I had walked into the huge Mall the other Sunday in search of an elusive eye drop coming from Charles O’Tudor’s.
The quintessential Brands Genius had just lost his beautiful wife, and I had gone to pay my condolences.
The Mall didn’t look very vibrant on a Sunday morning.
Maybe because when I went, the adherents from the huge Catholic Church beside it hadn’t yet closed to come and make their ritual shopping and visit.
Got what I wanted from the famous MedPlus Pharmacy and made my way out.
Something wasn’t just right about the atmosphere. It was missing a touch of what we, as users, had always felt about the mall.
Purple Maryland used to be Maryland Shopping Complex, when the Omoniyis owned and ran it.
Bosun, the head of that family, took over from his very hard-working father, who was a super agent to John Holt, and ran the place as a family-owned unit with little shops in a communal way.
Then came Purple Real Estate Income Plc (Purple), owned and visioned by two extraordinarily brilliant investment bankers, Laide Agboola and Obinna Onunkwo
Laide was a colleague at BGL, and Obinna was a client.
Laide’s brilliance saw him being moved to go support a Minister of State for Finance from BGL in his mid to late twenties. At the same time, Obinna was the superstar performer at his then Guardian Express Bank, where a super Investment Banker and current Chairman of Cowry Asset, Johnson Chukwu, held sway as Treasurer.
Anyway, Purple, under these two, set its sights on the Maryland Shopping Complex and raised equity and debt financing for its development. Nigeria got its most iconic Mall – Purple Maryland, built by Nigerians, with Nigerian funding and led by Nigerians. Further down, they refinanced using a USD mezzanine funding.
The Mall entered the market as a mixed-use neighbourhood centre, offering, amongst others, retail, co-working, and private offices, as well as an entertainment experience in the heart of Lagos Mainland.
It also came with a giant LED screen reputed to be the’ largest in Sub-Saharan Africa.
With its extraordinary accoutrements and strategic location, it was no wonder it was well received, recording about a million visitors annually since its 2016 opening, all under Purple’s management.
With the densely populated parts of Lagos mainland like Maryland, Mende, Ikeja GRA, Gbagada, Anthony and Ilupeju and with some of the most stupendous physical stats like a 7,700 square meters of land, a 220 parking bay with basement level parking coming with over a 100 car in transit capacity, it’s no wonder its attraction remains compelling.
My independent investigations also showed that throughout Purple’s management, occupancy averaged about 95%, with Nigeria’s most iconic brands calling the place home.
As of June 2025. The Mall was valued at about N23.5 billion
It was a beautiful Nigerian story of unique individual enterprise. But tarry, the ill winds came, and it was ferocious
The macroeconomic environment hit like a deranged tsunami with foreign exchange moving fivefold. No one could have planned for that, as we have seen with many other businesses being affected by the macroeconomic environment.
The strong winds that came with the delay in accessing Forex, resulting in further delays in meeting critical USD-denominated obligations to Offshore Financiers, amongst others, led to the beautiful story wiltering into receivership in October 2023, with highly respected Richard Ayodele Akintunde named Receiver Manager.
Purple under this period still managed the iconic facility and even onboarded a major fitness franchise, I-Fitness, which took up close to 1,000 Sqm.
Please note the centre comes with 50+ shop spaces, which were continued to be managed very effectively by Purple, who deployed international-standard internal controls and management capacity.
It is also noteworthy that during this period, strong growth in advertising revenues was recorded between 2023 and 2024, underscoring Purple’s management’s resilience and consistency even under constrained conditions.
Surprisingly, on November 30, with no notice and no reliable structured handover as I have, allegedly, gathered, the management agreement between Purple and the receiver manager was terminated, and BROLL was appointed the new Facility Manager.
Since the handover, the facility seems to be recording a downturn in patronage driven by the seeming cessation of initiatives like marketing, charitable, religious and artistic promotional partnerships used to drive ‘screen visibility’ and footfall, which attracted paying advertisers, thereby affecting the manager’s ability to keep the pace in maintenance and others.
This turn of events has led to various complaints from all stakeholders, including internal and external wh, which may, in turn, have attracted negative media attention.
Purple has stated exclusively to me that they are in settlement talks and are primed to return the place to its old glory once the talks achieve positive results.
Tenants are also pushing for their return or, worse still, a joint management structure that should see better days for the Mall
Purple, from my understanding, is a resounding Real Estate cum Entertainment behemoth with strong capacity to ‘keep doing things’. They recently unveiled the wonderful Purple Lekki and have released results showing capacity for resurgence
As of September 2025, based on market information available, the Firm’s Gross Assets stood at N73.9b, borrowings at N13.9 b, and Shareholders’ Funds at N43.7 b.
All of these, excluding Maryland Mall, with a gross asset valuation of N23.5b, which could have conveniently put Gross Asset at close to N100b, especially as borrowing keeps dwindling.
Once the settlement talks are finalised, I can envision the largest real estate company listing by introduction on the NGX especially with the offers of assets and cash currently available for them from shareholders and other stakeholders, whilst still entertaining others to neutralise the borrowing and bring total borrowing to well below N9b vis a vis N100b in Gross Asset.
I see light at the end of the tunnel. As we watch this series very closely, we expect a robust handshake amongst all stakeholders.
We expect this to remain a truly remarkable story.
