Founder of Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC) Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo has taken a jibe at chief executives and founders of banks, stating that they “go up” whenever their banks’ shares “go down”.
Ashimolowo bared his mind in a recent interview on KK Show, recalling how he allegedly lost N200m buying shares in Nigerian banks when he could have invested the same amount in real estate.
“The Nigerian banks, I am here today, I’m 72, and can say what I like, if you take me to court, you are wasting your money because I intend to talk about investments, and why you should do real estate, and not all these buying shares in banks because I lost about N200m in Nigerian banks. N200m worth of shares and they didn’t sell it N30m,” he said.
“If I had used the money to buy land, I don’t even need to cut the grass. And I am not even talking about wonder banks, I am talking of the ones that are in existence today, and every time their shares go down, their MDs and founders go up, How come?”
He said those who ignore investing in the real estate sector of Lagos now will regret it in the next 10 years.
“Anybody who does not invest in Lagos now will regret in 10 years’ time, because some of us regretted not responding to Lagos on time, I came to Lagos as a young pastor when a plot of land in Opebi was N500, and Allen Avenue was N1,000 for a plot. Allen was a bush. Ikeja areas were bush. Opebi was a bush. A plot of land in Isolo was N500.
“The same Opebi which I wouldn’t buy for N500 in 1979/80, and now went in 2004 and bought the plot for N10m and built four flats and a small house at the back and stayed there for a few years. I now sold the whole place for N120 or N150m in 2018, my own investment there was N55m,” said Ashimolowo.
