By Ademola Adekusibe
There is a particular way Nigerians remember the old Western Region. We remember the free primary education. We remember Cocoa House rising above Ibadan. We remember farm settlements, television, roads and the political legacy of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. We remember the phrase “life more abundant.” But somewhere between the stories we inherited and the political arguments we have today, another part of that history has received far less attention: the deliberate attempt by the Western Region to build an industrial economy of its own.
This is important because the Western Region’s development strategy was not built around the idea that agriculture alone would make the region prosperous. Agriculture was important because it generated income and raw materials, but the larger ambition was to move from producing raw materials to processing them, manufacturing products, developing indigenous businesses and creating an economic system in which regional resources could generate employment and capital within the region. The Western Nigeria Development Corporation, established as one of the region’s principal development vehicles, became an important instrument for this strategy, with the government participating directly in industrial and commercial ventures rather than leaving the entire process to foreign investors.
The scale of the ambition becomes clearer when the Western Region’s development plans are examined rather than simply relying on political memories. The region’s industrial policy included attracting both foreign and local capital, establishing industrial estates, encouraging cottage and rural industries, supporting small indigenous enterprises and providing technical and financial assistance to Nigerian industrialists. The 1955-1960 development programme allocated £6.5 million for industrial expansion, while the subsequent 1962-1968 plan envisaged almost £25 million for the sector and assigned about a quarter of total capital expenditure to industry. In other words, industrialisation was not an afterthought. It was being treated as a central part of regional economic planning.
One of the most interesting features of that strategy was the attempt to create an ecosystem around industry. Industrial estates were deliberately developed to provide the infrastructure that manufacturers needed, including roads, electricity, water and other basic services. The Ikeja Industrial Estate, established by the Western Nigeria Regional Government in 1954, became part of this broader effort to concentrate industrial activity in locations where businesses could operate efficiently. The idea was straightforward but important: government did not necessarily have to manufacture everything itself, but it could create the physical and financial conditions that made manufacturing possible for indigenous entrepreneurs and private investors.
The Western Region also understood that industrialisation could not survive without an agricultural base. That is why its development strategy linked plantations, farm settlements, agricultural research, extension services, technical training and industrial processing. The region established farm settlements and institutes aimed at training young people in modern agriculture, while its development plans included agricultural engineering, plantations, livestock, research and industrial development as interconnected areas of economic planning. The objective was not simply to produce farmers. It was to create a productive economy in which agriculture could feed industry and industry could create markets and employment beyond the farm.
This is where some of the forgotten industrial projects become particularly significant. The Western Nigeria Development Corporation participated in large-scale industrial ventures, including the West African Portland Cement Company works at Ewekoro, while the wider investment programme extended into areas such as textiles, manufacturing, food and beverages, chemicals, mechanical industries, hotels, printing and publishing, banking, insurance and agricultural ventures. The industrial strategy was therefore much broader than the popular image of an old cocoa-producing region. It was an attempt to construct a diversified economy around the resources, people and commercial networks available to the region.
And then there was the question of location. The Western Region’s economic planners understood the strategic importance of Lagos even though Lagos was the federal capital and not entirely under the regional government’s jurisdiction. Industrial and commercial investments were developed around areas such as Ikeja, Ilupeju and Apapa, while major commercial properties were established to support the emerging economy. The logic was geographical as much as economic: connect production to transportation, ports, markets, offices, finance and the growing population around Lagos. This explains why projects that today may appear unrelated were actually pieces of a larger economic architecture.
Some of the physical symbols of that era remain with us. Cocoa House in Ibadan is perhaps the most famous, but it was not merely a tall building constructed for prestige. It formed part of a wider portfolio of regional commercial assets. The Western Region also developed the Premier Hotel in Ibadan, Western House in Lagos and other properties and enterprises designed to generate revenue and provide the commercial infrastructure around the regional economy. Many of these assets eventually became part of the portfolio inherited by Odu’a Investment Company after the creation of new states in 1976.
That transition in 1976 is one of the most important parts of the story because it changed the political structure that had supported the original regional economic model. When the old Western State was divided, the assets of the former Western State had to be distributed among the new states. Odu’a Investment Company was subsequently established to take over and manage many of the commercial and industrial interests inherited from the former Western State. According to Odu’a’s own historical account, the inherited portfolio contained more than 60 investments and covered areas ranging from integrated textile mills and breweries to banking, insurance, real estate, agriculture, manufacturing, hotels, printing and publishing.
The tragedy of this history is that we often remember the buildings but forget the economic philosophy behind them. We see Cocoa House, but not the development corporation that stood behind a network of investments. We remember free education, but sometimes forget that education was part of a larger human-capital strategy designed to produce people capable of participating in agriculture, technical work, administration, commerce and industry. We celebrate farm settlements as historical landmarks, but rarely ask what they were intended to accomplish within the larger economic system. The Western Region was attempting to build not just educated citizens, but a productive population that could participate in a modern economy.
None of this means the Western Region’s model was perfect. The industrial programme faced financial limitations, implementation problems and the enormous political and economic constraints of the period. A World Bank review of the region’s development programme noted that of the £6.5 million allocated to industrial expansion in the 1955-1960 plan, only about £3.5 million had actually been invested. That distinction matters because history should not become mythology. The region had an ambitious industrial policy, but ambition and implementation were not always the same thing.
Yet perhaps the most important question for today’s Yoruba society is not whether every project succeeded. It is what happened to the idea that produced them. What happened to the belief that a region could deliberately build institutions, invest in human capital, mobilise indigenous capital, create infrastructure and use government as an instrument for economic development? What happened to the ambition to move from exporting raw materials towards processing and manufacturing? And perhaps most importantly, why did subsequent generations inherit so many of the physical assets without always inheriting the developmental thinking that created them?
This is where the story becomes relevant to the present. The Yoruba region today possesses universities, financial institutions, technology companies, manufacturing clusters, ports, airports, agricultural resources, a sophisticated commercial culture and one of Africa’s largest urban economies. But economic strength is not the same thing as economic organisation. A collection of successful individuals and businesses does not automatically constitute a regional economic strategy. The forgotten lesson of the Western Region may therefore be that development requires institutions capable of connecting individual success into collective economic capacity.
The question before the Yoruba today is not whether we should recreate the Western Region of the 1950s. We cannot and should not attempt to reproduce another historical period exactly. The question is whether we have the institutional imagination to build something equally ambitious for the present century. What would a modern Western Region development corporation look like today? Could states in the Southwest build stronger investment institutions that operate transparently and professionally? Could agricultural production be connected to modern food processing, manufacturing and export industries? Could universities be connected more deliberately to industry? Could ports, rail, highways and industrial estates be treated as parts of one economic system rather than isolated projects? Could indigenous capital be mobilised alongside international investment without surrendering strategic economic interests?
These questions matter because the old industrial projects were never really about factories alone. They were about economic sovereignty. The Western Region was attempting to create the capacity to decide what to produce, where to invest, how to develop its people and how to convert its resources into long-term wealth. That is the part of the history that deserves to be remembered.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable lesson is that infrastructure can survive longer than the institutions and ideas that created it. Buildings can remain standing while the economic philosophy behind them disappears. A region can inherit factories, hotels, estates and corporations and still lose the strategic thinking that made those assets valuable in the first place.
The forgotten industrial projects of the Western Region therefore deserve to be studied not simply as monuments to Awolowo or as evidence of a supposedly better past. They deserve to be examined as a case study in regional economic planning. There were successes, failures, contradictions and unfinished projects. But there was also something that is often missing from contemporary political conversation: a clear attempt to connect education, agriculture, infrastructure, indigenous enterprise, industrialisation and public investment into a coherent development strategy.
That may be the real history we have forgotten.
Not that the Western Region once built impressive things.
But that it once planned to build an economy.
About the Author
Ademola Adekusibe is a Nigerian journalist and the Operations Manager of The Yoruba Times. His work focuses on Yoruba affairs, Nigerian politics, history, culture, economics and the institutions shaping Nigeria’s future.