O'dua Investment repositions

• Published date: 11 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

THE Board and Management of the O'dua Investment Company Limited has repositioned the conglomerate to a world-class entity, with renewed interests in agriculture, agro-allied and Information Technology portfolios.

Its Chairman, Otunba Bimbo Ashiru, who made this known yesterday, when he led other members of the Board to a meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, also said the company runs without interference from the government's of the shareholder states of the Southwest.

Ashiru, who stated that his team visited to give an update on the development of the company as well as invite Professor Osinbajo for the inauguration of a mass housing project of the company in Ibadan, added that one of the driving forces of O'dua Investment Company's foray into agro-allied sector was its view that Nigeria had no business being an import-dependent country.

He stressed that the country should be able to produce its needs and have excess for export. He said: 'We are actually into agriculture and our focus is agriculture that will lead into industrialisation. Like I always tell people, Nigeria has no business being an import-dependent economy, we should be exporting, we should produce a large quantity that we'll be able to export out of the country. It's just like cement, for example, the consumption of cement in Nigeria is let's say about less than 30 million tons and we produce about 40 million. So, we can still export. So, what we want to do as Oodua is that we want to grow, produce and use it as.

'Look at what we are doing with starch. Starch is one of the extracts of cassava, but we import starch in this country. We should be able to produce starch that will service the needs of the industry and that's what SWACO, the Southwest Agric Company, that was formed by Oodua… and we want to be exporting, we want to produce in large quantity to cater for our needs and actually export because it will be bad for us to start exporting cassava and it's not meeting the needs of our people in house.

'Charity begins at home, we want to service the people at home and at the same time, make it an export, which will create income for the country.

'Technology is also key, we are focusing on technology. We have a technological hub in Ogun State and we want to create that model around. We are focusing on FinTech and in the next few years, we'll start hearing about the success story, in terms of IT, by Oodua Investment Limited.'

Ashiru revealed that the company...