One relatively quiet businessman and entrepreneur making his marks within Nigeria’s real estate world is the man Paul Onwuanibe, a Nigerian business tycoon and the CEO of Landmark Africa, one of Nigeria’s top real estate and property development firms behind popular signature brands such as ‘The Landmark Leisure Beach,” Lagos, Nigeria’s first premium, privately-owned beachfront.
Paul Onwuanibe has extensive experience in project design and implementation and has worked in the property management industry for 20 years.
Birth and Growing Up
Paul Onwuanibe was born in Paddington, London, on June 29, 1965, to George and Dorothy Onwuanibe. His parents are of Nigerian descent, and he has two siblings: an elder sister, Angela, and an elder brother, Anthony.
He went to primary and secondary school in the United Kingdom, as well as a brief stint at the all-boys Eton College. However, at age 10, Paul and his brother were sent to the Federal Government College in Lagos as boarders by their diplomat father, who wanted his children to learn about Nigeria.
Paul attended school for five years before returning to the UK for his A-levels. He then went back to Nigeria for his post-secondary studies. He attended the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), to study architecture.
Upon receiving his first degree, Onwuanibe moved back to London, where he attended South Bank University in 1989 to earn a master’s degree in construction project management. He then attended Imperial College in London in 1990, where he got his master’s degree in environmental design and property development. Finally, he earned an MBA from the London Business School in 1993 with distinction for his value chain analysis dissertation.
He also received the prestigious RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) certification. It was at this point that he realised that he had a long-term interest in business rather than architecture.
Foray into entrepreneurship
After working for several years at a few UK-based companies, Onwuanibe decided to start and manage his own company. Later, while living in the UK, he began developing a business strategy for his venture in his early thirties. Shortly after that, he launched the Landmark business in the UK before opening branches there and in Germany, Spain, Belgium, and France.
Paul Onwuanibe had previously worked for a UK architecture business for three years before establishing Landmark. He travelled to more than 60 countries while working for the construction and property management company, where he opened more than 200 branches for the business.
He also worked with Mark Dixon, the creator of Regus, whose foray into entrepreneurship saw him turn a $205,000 company into a multibillion-dollar investment in just eight years.
The Birth of Landmark Africa
Landmark Africa was established in 2003 and it began operations in Lagos and expanded into Accra, Johannesburg, and Nairobi in 2006.
Onwuanibe, in an interview with Africa Outlook, said, “I learnt a lot about the property, human behaviour, city infrastructure, finances, supply chain, and the commercial needs of businesses in the global marketplace. I also appreciated the importance of having a good office services platform within a certain sector,”.
“I eventually decided it was time to embark upon my entrepreneurial journey. And that’s when I thought of Landmark.”
The Landmark Brand
Even though Landmark Africa was established in 2003, he had actually started it in London in 1997. The idea was to make it simpler for smaller businesses to reasonably obtain luxury office space in prime locations to boost the consumer image of their brand. The word Landmark, he said, stands for “image, goal, and position.”
Soon, Landmark was operating in seven other European countries and New York City. Then it occurred to him to apply the same strategy back home, given how undersupplied Africa is.
Onwuanibe began laying the foundation for Landmark Leisure Beach as soon as he discovered a suitable piece of undeveloped property in 2007.
This followed the 1997 launch of Landmark Africa in Nigeria. Then, there were many resource and infrastructure problems, as well as a high level of crime; at the time the CEO was preparing to build the beach, this gave him and his colleagues the idea to build a commercial and leisure hub with everything available.
In other words, their plan was to develop a location where individuals could conduct business, obtain their preferred foods and beverages, and engage in leisure activities. This building is mixed-use and has a beachfront along the Atlantic Ocean.
Shiro Restaurant, Hardrock Café, and the renowned Landmark Event Centre are all located there. In addition, a mixed-use tower with retail establishments, offices, and a hotel, as well as residential and recreational spaces, can be found at the leisure beach.
This skyscraper was designed to encapsulate the company’s philosophy in a single structure. This beach is the ideal location to take part in a wide range of leisure and entertainment options suitable for adults and kids. Paul Onwuanibe and his group will develop a hotel and residential tower within the beach shortly. The CEO wants to guide his staff in providing top-notch services at the resort beach.
Landmark Africa has since launched several distinct African commercial, leisure, and lifestyle destinations after starting as a real estate development company.
Landmark Lagos is the most popular business and lifestyle location on the West African coast, according to the BBC, Euromoney, and African Property Investment Summit.
Challenges…
Every great success story has its share of obstacles, and Paul Onwuanibe has been no exception. Before hitting it, he faced his fair share of obstacles. First, he had to deal with paperwork issues for his Nigerian company, which delayed construction for two years.
According to him, it took him up to seven months to register his business. He compares that to the UK, where he claims registration barely takes seven minutes at most. “If you want what you never had, you need to be prepared to accomplish something you never knew,” he counsels young and aspiring business people working to improve Africa.
Business Lessons
The life of Paul Onwuanibe demonstrates the need for planning when starting a business. Before launching his business, he thought it out and created a plan. Even before it became a reality, he already knew what he desired.
Planning involves determining the necessary actions and tasks to be carried out and the duration needed to complete each. Put another way; it involves developing and maintaining a plan that bridges the gap between where we are and where we aspire to be, including emotional factors that call for conceptual knowledge.
Planning entails setting objectives and determining the best course of action to achieve these objectives. It took years to plan the Landmark as we know it today.
Another critical factor that should be considered is resilience. Being an entrepreneur requires you to have a high level of resilience. Resilience is the “developable capacity to rebound and bounce back from adversity, conflict, failure or even positive events, progress, and increased responsibility.”
To succeed, one must go beyond simply surviving and persist, recover, and go above and beyond. Resilience produces a positive pattern of adaptation when faced with risk or adversity. Resilience can be enhanced by maintaining the present, maintaining perspective, and concentrating on the immediate, which are both dispositional and trait-like characteristics. Paul Owanibe was very resilient when he returned to Africa, where specific government policies make it more challenging to conduct business.
He has also continuously ensured the growth and expansion of the company by reinvesting more money into it after making all these advancements in the business sector.
