The Ife Grand Resort and Leisure which is planted on over 1000 acres of land will aside from offering facilities for exquisite lodging/accommodation, harbour multiple industrial parks with pockets of industries currently producing many industrial and agricultural products as well as rendering essential services to the resort, the Ife community and Nigeria.
The resort is also housing the 3000 seating capacity Meeting Incentives Conference and Event(MICE) Centre branded ‘Ojaja Arena’, a complex of architectural wonder planted by Ooni Ogunwusi to add value of relevance to urban renewal in Ile – Ife.
“We are building a brand new city driven by urban renewal initiative. The Ojaja Arena is basically not built for social activities but a centre for training and manpower development for youths in this country, considering Ile-Ife to have over 500 thousand students of about 20 tertiary institutions; Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education and Schools of Nursing within 100km radius surrounding Obafemi Awolowo University built at the nucleus Centre in Ife over 60 years ago.
The question in my lips has been, what will these young vibrant youths will be doing after tertiary institutions, the best bet is to set up a hub that is technology friendly to boost and drive small and medium scale industries within our country Nigeria by creating a smart city for them to display whatever they can do to become employers of labour after graduation. It is a sad truth that no industries to employ them all. We can only encourage them to create industries for and by themselves because that is the reality on ground”. Ooni said.
“We are occupying over 1,000 acres, we are building a brand new city that Urban renewal and it is going to be a itech environment, it is a smart city that will have a hub, industrial hub, Ostrich farming hub, Adire Hub, Green farming, Sport Academy, film and entertainment village. The resort it is a culture and tourism destination that is close to nature. You don’t even have to move around the country.”
“What we’re doing is to replicate this, we have already commenced in Ondo, Oyo and Lagos states and we shall be launching these projects concurrently. It is a means of creating an avenue for our young minds to see Nigeria from a positive perspective, so we’re creating a country from a country.
“A country in the sense that is a localized environment, for them to be there and be successful and reach out to the world like the typical Adire hub that we have done we are exporting to 25 countries now. We are shipping to everywhere in the world and we have agents all over.
“We started that one just three months ago and it is fast gaining global recognition, the same we are going to start organic remedies (Our herbal medicinal products recently launched strategically with YEMKEM). We’ll soon have a factory here from where we’ll send it to the world.
“So it is an industrial park that is fintech driven and it is through fintech that we’re even selling what we are selling at the hub. They place orders from anywhere globally and we ship to them, life is easy for everybody.
“There is equally the African village that reminds us of our ancient ways of living and yet bring it to the modern world, everything that has to do with pan African is there. Then the sporting arena is another industry that is huge, we would have a mini camp for training and development in the sporting world. We are going to have an 18 hole Golf Course.” Ooni said.
The resort is scheduled to host the Grand reception aspect of the installation activities for the Iyalaje of Oduduwa Race worldwide to be conferred on the Lagos business magnate cum philanthropist Princess (Dr.) Toyin Kolade by the Arole Oduduwa, Ooni Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, the Ooni of Ife on Saturday.
