Olawale Opayinka built Makaya Consult on a proposition that remains rare in African advisory: that the highest form of counsel is one the client never has to defend, and the advisor never has to explain.
Trained as a Mathematician and Actuary, Opayinka brought to consulting a discipline most in the field lack — the ability to hold complexity without simplifying it dishonestly, and to communicate conclusions that are rigorous without being inaccessible. Numbers, he has always maintained, are not the answer. They are the language in which honest answers must be expressed.
His career has been defined not by the volume of engagements but by their weight. In the late 2000s, at a moment when Lagos was beginning to assert itself as a serious destination for global capital, Opayinka was among a small group of Nigerian professionals operating at the intersection of international real estate development, infrastructure vision, and sovereign-level relationships. He facilitated engagements with principals of the highest global standing — figures whose names were synonymous with landmark development across three continents — bringing them to Lagos not as tourists of opportunity but as serious evaluators of transformational possibility.
Some of his most consequential work from that period remains, by design, undisclosed. That discipline has earned him the trust of principals across the public and private sectors who know that what they share with Makaya Consult stays with Makaya Consult.
“The relationships that matter most are the ones that endure longest. And they endure because they are built on judgment, not convenience.”
What that period produced, beyond the engagements themselves, were relationships — with Lagos, with the federal architecture of Nigerian public life, with international developers, engineers, and financiers who learned that a Nigerian advisor could be the most exacting person in the room. Those relationships have not depreciated. Several have deepened into partnerships spanning nearly two decades.
His formal engagement with Eko Atlantic City began in 2011, when he was engaged by South Energyx Nigeria Limited to undertake the financial modelling and value engineering assessments for the development. In February 2013, he organised and delivered the ceremony marking the reclamation of five million square metres of Eko Atlantic City — attended by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the 42nd President of the United States, and the Governor of Lagos State.
Welcoming President Bill Clinton, with Governor Babatunde Fashola and Ronald Chagoury.
In 2019, Olawale was appointed Managing Director and CEO of Eko Development Company — holding that role across both its FZE and Limited entities — inheriting the Azuri Towers programme at a critical juncture: a three-tower mixed-use complex including what would become Nigeria's tallest residential tower at 146 metres, under the dual pressure of a global pandemic and significant supply chain disruption.
Azuri Towers — azuritowers.com — was commissioned on schedule in December 2021. The Office Tower delivered 28 floors and approximately 27,000 sqm of Grade-A office space. Azuri One became Nigeria's tallest residential tower.
In December 2024, Olawale founded Makaya Consult FZE, incorporated in the Eko Atlantic Free Trade Zone (RC 01689), with offices at P2 Retail, Azuri Towers — the building he delivered — at the heart of EAC's Marina District.
Opayinka is a people person in the precise sense — not socially performative, but genuinely oriented toward understanding what the person across the table actually needs, as distinct from what they have asked for. His mathematical training gives him the tools. His temperament gives him the access.
In March 2026, he was principal speaker at the DAWN Commission / BRACE Commission forum on the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, projecting the corridor's potential enterprise value at $1.4 trillion to $14 trillion over 50 years. He is a golf enthusiast, a resident of Ibadan, and the proprietor of the Makaya Estate Golf Club.
