SmartCity PLC and HazanaCity: What the Public Record Shows About the Lagos Developer

SmartCity PLC is marketing two large mixed-use schemes in south-west Nigeria. Its own site describes HazanaCity Oyo, which its tender documents call HazanaCity Ibadan, as "spanning across 100 hectares", and HazanaCity Osogbo in Osun State as "a visionary 78 hectares mixed development". As of the most recent public documents, the construction of the housing and infrastructure at both sites was still being put out to tender.

That is the central fact a buyer should hold. In January 2025 the company published an invitation to tender for housing and infrastructure development at HazanaCity Osogbo under a private sector participation scheme, covering six lots including retiree residences, assisted living units, technology lodges, a commercial technology hub and the horizontal infrastructure of drainage, sewage, water, fibre, electricity and landscaping. Submissions closed on 14 February 2025 and were directed to the Project Director at No. 9 MacDonald Road, Ikoyi, Lagos. A second invitation, for development works at HazanaCity Ibadan under the same scheme, carried an April 2025 deadline. Tendering construction is a normal and orderly stage of a project. It is not the same stage as delivery, and no independent report, government release or third-party record of a completed or allocated unit at either site was located.

Who runs SmartCity PLC

The company names its own leadership. Sir Demola Aladekomo is listed as founder and chairman. Gabriel Ukachukwu is listed as managing director and chief executive. Very Rev. Titilola Aladekomo is listed as a director and as chief executive of Treasurenest Limited. Emmanuel Ojo is listed as a non-executive director and as managing director of RedTech Ltd. The management team named on the site includes Kayode Arogundade as general manager, Fatai Alimi as chief finance officer, Ifeoma Madu as company secretary and legal, Ajibayo Adebayo as head of people and culture, and Tolulope Ogundadegbe as assistant general manager for marketing and communications.

The chairman is the most independently documented figure. Chams HoldCo's board page records that Sir Demola Aladekomo retired as group managing director of Chams Group in 2015 and was appointed chairman of the board in March 2020. The same page records Tomiwa Aladekomo as a non-executive director who "currently serves on the boards of ChamsSwitch Plc, SmartCity Resorts Plc and Volunteer Corps Nigeria."

Two companies with almost the same name

This is where the public record most easily misleads.

SmartCity PLC, the operator of smartcityplc.com, appears in third-party registry aggregators under RC-1439376, registered in September 2017 as a public company limited by shares with a registered address at Plot 8, Louis Solomon Close, Victoria Island, Lagos. SmartCity Resorts Plc is a separate entity under RC-452578, registered in May 2002, at House G13, Victoria Garden City, Ajah. Both records list Aladekomo directors, which is the main reason to connect them, but they are different registrations with different dates and different addresses.

The distinction matters because the older entity carries the older story. Chams Plc's audited financial statements for 2021, filed through the Nigerian Exchange, record SmartCity Resorts Plc as holding 283,064,633 shares, a substantial shareholding of 6.03 per cent in the listed company. And BusinessDay, reporting on 9 July 2018 under the byline of Elijah Bello, wrote about an earlier smart city project conceived in 2011 and quoted "Demola Aladekomo, Chairman of SmartCity Resorts Plc" from a January 2016 statement that the initiative had the potential to create "about 50,000 direct employments in its first five years." The article's assessment was that the vision "seems to have fizzled out of the minds of the Nigerian government." That reporting concerns SmartCity Resorts Plc and a government technology programme. It is not a report about HazanaCity, and it should not be read as one.

The registration number for the operating company is itself unsettled in public sources. The Corporate Affairs Commission's own search was not reachable during this research, so the RC number above rests on commercial aggregators rather than the registry. The registered address on those aggregator records is in Victoria Island, while the company's published operating address is on MacDonald Road, Ikoyi. The tender notice describes SmartCity PLC as "a company registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC)" without giving a number.

Dates conflict too. A 2021 recruitment listing stated the company "was incorporated on 20th September 2002." The aggregated registry record gives September 2017. The timeline on the company's own About page begins in 1990, but that page is unedited template copy, discussed below, and cannot carry a founding date. None of this is evidence of anything improper. It does mean that the incorporation date and the correct operating entity are questions for the company, and that a buyer should ask for the RC number in writing and check it at source. The guide to verifying a Nigerian developer before buying off plan sets out how to run that check, and the note on why a polished website is not due diligence covers the wider trap.

No named partners, and project pages that are not filled in

No contractor, architect, quantity surveyor, engineer, bank, trustee or escrow agent is named on the company's live website in connection with either HazanaCity scheme, and none appears in any independent source located.

The project pages are the clearest illustration. The Hazana Park page, one of seven under the site's Projects section, carries a specification block reading "Architect: N/A, Project Type: N/A, Client: N/A, Terms: N/A, Strategy: N/A, Date: N/A", followed by the unedited template prompt "Please add the statistics for this project!" and, in place of a video, "Please add the YouTube video URL for the project!" The site's About page has the same character: its history timeline describes a founder focused on "personalized, high-quality residential interiors" and a fifteen-year anniversary in 2025, which is generic template copy rather than a description of this business.

None of that is evidence of anything improper, and an unfinished website is a common condition. It does mean that the publicly available detail on who is building these schemes, and on what terms, is currently thin enough that a buyer would have to obtain it directly.

What no source establishes

No bank, lender, development finance institution or equity investor is named anywhere in connection with the company. No certificate of occupancy, excision, gazette entry, governor's consent or deed of assignment is published for either HazanaCity site on the company's project pages, which is an absence on those pages rather than a finding about title. Anyone buying into either scheme should ask for the title instrument by name and number; the explainer on certificates of occupancy, rights of occupancy and governor's consent sets out what each document does and does not prove.

No registration, prospectus, approved public offer, enforcement notice or warning-list entry naming SmartCity PLC was found in searches of Securities and Exchange Commission Nigeria material, and nothing naming the company was found in Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission material or in published court records. Nigerian court filings and regulator registers are largely not published in searchable form, so those searches establish the absence of a public record, not the absence of a matter. The company name carries the PLC suffix and the aggregated registry record is consistent with a public company limited by shares, but no evidence was found that it is listed on the Nigerian Exchange.

Bektu (https://bektu.com) tracks developer records against delivery history rather than announcements, and the company profile sits at https://bektu.com/companies/smartcity-plc.

The useful questions to put to SmartCity PLC are short. Which RC number is the contracting entity, and what is its registered address today. Which of 2002 and 2017 is the incorporation date. What title documents cover the Oyo and Osogbo land, and in whose name. Who are the appointed contractor, architect and escrow or trust arrangement for each scheme. And how many units at each site have been completed, handed over and allocated, with dates.