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Benjamin Olayinka Sunday Awoyomi, a seasoned technocrat, entrepreneur and politician, is a former sole administrator/director-general in Ekiti State Public Works Corporation and is currently chairman of S&S Limited. He told TUNDE ADELEKE his life story.
What is the story behind your passion for the people?
I would rather say in my own little way, that I love to contribute to people’s lives in ways that will be of benefit to them and to the people around them as well.
I recall my father’s comments to me very early in life. I think in terms of motivation towards that kind of thing. I think it started from there. My father told me how poor his own father was and how that impacted negatively on his education or rather, how that prevented him from having the kind of education he would have loved to have, and I also recall him saying while he was on the farm, he would bend down, look up to the sky and tell God ‘If you just give the enablement, I will make sure all my children go to school and if I see any child around me, and you bless me in such a way that I can help, no child would go through this kind of structure where the child wishes to go to school and is not able to.’ I think it started from all that and my other personal experiences very early in life that just made me feel that I need to be there for others. I won’t say I suffered the same deprivation as my dad; though, I am from a very humble beginning. Relatively, we were not that poor, but all the kinds of things around me growing up, people struggling to go to school, people not being able to have three square meals and all of that. So, I just felt that God should just give me some bit of empowerment so that I would try at least, to contribute my own little quota towards that. I think that’s what has been guiding me.
What kind of environment produced you?
It was a very humble beginning like I said. I think one of the past Nigerian presidents did say that at some point he had no shoes; I don’t think that’s peculiar to him, many of those in my generation grew up in the village, and going to school in shoes or sandals was considered a luxury; that was for the children of the affluent. So, I am from that kind of background, my dad was a cocoa merchant, and though not on a large scale, it was moderate enough to cater for the family. And my mum was a mat seller. So, I would say that I came from a background that is far from the silver spoon kind, but not so bad, at least we were managing.
We were a family of seven; four boys and one girl, and all we knew was to go to school, help my dad in his cocoa store or help my mum to carry mat early in the mornings from neighbouring towns and villages.
How were your early years?
I would say very challenging, but at the same time, very exciting. Challenging because financially, we weren’t there; as I said, we were not among the extremely poor, but exciting, because I had good friends and brothers we looked up to in terms of navigating life and the rest of it.
But generally, it was tough in the village; it was tough to the extent that all that could be regarded as the luxury of city life were missing. Essentially, even the schools we attended were basic government schools with limited facilities that didn’t allow us to explore all of our talents. Growing up, we would wake up in the morning, go fetch water from a stream that was about two kilometres away and still have to go to school and meet up with all our chores, and when we come back from school, it is straight to the store. On weekends, apart from the church service, we just had to keep supporting our parents. What some would regard as child abuse or child labour these days used to be the norm in those days. You had to go support them on the farm, support them in the store and all of that. But I think some of the things my parents held very highly were discipline and personal conduct. Though that was not peculiar to us, however, we were known for good conduct in our neighbourhood, my parents were known as no-nonsense people; all that mattered to them was your conduct, your morals, and godliness and yes, we were very lucky that good academic performance just came with it, maybe, one led to the other, but I just realised that we were doing well at school. But at home, it was a strict disciplinarian regime we were made to pass through.
Can you let us into your educational background?
Well, I had primary education in the village – Seventh-day Adventist Primary School, Ipoti-Ekiti; which has now become a big town, from there I had my secondary school, even though, I wanted to go to Christ’s School, Ado-Ekiti, or Ekiti Parapo College, Ido-Ekiti, those were the two most prominent schools around Ekiti then. My father allowed me to go and write the entrance examinations into those schools which I passed and did the interviews which I passed as well. But when it came to a decision point, my father in his characteristic manner would have decided for us before we even knew what was up. He decided he was going to send us to Ipoti High School to support the drive for students for the school that was taking off in our home town then.
I was very sad, but my father is a man of his word.
So, I had to go to that school and I am happy I did. From there, I proceeded to the University of Ibadan for my first degree and later to Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife for a Master’s degree in Business Administration. Before then, I had a postgraduate diploma in Management Studies, also from OAU. After that, the other thing I did was to improve myself professionally.
What about your career?
My career was an interesting thing because we all graduated from school hoping for the best, hoping that in the next four to five years, we would get a good job, raise a family, buy big cars and build houses. I also had the same dream of myself. Those were military years when the economy was in a big mess. So, after school, I struggled to get a job, all these multinationals coming to Nigeria hadn’t started then, a lot of things were not right with the economy, and everything was in a big mess as Nigeria was said to be a pariah state because of the anti-democratic stance of the government. The military boys were really running the economy and it was really hard to get a job. I ended up teaching; I was a teacher for about six years. But within that period, I realised that first, I was not a trained teacher, I knew I was going to be limited in terms of growth and development on the job, and second, it wasn’t something I had a passion for. So, I just realised I had to do something else.
But time kept going, that was time I realised, maybe, I had to help myself by going to have a Master’s degree. I recall how tough it was for me then to even finance that. I would trek from Ipole-Iloro, one of the places where I taught. Because of the high cost of transportation from that place to Ife, I recall I would trek, climb Ipole-Iloro Waterfalls hills and mountains; pack extra clothes and enter the bush and trek for about two hours to get to Erin-Ijesha and once I was about to get out of the bush, I would go to a stream nearby, bathe and change my clothes because I would have been all sweaty; and from there, I would take a bus to Ile -Ife.
I was doing that every weekend until I finished my Master’s. I recall one old woman that was living around that place. One day, she said ‘Young man, I see you entering that bush and coming every week what’s going on?’ and I told her my plight. Throughout that period, she would always preserve some fruits and other stuff for me and I would come out of the bush and collect them thankfully. It was tough!
Something big had to happen after all that sacrifice.
After I finished my Master’s, I just decided I had had enough of teaching. So, without a job in view, I left teaching and headed to Lagos. It was when I got to Lagos that the second phase of the struggle began. I recall moving around the whole of Lagos, looking for jobs; trekking from Oshodi to Ogba and I would stay with one of my friends there who usually gave me a stipend to feed with. Then, I would trek from Ogba to Iju in one day. I was doing it religiously like that, not because I wanted to, but because there was no money in my pocket. I did that for a while until I got a job. I got a job with one company called Rainbow Cosmetics along Apapa Road, stayed there for about a year and moved to another company called ACNielsen, an international research company. But I didn’t last there. I left ACNielsen after a couple of months when the company felt Nigeria was too difficult to do business with and decided to downsize and consequently, I had to leave.
So, I stayed at home for some time. At that time, I had gotten married and it was very tough. My wife, who was working in a bank, had to be laid off because it was during the era of distressed banks; many of them were closing down and my wife suffered that. And then, I had no job, she too was jobless. In fact, let me add that curiously by some act of fate, we both lost our jobs on the same day!
We ended up going to Mushin. We would go to Mushin, buy like five packs of biscuits, carry them on our heads, take a ‘molue’ to Agege and go to sell to all those small retailers by the roadside in Agege.
You couldn’t engage someone to do that?
I couldn’t afford to give the luggage to the ‘Alabaru’ (labourers) because we had a small margin of about N10 or so per carton. So, if we dare give N20 to Alabaru, the profit was gone. We kept doing that, but unfortunately, we had gathered up to about N6000 doing that when one day, armed robbers came and cleared all we had from our house and we were back to square one.
The thing continued like that; it was really bad. At the time we thought of going to start a barbing business, but I didn’t have enough money to rent a shop. I was telling friends ‘if you want to cut your hair, please come to my house.’
But of course, that wasn’t going to be very effective. Eventually, one of my church members informed me of recruitment at International Paints for West Africa. So, I applied, though, I didn’t have enough requisite experience, but because I did so well in the recruitment exam (actually, I was told I came tops), they were going to try me in the role of a Brand/Area Manager. I came in and spent some time again, and from that place, I moved to British American Company as an Area Manager. It was at that point that my career began to take a better shape; it was then I began to get exposed to the outside world and a structured way of working. I spent 12 years with BAT before I left. I had become a group head before I eventually left to start my own line of business.
What kind of business do you do?
When I was in BAT, one thing I noticed was that, no matter how good a company is, I always had a desire to do something of my own, that entrepreneurial thing in me may have started from childhood, my experience with my parents because in their own little way, they were entrepreneurial in nature. I realised I had that passionfor doing my own thing. So, after about seven years in BAT, I started nursing the idea of pulling out to do my own stuff. I told one of my white bosses that in five years, I was going to leave. He said I must be joking; that he had done 23 years in BAT and as far as he was concerned, though people always said it, they never got to bring it to life. But exactly after five years, call it fate, call it luck or whatever, everything added up and I left.
What did you branch into?
But before I left, I told my wife, who had started taking some other jobs, to pull out and let us start something in the area of culinary services. We started an eatery. At that time my wife was never a caterer, I was also not one. But I just had a passion for that kind of business because my wife is a good cook.
She agreed and we started while I was still in active employment. I checked what was in my bank account and I used that to approach the bank for the facility. The bank was actually not willing to lend money to go and start a business that I had not done before. So, I told them I would use the money to buy a generator and some other equipment. So, that was what we did and put into the business and we started the first fast-food outlet. The outlet was about three years old and I realised I was not able to give it my best, my wife too was struggling with it alone. At that point, I felt I needed to pull out fully of paid employment plus other factors like my boss at work who contributed to my quick exit from the job. When I pulled out, the first thing we focused on wasputting up the structure and processes for the eatery.
How?
About the time I was leaving paid employment, a friend of mine also wanted to quit his own job to start his own business. So, we got talking and we said okay, we have a different set of skills and competencies, why don’t we pull them together? And I recall one Swiss guy called Sacha, he was the one that encouraged us that ‘Why don’t you guys join together and start something? It makes sense for you guys to pull resources together.’ That triggered the thought in me and Soji my friend that I earlier referred to who is my very good business partner up till today, that ‘can we start something?’ So, he came to me, we spoke and we agreed on the modalities, ownership structure and so on. That was how we started FKM Ltd., a marketing communication and advertising outfit. We started that; though I was alongside, running the eatery with my wife, most of my time and focus was on FKM while she handled the food business. I recall the early days at FKM weren’t easy at all.
We rented one apartment in Ajao Estate in Lagos. The first job we had was less than N1m and it involved us running around the whole of Nigeria. In the end, we even ran it at a loss. But we took learning and we moved on.
I recall we would spend hours in the office and at some point, sleep in the office on the bare floor, just to make sure we write proposals and put them in place because we could not afford to hire staffers; so, we were doing everything. From end to end, Soji and I would call a few friends, we would offer them ‘booli’ (roasted plantain), groundnut and water and at the end of the month, we would give them N10,000, N15,000, about three or four of them, who shared in our vision and we were moving on. At a point, we could afford to buy student mattresses, about two, in the office, so that we could sleep over if the situation demanded, but not on the bare floor any longer.
When was your big break?
I think PZ Nig. Ltd. was the first multinational to see a sense in what we were doing and gave us a job; we gave it all our passion and energy. When we got that right, they were impressed andthey gave us more jobs, from there, we started reaching out to other companies like Procter & Gamble, Guinness, MTN, Kimberly Clark, BAT, Mid-Western Oil & Gas and others. These were the early ones and later on, we had other clients Samsung, Chi limited and so on.
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Up till now, we still retain many of them in our clientele. That is how FKM started, then we started diversifying into other areas of our business such asoutdoor advertising, digital marketing and so on, leading to other subsidiary companies springing up, like Image Target which is essentially an outdoor business, SSB Africa, FK Digital and then we started spreading our tentacles beyond Nigeria, exploring the frontiers of the West African sub-region. We are presently in Ghana (FKM), we are in the process of business registration in the Republic of Benin and our next target is Cote D’Ivoire. Recently we diversified into the Agric sector with the launch of FK foods which exports processed and semi-processed foods to foreign countries. Then, out of the fast-food business too, a number of bakeries have sprung up.
So, in a nutshell, that’s what one has been able to do after leaving employment.
In all that you’re doing, who would you consider your role model?
Interestingly, I think it would be my dad. Without mincing words, I have said it at different forums within and outside Nigeria. Though my dad wasn’t a professional in that sense, in terms of discipline, in terms of focus, and in terms of somebody trying to grow something all by his efforts and the blessing of God, I connected with my dad’s vision that you could actually grow something and watch it germinate and blossom. So, I also think he’s my role model in many areas, including how to do business. One of the things I am proud to say today and I am happy my business partners and my wife share in common is that you can run a business with integrity. There’s nobody, either employee or associate, local or foreign, that would say we have swindled him or her of one naira. When we take loans from the bank, we pay back every penny. And I think those are the things I took from my dad. I see him as my role model in terms of dealing with people, and in terms of dealing with my business partners. His principle of ‘do unto others as you would want them to do unto you’ is one of my guiding principles in life.
Is that responsible for the ease of doing business with your wife?
People wonder how I’m able to do business with my wife and other partners and we have never fought. I try to explain that once you take greed out of the picture and you treat the other person fairly, you are bound to make progress and live peacefully. I recall we had a challenge recently; we ventured into the export of Agric products to UAE. Along the line, the shipping company delayed and the products got spoilt, running into hundreds of millions of naira. I remember that a similar thing on a smaller scale happened to my father and how he managed to get out of it. I recalled that resilience and the spirit of never saying die were all very instrumentalto seeing him through the challenge.
I remembered what he would always tell me: in life, you meet with ups and downs, and how you react to them matters. I realized that we couldn’t afford to do otherwiseand gradually, we are getting out of the woods in that regard. So, in summary, it is my fatherwhom I regard as my role model.
How did love find you?
Very interesting. My late uncle, MrSolabomiAjiboye, happened to be the vice-principal of my wife’s secondary school and I was always going to visit him. My uncle was very expressive, he would tell all the students that my son (that’s what he used to call me) was this and that; he would hype me,and I would call him my hypeman. He would make them believe that I even had more intelligence than I actually believed that I did. So, my wife and a couple of her friends gravitated towards me and asked me to be giving them extra lessons after school hours.
But one thing that stood her out was, though she was good looking I must admit beyond that, out of all of about five or six of them, she was the only one that was serious with what we were doing; the others would just play away. If I gave them an assignment, I realised she was the only one that would do the assignment. So, I started seeing something different in her. It didn’t go beyond friendship at that time but I had started to admire and respect her a lot
So, it wasn’t a surprise when she was the first person, to get admission into a higher institution out of all of them. And then, we kept writing and communicating.
How did you make your intention known?
In those days, there was no telephone, I would write to ask about her school, how she was doing and all of that. By the time I left school, I was going to see her in school (because I graduated before her), encouraging her and then, somehow, I didn’t know how it happened but then, one thing led to the other, and the thought just dropped that we could actually perfect the thing better and then, I proposed to her and she accepted. Proposing and accepting was a bit of a big task then, but eventually, it happened. But one thing I would say which I normally use to encourage my children and the younger ones is that at the time she was a banker, I was a teacher and, in those days, bankers used to have airs around them. And so, I knew a couple of people who would taunt her each time she was coming from Lagos to Ekiti to see her fiancé then, that she was leaving Lagos to the ‘bush.’ But she didn’t see all that in me.
I later got to ask her what she must have seen in me at that time to convince her to stand by me and she said she saw seriousness, saw focus and knew that it was just a matter of time, to have the right opportunity, that things would happen for me. That’s, in a nutshell, how we met and got married. Like I said before, the early part of the marriage was tough and very turbulent but together, we were able to weather the storm.
What are your likes and dislikes?
First, I hate a very proud person. I believe that all that what a man can achieve is given by God. Just like the Bible says ‘chance and time happen to people.’ I believe we do not of our own anything or any capabilities, except that which God has given. So, when I see proud people, I get pissed off; I find it very difficult to associate with proud people. Two, I hate people betraying the trust that is reposed in them and I always make sure that when people repose trust and confidence in me, I try not to betray that. When peoplerepose trust in you and let you into their lives, it’s like a currency; if you spend it anyhow, too bad for you! You can’t afford to just waste it.
People say they don’t like people lying or something; for me, it’s more about trust. Don’t betray trust; people should be able to say that ‘I trust this guy, whatever I keep in his hands is safe; whatever secret I keep with him is safe, whatever issues I divulge to him is safe.’
Then, fairness, do unto others as you would like them to do unto you as my father would say. What you would not accept, don’t do it to me and I will not do the same to you.
What is your top pick for food?
I would go for rice and beans with vegetables. I think I have a soft palate, so I like sweet things. If you put food on the table, I’ll probably gravitate towards the sweet ones, but essentially, if you ask me, rice and beans, beans and dodo (fried plantain), and anything that goes with beans. I found out that in most food I like, beans play a role in the menu. Even amala and gbegiri, beans still has a role to play in it. For snacks, it’s groundnuts and Booli
How do you recreate or is it all work and no play?
I play golf. But I’m poor at it; I’m not very good. My kit has been at the Golf Club for a long time, but my work schedule has made it difficult for me to improve on my skill. Not a good excuse though. The coach and other club members keep calling me to say, ‘Your kit is getting mouldy here’
I like music, both classic and contemporary. Even, my kids make jest of me when I listen to stuff like Ashake, Davido, and Wizkid and still play songs by Orlando or Bob Marley. So, it’s a mix. Even when I sing the lyrics of Naira Marley, my children are like ‘daddy, so you are into this.’ So, I don’t have a particular genre of music that appeals to me.
I travel a lot, though I have since reduced it since I got involved in governance. Paradoxically, I am afraid of flying, yet I love travelling a lot. I travel for holidays, I like to explore new places, I play golf, and I love athletics, but I am not a soccer person.
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