Photo: Ikoyi, Lagos — the neighbourhood Banana Island is attached to (file photo) — Wikimedia Commons.
Nigerian businessman and socialite Terry Waya has renewed his claim that he created Banana Island, Lagos's exclusive man-made residential enclave, and says his money came from farming.
Speaking on the School of Hard Knocks programme this week, Waya — father of former BBNaija star Kiddwaya — described how he says the project came to him, and rejected any suggestion that he is merely a millionaire.
- Waya: "I was the one that created Banana Island using my military contacts"
- He says he became a billionaire 20 years ago and is "one of the biggest farmers in Nigeria"
- Published histories credit the original Lagoon City concept to the late engineer Adebayo Adeleke
What Terry Waya said
"I was the one that created Banana Island using my military contacts. Today, the richest people in Nigeria live there," Waya said on the programme.
"I'm not a millionaire, I'm a billionaire. I became a billionaire 20 years ago. I'm one of the biggest farmers in Nigeria. Very, very serious farmer," he added, describing his network as his greatest asset.
It is not the first time Waya has made the claim. In a 2020 interview with BBC Pidgin, he said he learnt about the proposed project during a visit to the office of the then Minister of Works, the late General Abdulkarim Adisa, asked to be given the project, and brought in the Chagoury Group to execute it.
What the published record says
Banana Island is a man-made peninsula reclaimed from the Lagos Lagoon and connected to Ikoyi. Published accounts trace its original concept — a larger development called Lagoon City — to the late civil engineer Adebayo Adeleke, while the banana-shaped estate itself was developed by the Chagoury Group in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing.
Waya's own account places him as the man who connected the government to the developers — a role he has consistently claimed, and which no public record has contradicted, even though the "creator" title itself remains his claim rather than settled history.
Why it is trending
The clip has reignited the long-running argument about who really created Nigeria's most expensive neighbourhood — and about how one of the country's most flamboyant socialites actually made his money.
Credit: Instablog9ja report of November 11, 2026, of Terry Waya's appearance on School of Hard Knocks. Follow @newstweetnaija on Instagram for the day's biggest stories.
