For decades, Cocoa House has watched Ibadan change around it. Roads have become busier, businesses have multiplied, and the city’s skyline has grown, but the 26-storey tower in Dugbe has remained a familiar sight.

Rising about 105 metres above one of the city’s busiest commercial districts, Cocoa House is surrounded by traders, offices, businesses and the everyday movement of Ibadan. It represented something much bigger than another addition to the city’s skyline.

Cocoa House was completed in 1964 and officially commissioned in 1965; the building was developed during the period when cocoa was one of the major drivers of the Western Region’s economy. It was built from the proceeds of agricultural exports, particularly cocoa, alongside commodities such as rubber and timber.

Before it became Cocoa House 

Before it became known as Cocoa House, the building was called Ile Awon Agbe, meaning House of Farmers. The name captured the thinking behind the project. The tower was not simply another office building rising over Ibadan. Its story was connected to the farmers and agricultural economy that generated the wealth behind the Western Region’s development ambitions.

The building was conceived during the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and completed under his successor, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. It was officially commissioned in July 1965.

At the time, a 26-storey tower rising more than 100 metres above Ibadan was a remarkable sight. It was also not just remarkable for Nigeria.

When a tower became a city landmark 

Cocoa House became the first skyscraper in West Africa and was the tallest building in Nigeria for a period after its completion. It held the Nigerian height record until 1979. And the building rose in Dugbe, one of Ibadan’s major commercial areas, at a time when the modern Nigerian skyline was still taking shape.

The tower’s height therefore carried a certain message. Ibadan was not simply a large regional city. It was also a centre of commerce, administration and investment, and Cocoa House became one of its most recognisable symbols.

From cocoa farms to a city landmark 

The most interesting part of Cocoa House’s story may be what sits behind the concrete.

The Western Region’s economy had been heavily connected to agriculture, with cocoa playing a major role in its export earnings. Those earnings were used to support development projects, and Cocoa House became one of the most visible examples of turning agricultural wealth into physical infrastructure.

That is what makes the building more than an architectural landmark. Look at Cocoa House, and you can also see a particular moment in Nigerian economic history. A crop grown on farms became an export; exports generated revenue. And some of that wealth eventually appeared as a 105-metre tower in the middle of Ibadan.

The name Cocoa House was therefore fitting. The building itself became a physical reminder of the commodity that helped make its construction possible.

It survived the fire and kept working 

Like many historic buildings, Cocoa House has had its difficult chapters.

On January 9, 1985, a fire gutted the building. Reports on its history state that the fire began in the upper floors and was linked to an electrical fault. The building was subsequently closed before restoration work was completed. Cocoa House was renovated and reopened for commercial use in 1992.

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The fire became part of the building’s story, but it did not erase its place in Ibadan’s history.

Today, the building remains an office and commercial property in Dugbe. It is owned by Odu’a Investment Company Limited and managed by Wemabod, an Odu’a subsidiary. Wemabod currently describes the building as having 26 storeys, a height of 105 metres and more than 9,900 square metres of lettable space.

That continued commercial use is part of what makes Cocoa House interesting.

Some historic buildings survive mainly as monuments. Cocoa House has remained part of the working city around it. People still go to Dugbe to do business. Offices still operate inside the tower. And the building continues to occupy the skyline that made it so striking six decades ago.

A new look for an old landmark with a bigger story 

Cocoa House has continued to change with the times. In August 2026, Goldberg Lager unveiled a giant talking-drum installation above the building, designed to celebrate Yoruba culture, with the drum sounding hourly and lighting up at night. The addition has given the landmark a new visual identity and attracted fresh attention, while also raising a question about how much modern commercial branding should shape a building with such a deep history.

In 2025, Odu’a Investment Company marked Cocoa House’s 60th anniversary and announced plans centred on preserving the historic landmark while modernising it for continued use.

Cocoa House is old, but its significance does not belong only to the past. It tells a story about cocoa, farmers, regional development and the ambition to turn economic resources into lasting infrastructure. It also tells the story of a city that has changed around it without completely losing one of its most recognisable landmarks.

A story that began with farmers, grew through cocoa exports and eventually rose 105 metres above Ibadan. nd perhaps that is what makes Cocoa House worth remembering: it is not only a skyscraper that survived the decades. It is a piece of Ibadan’s economic history that happened to be built upwards.

Meiza Nigeria