Greenfield Assets Nigeria Limited is on a quest of transforming Aba City’s history of the Open Market Retail System to Smart Mall Infrastructure which will help stimulate the urban renewal of Aba City.
The Nigerian company owned by Peter Obanua, a 43-year-old Nigerian business man is converting a 28-acre property in Aba into a smart mall community with 100,000 square meter of retail space for shopping, a multiplex movie theatre, bank, a transportation system, a dry dock for wholesale distribution and lots more.
Aba is a renowned city known as a major centre of commerce and industry in Nigeria with an influence that extends to neighbouring countries such as Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Central Africa Republic and Ghana. The city’s major shopping centre is Ariaria market, built in the 1970s with the capacity of 20,000 shops but now occupies 120,000 shops, exceeding its carrying capacity.
But with the Aba Mega Mall on a projected development cost of $300 million, it is expected to become the biggest shopping mall in Africa and that will go a long way to fill the commercial needs of the city, the nation and the neighbouring countries that trade with the city.
Peter Obanua, CEO, Greenfield Assets Nigeria Limited, in an interview with Forbes, confirmed that the first phase of the 1,000 units of retail space has been completed and commissioned. The second phase has started and will include a luxury mall, 100 room boutique hotel, 6-screen cinema, 10-megawatt independent power supply, the dry port with a fully automated 30,000 sq mile warehouse. The second phase, he said, would allow for 10,000 units of lettable space for commercial activities.
The development of this mall will help nurture local industries such as the leather industry in Aba which has suffered because of lack of a conducive environment. The mall will provide a world class trade environment with adequate facilities to support the leather works industry and many other industries locally and nationally. It will ultimately also create employment opportunities in excess of over 10,000 direct and indirect jobs.
