PWAN Group emerges Champion Newspapers’ 2023 Most Outstanding Real Estate Company of the Year

 

.Award a show of local reference, says Dr. Onwumere, commends Champion Mgt

 

COMFORT EKELEME, Business Editor

 

President/ Chief Executive Officer, PWAN Group, Dr Jayne Onwumere has commended the management of Champion Newspapers Limited for honoring the company as the 2023 Most Outstanding Real Estate Company of the Year.

PWAN Group is Nigeria’s leading Real Estate Conglomerate and and has waxed stronger from year to year to meeting the expectations of clients.

Speaking during a management visit to the corporate head office of PWAN in Lagos, Dr. Onwumere thanked the leadership of Champion Newspapers for the nomination, adding that the award is coming at the company’s 12th year as an organization.

She expressed gratitude that PWAN is having local reference, adding that the company has become one of the models that people are looking up to in Nigeria and Africa.

“I want to thank the management of Champion Newspapers Limited on behalf of the entire PWAN Group, the Chairman, myself and other directors for this honour.

“It gladdens my heart that we are having local reference. Before,  all our references were foreign, but today God is raising people out of Africa. We can say that we have local model, people we can look up to in Nigeria here and I am grateful that PWAN has become one of those models that people are looking up to, because this is out of Africa.

“It is not just a company that came out from abroad, because most times that is what we celebrate. So thank you so very much”.

While speaking on the programme lined up for the company’s 12th year celebration, she said there will be Founders’ dinner on the  10th of March,  Diversity day on the 11th and Convention on the 12th at the Eko Hotels and Suites.

According to her, on the 11th which is the Diversity day, the company will showcase it’s beautiful difference, because the staff strength cuts across every part of Nigeria.

She said, “We have the Muslims,Christians in our team and we have been able to cooperatively work together. So this year, we decided to celebrate that diversity.

 

“On the 10th which is the Founders’ dinner, is an opportunity for us to celebrate people that have worked with us. Then on the Convention day, we will celebrate our independent marketers”.

Speaking on what differentiates PWAN from other Real Estate Companies in Nigeria, Dr. Onwumere noted that the most important thing PWAN does that other companies don’t do is bringing people together.

“We have a quote I am known with in PWAN, “to invest in property is good, but to invest in people is better”. This is because I have come to realize that to invest in people is better. If I was the only one running this business, maybe by now my hair would have turned completely grey, it is a very tough field. Because we are so many doing it and everyone is doing their beat, the group is growing.

“Right now, there are about sixty companies in PWAN Group, all of them do real estate and are fully registered companies with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

In 2015, we started setting up other people. We said that our vision is to make home ownership a reality for as many people as possible because that is where the Chairman and I were coming from. We were homeless for two and half years after our business failed, and in those two and half years, we lived in about thirteen different places in two and half years.

“When we started PWAN, we were squatting in somebody’s house, our first office was a bar. By 2013, I noticed that most of the people that  were marketing with us were people that knew us as people that didn’t have any shelter. I noticed that they were all getting interested in the business.

“What I did was to start opening businesses for people on a 50/50 basis. One most important thing we need in this business is capacity to market.

There is no PWAN company that do less than N120 million in a year. That is why I say the most important thing that PWAN does other companies don’t do is bringing people together. A lot of other companies are more interested in class, but in PWAN, everybody is welcomed,” she stated.

Dr Jayne further noted that PWAN Group has so far created it’s own economy aimed at supporting the Nigerian economy, YOUR VIEW.

“So a lot of times we don’t focus on what goes on in Nigeria, all I keep thinking every time is how do we provide solution because we really don’t have the power to change certain government policies, but we can adapt and make something out of it.

 

“For instance, with the food crisis going on in Nigeria presently, we decided on this our 12th Convention that our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) will be food. So a lot of our companies will be distributing rice in different locations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we did palliatives, we shared N6,000 to our people.

“So we try to see what we can do within our organization, thank God that we are many in the same field. In PWAN now, if we say we want to raise a hundred million, we can do it under no time and collectively we can use it to do something.

“What we are trying to do in our business is to see how we can get around what we call issues in Nigeria. I also strongly believe that wherever there are issues, there are opportunities for somebody to do something.

“Recently, I said to my people, instead of all of us going into land, can some people begin to set up cement distribution business because in our value chain, there is so much to do.

“Somebody can take up the work of clearing bushes, somebody can take up the work of building, fencing. So within the Group, we can still create jobs again out of what we do. If someone amongst us now becomes a rice distributor, the person already has customers on ground. That is Why I said that the most important thing we have done is people,” she said.

Interestingly, Dr Jayne noted that they have over three hundred thousand people registered with PWAN.

She stated that over a million people every month benefit from the work done by PWAN, adding that things will surely improve in Nigeria.

It would be recalled that PWAN Group came into the Real Estate scene on March 12, 2021, and was fired by the desire to narrow the perennial housing deficit in the country.

Also, the company was set out with the vision to make home ownership dream a reality for everyone.

Interestingly, the now sprawling conglomerate gave the world the first -ever Real Estate network business model. Since then, PWAN Group has continued to touch many lives positively, just as other competing firms have variously copied it’s business model.