Sir Kessington Adebutu, founder of Premier Lotto and recognized throughout Nigeria as Baba Ijebu, has given the Lagos State Security Trust Fund (LSSTF) a purpose-built headquarters in Ikeja valued at over N800 million, plus 5 patrol automobiles. Witnessing the donation, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu inaugurated the constructing, cementing the most recent thread of Adebutu’s legacy at 91.
LSSTF is a fund that raises non-public cash for Lagos State’s safety companies. Previously, it labored from rented premises. Now with a constructing of its personal, it not has to pay lease, and it now has a everlasting base for mobilising different donors.
Lagos runs on commerce, and commerce will depend on safety, which is why a fund backing safety companies issues to merchants as a lot as to residents. Clearly, Adebutu had all these laid out on his desk earlier than making the large transfer.
The fortune of Adebutu, as some readers are probably conscious, comes from gaming, an uncommon route amongst Nigerian billionaires, most of whom constructed theirs in oil, banking or cement. He laid the muse for the nation’s lottery and swimming pools trade within the Sixties, registered Face-to-Face Pools in 1971 and based Premier Lotto in 2001. He has since unfold that cash throughout the financial system.
Through Neemtree Limited, he holds about 28 per cent of Wema Bank, making him its largest particular person shareholder, and he chairs the listed engineering agency Arbico Plc. His group additionally has pursuits in actual property, oil and fuel, and agriculture.
Moreover, his giving runs on a schedule. The Kessington Adebukunola Adebutu Foundation, arrange in 2005, spends about N150 million a month on hospital payments, training and assist for poor folks, and has constructed libraries at Lagos Baptist Academy, his old-fashioned, and Crescent University.
When he clocked 90, he arrived with two massive items: a medical analysis centre on the Lagos University Teaching Hospital and a N4 billion dedication for infrastructure throughout the native governments of Remoland, the Ogun State space the place he holds the title of Balogun.
Few businessmen carry Adebutu’s standing past enterprise. The Ooni of Ife made him Odole-Oodua of Ife, a title as soon as held by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and Lagos has given him the title Babalaje.
