The Oyo State Government on Friday formally commenced the construction of a 150-room five-star hotel in the heart of Ibadan, the state capital.
The hotel, which is under a Public Private Partnership arrangement, will be built at a cost N6 billion.
Governor Abiola Ajimobi, while turning the sod of the hotel situated few metres away from the popular Premier Hotel and Cultural Centre, Mokola, said that it was a key prong of his administration’s restoration and developmental initiatives.
“If Chief Obafemi Awolowo constructed Premier Hotel several decades ago, a government patterned after his like ours should also seek to equal, if not better, this laudable and evergreen initiative,” he said.
According to the governor, the state government will provide cash injection of 10 per cent of the total project cost, in addition to value of the site.
He said that the hotel would provide an international conference centre and banquet facility for a projected 400 to 750 guests, adding that all its facilities would be of international standard and with a touch of class that his administration had been known with in the last one year.
He said: “We have chosen this site as a result of the tripartite value addition we want the people of Oyo State and the guests from all over the world whom we expect in our state as a result of our aggressive developmental drives to benefit from it.
“Indeed, this hotel is formulated to key into a triangular developmental corridor that we expect of this area.
“Already, the Cultural Centre, which we are going to develop to international standard, is sited in this corridor; so also is the legendary Premier Hotel, jointly owned by Oyo and other Oodua States.
“This hotel completes the triangle and is expected to provide complementary support to the earlier-mentioned existing members of the corridor.”
Ajimobi explained that the establishment of the hotel had become necessary because of the gap that exists in quality hotel in the state.