1
“After Oja’ba, close to the late Oba Adetunji’s palace at Popoyemoja is a compound called Ile-Ilaji, Idi-Arere. That Ile Ilaji is where my mother hailed from. It so happened that on the 17th October 1968, I was born in that very Ile-Ilaji, and it was after she’d birthed me that she took me to the hospital so that the birth could be registered. While my father is from Olugbade compound, Oja’ba, I grew up in Ile-Ilaji.
Ibadan, at the time, was a peaceful, serene, community. Back then, there was a saying that ‘Ibadan people have so many windows but only one door’. That means that in Ibadan, there is a communal sense of belonging. Every Ibadan person is, someway somehow, connected to another man. If you look closely enough, you’ll find the link. We all come from the same source.
I knew early enough that when there is a conflict between two Ibadan people, it is better for an outsider not to meddle in the conflict because no matter how fierce the conflict may be, when the parties would resolve it, the outsider will not be there; and if care is not taken then the outsider will find themselves trapped in the centre of a resolved conflict. That was the kind of Ibadan I grew up in.
Our sense of community is very strong in Ibadan and I believe, too, that from the days of our ancestors, every member of the Ibadan society was embraced. No one was left out. Everyone mattered and you can see this in our chieftaincy system. In the rise to the throne, there is the military line of ascension which is the Balogun line and the civilian line. So, from the earliest of times, the unity of Ibadan was forged in the manner that our ancestors carried on things, not leaving any strata of society behind.
Growing up was fun. My primary school was Wesley Primary School at Elekuro. The school was founded by the Methodist church, the same institution that founded Wesley College which happened to be a teacher training college at the time. Back in those days, it was the educated ones in our community who ran the Methodist schools and they did so with whatever resources the church provided for them.
The school may have been founded by the Methodist church but it truly felt like it belonged to the people, there was a strong sense of communal belonging within and around the Elekuro axis. The implication of this was that there was no discrimination whatsoever in who attended the Methodist school. As a Muslim, you were welcome to join the school so long as you were willing to learn. That willingness to learn was all that mattered.
At the time, I would walk to school. I had friends and we moved around together in our cliques, just having fun. There was nothing like ritual killings at the time, so as a parent, you had nothing to worry about if your little child left home for school. Doors and windows of houses were never closed because you’d rarely ever hear of any robbery incident. That’s why when you see the structures of houses from that era, there were never fences; why will you need a fence?
I remember that, as a child, I could sleep in the Fawoles’ house or I could sleep in the Tonades’ House; I’d sleep anywhere night found me and, before I slept, they’d give me dinner. It was such a great time to be alive. There was no home I couldn’t walk into and have a decent meal, and just as you could enjoy the meals from neighbours’ homes, you could be disciplined by an elder too without needing any prior approval from your parents. Today, life is very different: we build houses with tall fences. As though the tall fences are not enough, we put electric wires on the fence, and after that, we still install CCTV cameras everywhere.
Elekuro in the 70s was not the posh side of Ibadan, it was ghetto. The posh places in Ibadan were Bodija, Jericho GRA, Oke-Ado. Life in the slums was radically different from life in the posh places. The kind of water the Jericho people drank was not the same as the water we drank, and I must say that getting exposed to that kind of unfiltered water helped people like us from the ghetto to develop better immune system, unlike the posh kids. We had easy access to fresh produce from the farms and so fresh foods were no big deal.
That’s why I can say that the real life was in the ghetto and, perhaps, that explains why some of the greatest men in history came out of the unbelievable places of this world.Being born into that world, living that life, would lay the foundation for my journey into the person who I have become today.”
2
I lived an adventurous life as a kid. My friends and I would trek from Aperin-Elekuro to Akanran just so that we could swim in the Akanran river. That trip to the river was long but it was always fun. Once we began trekking, we would see people selling corn by the road, and we’d eat that as we go along. Sometimes, we could see a farm of yams and we’d go in. The farmers would welcome us into their farms and encourage us to roast some if we were hungry. They did not know us from Adam.
The peak of our adventure was getting to Akanran river and jumping into the water for a swim. Just like us, tens of other kids would come from far and near to swim in the river. The water would be full of kids swimming, splashing water over themselves, having fun. It didn’t matter if anyone in the water had a skin disease, it didn’t matter whether the water was dirty, we just wanted to play in the water – that’s it!
These fun-seeking escapades got me into trouble every now and then, especially with my father. There were times I’d leave home in the morning and return very late in the night. Sometimes, I may not return until the next day, or even the third day. Whenever I got home, he’d flog me for not informing anyone where I had been. Let me remind you that this was an era when there were no cell phones and not everyone owned a NITEL telephones. That meant there was no way to let my father know where I was per time.
Still, all that flogging never stopped me from joining the boys on the next adventure. Usually, I’d weigh the fun that waited for me out there versus the pain of the punishment if something went wrong; somehow the fun mattered more to me. When I grew older, I began to follow some of the older boys into the bushy areas to hunt for bush meat. They showed us how to hunt and skin the animal. They also taught us how to roast them. That was pretty much how my primary school life rolled by. I look back on those years now, I realize that even as a boy, I’d always stood firmly by my convictions even when they got me into trouble.
For my secondary school education, I attended Ibadan Christ Apostolic Grammar School. Though the school was not one of the big names, there really wasn’t any difference between a school like Ibadan Boys High School and Ibadan Christ Apostolic Grammar School. It still had the standard that a good school should have. We had Indian teachers in my time, we were exposed to sports like basketball, volleyball etc., so there was nothing to set us back in our educational journey. Today, the reality is different.
At that time, in Ibadan Christ Apostolic Grammar School, the competition among the students to top the class was fierce; and as fate would have it, I was one of the brilliant ones. At this point, I’d begun to get more intentional about my life. When I chose my friends this time, I picked the best students in my class. Having the smartest students in my circle, was how I laid foundation for growth in life.
I didn’t have the privilege of having parents who’d sit with me to check if I had done an assignment. My parents were busy with their businesses, and so as far as school was concerned, I was on my own. In fact, the only time any of my parents ever followed me to school was my first day at the primary school; it was my mother who followed me, and the reason was because I had to be registered. I couldn’t do that by myself.
Knowing the kind of home I came from, I knew early enough that the responsibility of doing well in school rested squarely on my shoulders. I was able to get my tasks done and score good grades because whatever I did not understand, someone in my circle knew it and they’d teach me. In the same way, if I understood a task and someone in my circle didn’t, I’d teach them too. This helped us a great deal.
As we rounded off our sojourn at Ibadan Christ Apostolic, my friends and I began to talk about what we wanted to become. They mentioned professions like doctor, lawyer, mechanical engineers, etc. but I never saw my path in any of these nice courses everyone else mentioned. As young as I was then, I had recognized a pattern in my life; that in moments of making big decisions regarding my life, joining the bandwagon never worked for me. From those early years, I knew that my path was different.
Let me tell you how I found my path….
3
In secondary school, I was in the sciences, and I knew that I had a desire for engineering. What I then needed to figure out was the kind of engineering I wanted to specialize in?
I listed the engineering disciplines available at the time and I began to subject my options to an elimination process. Think about this as an episode of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire show, you have options on the board and you need to eliminate the options, one after the other, to get to the right answer.
I knew that I had no desire for mechanical, electrical, and chemical things so I knocked them off the list. Petroleum Engineering felt like something that would work for me and so I checked the brochure to be sure I met the requirements for admission. Truly, I did. At the time, I never knew that petroleum would become a critical commodity and a wealth-generating industry in Nigeria.
It was after the JAMB results were released that my father found out that I’d applied for Petroleum Engineering and how he found was so funny. My father had a friend whose wife was a principal at St. Anne’s. They had a daughter and they closely monitored her educational advancement. The girl and I were in the same class; by implication, we wrote JAMB the same year.
My father’s friend came to our house with their daughter one day, and during the visit, he announced that the JAMB results had been released. He mentioned that he and his daughter were going to the JAMB office to check the girl’s result. This news prompted my father to ask me to dress up and come along. When we checked the results, it turned out that I performed better than the girl. Seeing that, without any supervision, I did better than his friend’s daughter who had all the parental supervision, my father got interested in my education.
Armed with my results, my father and I went to the University of Ibadan (with his business partner at the time) to see a certain Dr. Agagu for any assistance he could render to ensure I got into the university. He was like an aburo to my father and he was a lecturer in the school. When my father mentioned my score to him, he told my father that my score was way over the cutoff for admission into Petroleum Engineering and so no reason to worry.
For the first time in my life, my father showed it that he was proud of me. “That’s my son!” He exclaimed. True, as Dr. Agagu said, my admission letter into the University of Ibadan came in the mail and that was it. That very Dr. Agagu would go on to become a governor of Ondo State.
Getting into the university, I knew the kind of life I wanted to live. I didn’t want to be about books alone. I wanted to have fun while going about serious business. I had told myself I’d leave no room for regrets; that I’d not leave the school and feel like I left some things undone. This was my mindset as I came in, so I did everything that was there to be done on campus.
I lived in Independence Hall – Indy – during my stay in school but there were semesters that I lived in Zik Hall too. We, the Katangites, never really rated those who lived in other halls of residence like Kuti or Mellanby; to us those halls were for the rich, posh kids. We were not bougie, we were the real salt of the earth. I remember I’d go join the kegites and we’d gyrate and drink palmie.
Though I was born into a Muslim family, I was everywhere. There used to a fellowship called Agape. In that fellowship they had a song they used to sing, it was like their anthem: “Hold somebody tell him that you love him…” If you had a girl you liked who was attending Agape, you’d go to fellowship and sit very close to her. Once they start that song, “Hold somebody…” you will quickly grab your girl. Also, whenever we know there will be food at the Central mosque, we would show up there too.
The real live wire of student unionism in UI, at the time, were the Katangites; that was where mobilization for peaceful protests always began and as a Katangite, I had to get into the aluta rhythm with them too. So, you see, I experienced all dimensions of life on campus such that when I was leaving, I was satisfied that I came, I saw, and I had conquered.
4
Not long after I graduated from the university, I started work at Haliburton. Because it wasn’t directly in my discipline, I didn’t reckon with it so much. From Haliburton, I moved on to Saipem Drilling. It was at Saipem that I then began to develop real expertise in drilling. There, I learned measurement, wide drilling, directional drilling etc. It was from Saipem, too, that I was sent to Germany and other countries across the globe for training in drilling.
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In every man’s life journey, he must be able to study the patterns in his life and figure out what he has truly been called into. I have always believed that there are two types of people – the producers and the consumers. The customers are the people who benefit from structures or creations; they live off whatever is provided for them. The producers, on the other hand, are the giant pillars; they are the ones who create the structures that consumers benefit from.
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I have always been on the producing line. As a boy, I was always interested in providing things. I always stayed in the kitchen with my mother, and consequently, I cook so well. As I grew older, I realized that whenever I cooked, people always found their way to me and I would have to offer them whatever I had. I used to complain about people shortening my ration till one day when my father spoke to me. He said that as long as I was the channel providing things for people to consume, then I am a producer; and that being a producer in the world was a divine privilege.
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From then on, I began to always seek opportunities to create things that others could be beneficiaries of. It was also this understanding that inspired me to step out of the ‘consuming line’ as a professional and start my own company. I wanted to create something where other people could come to and benefit from my knowledge and expertise. In 2004, I got the nudge in my spirit to start my own drilling company but before I quit my well-paying job, I made sure that I had a few savings and I also ensured that my wife was financially independent to a considerable extent.
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Walking away from a steady employment that was paying so well and heading for uncertainties seemed like a crazy decision at the time. How would one choose to start a drilling company without millions of dollars to purchase drilling equipment and set up the infrastructure for running the business? Where would I even find organizations or high net-worth individuals who would entrust huge drilling contracts in my hands when there are established names in the business already? Now you see why it was crazy. However, when you have a conviction in your spirit on the path that you should be on at a certain point in your life, you shouldn’t dilly-dally.
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We started the company in 2004 and, boy, was it rough! I will not lie to you. I had no financial backing, no sponsor of any sorts, it was just God and me navigating those early years of the business together. I had two kids and a wife to take care of, I had pulled out of employment, founded a company but we were not making money as a company. What sustained my family in the first year of establishing my company was the little investments here and there that I had made while in paid employment. The resources from the ventures I had established my wife in helped us too. Then, there was God too.
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By 2006, I began to take whatever small jobs I could find just to keep small funds coming in so that our doors could stay open for business. My first major drilling contract came in 2007, and the project commenced in 2008. When I secured the contract, my excitement was beyond words. I remember keeping the documentation of the contract under my pillow because I couldn’t bear to keep it out of my sight. Every now and then, I’d bring it out and just read and marvel unbelievably at how God had come through for me.
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With the contract secured, I began to source for companies I could partner with as I had no drilling rig at the time. Some powerful people tried to hijack the contract but God took care of that end of the business. There were people who I’d approached for some form of partnership or support on the project who, when they heard of the contract, tried to buy it off me and execute it on their own. Still, I refused to give in.
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At some point, the lawyer that we worked together in trying to secure some of these partnerships wondered out loud what kind of stubborn person I was; unwilling to trade the contract for such tempting offers like the ones that came our way. For me, it was more than just a contract, from early on, I knew that the contract in my hand was going to be the opening chapter of a big vision that had no price tag. So there I was with this big contract in my hands but then, I was stuck, not knowing where the tools to pull it off would come from.
5
I travelled to China to find companies that would partner with me by providing the rigs needed for executing the contract. Luckily, I was able to secure a partnership and, in 2008, I brought in the first drilling rig for the job, and on the 12th March, 2008 we commenced the project. Five days later – on March 17, 2008 – the rig we’d brought in from China sunk! Imagine a rig which doesn’t belong to you, worth millions of dollars, sinks while running your first major project! Luckily, we were able to salvage that rig. By December of 2008, I secured another drilling contract.
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The organization that partnered with me in executing those contracts in the early days took a huge chunk of the profit. In the first contract, my company got 5% of the profit we made. I knew from those early doors that the future of my company would be shaped by whatever choices I made with the “small’ profits we made off these big contracts. Since I couldn’t buy the big rigs and equipment, I decided to use a percentage of whatever I made to buy small, in-demand equipment. As we got our own equipment, we relied less on the partners’ tools and, gradually, increased our cut of the profit from 5% to 10% and onward like that. This was how we carried on business. As our share of the profit increased, I made smart choices regarding spending money. I got more equipment, saved, and delayed gratification. I never lived like a big man.
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In 2010, the heavens (or fate, as some may call it) opened a window for me. That year, the Federal Government implemented the Local Content Law in Nigeria and with this law, policies were put in place for indigenous companies to gain prominence. That policy gave me a rare chance to buy out my partners. By buying them out, the company would be completely under my control.
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Buying out my partners out wasn’t going to come cheap, so how did I do it? Remember that we’d been seizing opportunities to buy drilling equipment whenever we got great deals and we’d been saving a lot of our profit? Well, when this opportunity to buy back the whole business came, we fell back on the money we’d been saving. It was as though, all along, we knew that moment would come, and when it did, we seized it by the scruff of the neck. I bought out my partners and gained back one hundred per cent control of my company.
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By 2018, the company was completely back under my control; that meant I didn’t have to share any proceeds with anyone anymore. It was from then on that the company’s growth skyrocketed. Then, in 2019, I made my first billions. My first major contract was 2008 and it took me eleven years to become a billionaire. Today, I have five (5) drilling rigs to my name and our financial standing has grown into the realm of billions.
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I learned something from the Chinese; they say that the energy you need to chase one billion naira is the same energy you need to chase ten Naira. Over time, I have come to agree with that philosophy. I have some equipment that when we lease them, we get paid $10 or $20 or $40, it sounds small, right? Let’s get practical – I run a pipe rental. If I tell a customer that pipe rental for a joint is $10 a day, they easily jump on the deal because $10 doesn’t sound so much.
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When they get their big equipment to the site, that’s when they’d realize that they need about 500 or 1000 joints. It is only at this point, when the project is due to commence that you realize that renting the pipes is a lot of money. Do the math – $10 x 1000 pipes, that’s $10,000 for just rental. If I had said from the start that the rental would cost $10,000 it would sound staggering and, maybe, some would be discouraged.
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When you know they will need that product or service in its multiples, then the basic unit is what you charge by in order to keep them patronizing you. Usually, they would come back and try to negotiate but at that point, they will not turn around and go look for someone else. They will appreciate whatever discount you give and you still make your own money. I have multiple clients at different times that come to rent pipes and so that money comes in from multiple sources. $10,000 here, $25,000 there through rental and your profit is growing without you even taking a drilling contract. That sounds like good business to me. Isn’t it?
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I got this knowledge from my mom. Even though she was unlettered, she was very business-savvy trader with a keen eye for spotting trade opportunities. Like me, my mother had a producer mindset too. You’d never find my mother among the people complaining about a situation. She’d rather find a solution to the problem and then build a business around it. I got that orientation from her.
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As God blessed me, the Provider in me began to think about creating something that would provide opportunities for people within whichever area I choose and thereby creating growth for the communities. I wanted a location with strong communal bonds and cultural orientation, not some urban upscale spot. I wanted a place where I could connect with the history, a place that intersects with my own life trajectory too. At the time, all that was on my mind was food production.
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6
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“When I was young, Nigeria did not used to import foods. In secondary school, every student had a ridge on the school farm where they planted maize or vegetables. Back then, the school had a functional poultry too. Suddenly, food importation became the norm, and that never sat well with me. Once I made my first billions, I figured that the perfect time had come to go into agriculture on a commercial scale. My research showed that Ona Ara had so much arable land. However, the development of the axis was slow-paced, unlike what we see in other places.
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Seven years ago, I situated my farm at Ona Ara and called it ILAJI FARMS. The name “ILAJI” came from my mother – the business savvy trader who hailed from Ilaji, and whose tradename was “Ile-Ilaji”. We got 75,000 layer birds for the farm, and employed a sizeable number of staff. I put some members of my extended family in charge, as managers of different aspects of the establishment.
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History has shown again and again that it is usually not a nice idea to involve extended family in one’s business. Candidly, I will not advise anyone just starting a business to put their family members in charge. In this Ibadan, examples abound of businesses that were run aground because family members got involved in their management. Look at Chief Bode Akindele, his Dr. Pepper drink – at the time – was a thriving venture. The moment his family got involved, it all collapsed.
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Go to the Ilaji farm pens today, there’s almost nothing left of the 75,000 poultry birds. It was the very family members that I’d put in place to manage the farm mismanaged it. That’s an investment of almost two billion Naira down the drain. Do I have any regrets? No, I don’t. The farm may not have worked out but it served other purposes. For example, by putting family members in charge, I have been able to show that I sincerely tried to empower my family and that laid the opportunity to ruin. If I didn’t set it up, how would I have vindicated myself?
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As Ilaji began operations, I noticed that there were a lot of young idle people in Ona Ara, and I wondered what got them engaged. When I was in secondary school, sport was a major activity we were involved in as students. I looked around schools in Ona Ara and I asked myself: “How many of these schools have sporting facilities?” The answer was none. If the school fields are gone, how then will these young people engage themselves, identify, and promote their sporting talents?
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It was this thinking that birthed the sports arm of Ilaji. We reckoned that by putting facilities in place and making them accessible, young people could pursue their interests in sports, and be matched with life-transforming opportunities. We divided Oyo State into zones and created a competition among the community clubs across the State.
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One of the talents that has come through Ilaji is a lad called Bolu. He stayed here with us in Ilaji for a while. Today, Bolu plays football in Europe with a club in Czechia, and he is one of their top scorers there. In fact, he played in the just concluded Europa League competition for his club. It all started here in Ilaji. Now, we have people from other countries of Africa here in Ilaji. We run a resort, too, in Ilaji and these are all thriving ventures.
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Also, having observed how things went with the farm, I learned my lesson and took a different approach when we started the resort and sports arm of Ilaji. This time, I did not involve extended family members and, guess what, those ventures are thriving. That’s not to say we don’t face challenges at all in those ventures; we do. We think solutions rather than moan about our challenges. That’s me – once there’s a problem, I don’t lament, I begin to think and research solutions.
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It is whomever finds a solution that would make profit; business is essentially about providing solutions. Look at the richest man today, Elon Musk, he is a solution provider. He is so rich because he solves the problem of mankind. The services he provides with his satellites proffer solutions to very pressing needs of humanity, that’s why nations, organizations, and individuals are willing to part with money for those services.
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Moving to Ona Ara and citing these facilities here has brought tremendous impact to this vicinity and that gives me joy more than whatever I may have lost in the process of making this happen. Today, Ona Ara is the most visited local government in Oyo State and that’s because of what we have been able to situate here. When we began Ilaji, an acre of land was N30,000, today an acre is a million naira or more. That tells you how much impact we now have here in Ona Ara. Right now, Ilaji owns over 300 acres of land in Ona Ara.
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7
Integrity is the foremost principle I have lived my life by. Next to integrity is finding ways to make things better for the people around me. In this realm of existence that we are in, no one has the power to create life. We all found ourselves on earth, in the families we were born into; we had no hand in deciding these things.
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From early on in my life, I have always been driven to seek ways to improve the lives of people whose realities may be different from mine. As long as I have the means and resources to improve the lives of those around me, I am always eager to step in and help. I don’t talk much about my philanthropy but records of my philanthropy are out there for everyone to see. No man comes to this world with anything, and no one would leave with anything.
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I hear there are talks from some quarters that my philanthropy all these years where engineered towards me venturing into politics. First of all, whatever opinions people have of me is their opinion, and they have a right to hold the opinion; we cannot rob them of their right to hold an opinion. However, it will be a naïve take to think that politics begins with joining a party or running for an office. No.
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Politics begins with influence and every community of people has its own form of politics. Within the family structure, there’s always a form of politics happening. Even to succeed in business, you must master the art of politics. Anything you choose to do, you need to understand and navigate its political systems in order to survive and thrive.
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Politics is how leaders emerge but then what makes a leader a leader is because he has a followership. That’s influence.
Look at the last elections for example, I was sought after by those in active politics because I am a voice to be reckoned with, not because I was a politician on a campaign trail. It is not being tagged “politician” that makes one a politician, it is the leadership-followership relationship navigated through influence that truly tells who a politician is. Remember what I told you about a solutions mindset? The moment you begin to solve the problems of people, you wield influence, and you become a leader.
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My philanthropy started a long time ago, when I was much younger than I am now, so how could politics be the motivation? If anyone says I am in philanthropy with a political agenda, that is their opinion. As long as I act out of a clear conscience, I don’t bother myself about what anyone may think of the things I do.
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To every young person reading this is that life is a risk. Anyone who wants to get to the top must be a risk taker, however, you should always take calculated risks.
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Also, to go far in life, you need relationships. I cannot overstate the importance of relationships; not just in business but in all spheres of life. No man can be an island to himself, and so if your dream is to go far in life, create relationships, and nurture them. The doors you seek to open unto you will be opened by God but He will not come down by Himself, He will use people. Relationships with all peoples have been critical to my success.
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Your circle of friends is part of the relationships that will shape or mar your destiny. The friends I grew up with were go-getters themselves, so was I. Our friendship started with us stubbornly seeking fun as kids, defying punishments. We all took the same resilience and applied it to our lives as we grew older, not giving up on ourselves. Today, we have a SAN, successful medical doctors and very successful engineers, of which I am one; all from that circle.
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[THE END]
