Chairman of Tricontinental Group of Companies and Deputy President of Nigerian-American Chamber of Commerce, Chief Olabintan Famutimi, has come a long way from his humble beginnings in Ondo town. Without a formal training in Medicine or Pharmacist, he worked at management level with blue chip companies in the pharmaceutical industry before left for the oil and gas industry to set up Tricontinental Group, which today has branches in Angola, Canada, the Caribbeans and the USA. He recently handed over the running of the Group of Companies he established to Dr. Oluwatoyin Ashiru, an acclaimed engineer, as he contemplates retirement. These days, Chief Famutimi finds time to cruise around Nigerian waters in his yacht which he anchors on the Lagoon at Victoria Island. And when he is abroad, he hires a posh car and drives around for adventure. He tells PAUL UKPABIO that he deserves every bit of the pleasure because “I have worked my ass out to get this far.” Excerpts
Would you say your background as a child has influenced your person?
To a large extent, the things that I do now have their foundation in my childhood. To start with, I come from a family where you had no choice but to struggle: a polygamous family of four wives and 23 children. And I happened to be the first born. So, from childhood, my life has been that of struggle as I grew up in the midst of so many children. There was no way one would want to lag behind because the competition was keen and the mothers were all ready to push their children.
As a child, your success was your mother’s gain in a polygamous home. And so, during my childhood and youth, I was forced to be competitive. I was all out to achieve tasks. We also knew then that in a polygamous home, if your father gave you an opportunity to have education, it was a priviledge and not a right. If it turned out that you were not doing well, he would turn the attention and support from you to others.
So, I had no choice but to work hard and have good grades and excel. To a great extent, that sharpened the way I grew up into adulthood.
Tell us briefly your early journey to the top
I was smart enough to look around me and realise that it was only if I was educated that I could escape from poverty or just learning a trade like my father. I did my early school in Ondo, and higher school in Molusi College, Ijebu Igbo where I had the best result in Ijebu province, AAB, in that year’s Advanced Level GCE. I then came to Lagos where I taught as a secondary school teacher for a while before I applied to the University of Ibadan to further my education.
I had no guidance. Nobody was telling me what to do. So, I asked for the most difficult course because I was looking for challenges. I was told that Geography was the most difficult subject. That was how I applied to study it. I was automatically given admission because of the result I had. I spent three years there. After the first year, I got a scholarship. When I applied and started the course, I was not sure where the fund was going to come from. Three years later, I had one of the best results in 1971. Five of us got Second Class Upper division. It was believed that if I had done some other social science courses, I would have had a First Class. It was four alphas to make first class in other social science courses, but in geography, you needed five.
Can you compare the system of education then with what obtains now in Nigerian universities?
Nigeria was totally different then. There were just five universities at the time I went into the university. Our student population was low. Perhaps it was just over 5,000 then. We enjoyed the best as undergraduates. We were all in hostels, served breakfast, lunch with half of a full chicken, and an equally sumptuous dinner. Our laundry was done for us and in the final year, you had a room to yourself. Life was so good in those days as Nigerian students. And by the time we were graduating, there were many companies in Nigeria that were doing well, and they were waiting to give us employment. For this, they set for us job interviews. They were actually struggling to get us. So in our final year, the big companies like UAC, SCOA, Leventis and others came around and we were being recruited straight from the universities.
As a graduate, I had three job offers from UAC, Elder Dempstar Shipping and Lintas Advertising. Getting out of the university and being unemployed was unheard of in those days. We were being pampered and made to feel really wanted and needed. I picked the job offered by UAC under their graduate management programme. Young graduates from Nigerian universities and those returning from abroad were put together, trained and posted to subsidiaries of UAC. I was posted to Kingsway Stores. UAC had a training school that offered the best of management training. That was where I started my career.
Although you did not train as a pharmacist, many still recall how popular you were in the pharmaceutical industry. How were you able to achieve that?
My niche has always been hard work. Wherever I worked, I was usually known for hard work. That differentiated me. At a stage, I had to determine that when it was time for my annual leave, I would buy a ticket and travel abroad. Because what used to happen was that whenever I was on leave, I would be at home and all around me I would be seeing people going to work. I would feel so idle and end up going to the office. Then I would sit on my table and worked as if I was not on leave and still closed late. In later years, I realised that the only way to enjoy my holiday and not turn it into work all over again was to spend the time outside the country. So what I later started doing was usually to buy my holiday ticket the Friday before the commencement of my leave. That way, I was sure that my annual leave would be work-free. That became a strategy to tear myself away from work.
Every boss that I had worked with knew me as an asset. I believed that nothing was too much for me to take on. I was always looking for challenges. Though I studied Geography, I have not applied to work for any job that is directly on that subject. After leaving Kingsway, I worked at R. T. Briscoe Nigerian Division. I then went into the pharmaceutical industry. I became the Head of Marketing for a UK company known as Boots. From there, I went to Beecham, and then to Pfizer Products Company Plc.
Most of my career was in the pharmaceutical industry. I was attending local and international conferences, and most of the pharmacists in Nigeria that I was regularly interacting with did not even know that I was not a pharmacist. My movement from one pharmaceutical company to another was always through attraction. Pfizer interviewed me a year before I finally joined. We couldn’t agree initially.
I remember how shocked the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure was when he got to know that I had never been to school to study any of the medicine-related courses. He was amazed. Though I did not get involved in drug mixing or core professional work that belonged to them, I was versed in the knowledge of what they were doing. I read extensively.
Now the field I am in, the oil and gas industry where we provide services for companies in the upstream sector, we are also into corrosion management, tests and inspection. I set this company up in 1977. I ran it successfully until two years ago when I brought in the Group Managing Director, Prof. Toyin Ashiru, who is a professor of engineering. Again, most people are still amazed that I have no training whatsoever in any aspect of the engineering field. And to have been able to establish a company like this and employ all the engineers, direct the growth and get to where we are today and still be undaunted, is much to say. But I must let you know that I have worked my ass out to get this far.
How big is your oil and gas organisation?
In Nigeria, we have our head office for the group in Lagos and, still in Lagos, a big office for a subsidiary of the group. We have offices in Port Harcourt, Warri, and operations in Eket. We have locations in Canada in Trinidad and Tobago to cover our operations in the Caribbean where we are sole agents to some agencies. In the USA, we have an office in North Carolina and Houston. We are setting up operations in Angola. So, to some extent, we can be called a medium-scale enterprise. The number of direct employees is over 400. We are also contract manpower suppliers to some oil companies in Nigeria. We employ people and then deploy them to the oil industry.
You are from Ondo town, studied in Ibadan and Ijebuland and then moved to Lagos. Which of these places are you more inclined to?
The point is that I have more friends who hail from Ijebu than Ondo. However, one way or the other, my path and those of my Ijebu friends always cross and we joke a lot. Sometimes I tell them jokingly that the only good Ijebu man is a dead one (laughs). But then, I wine and dine with them. And three of my children are married to Ijebu people (laughs). So I believe that I am a very cosmopolitan person. I relate across. I have no discerning line in choosing my friends or who I relate to. My wife at home is an Igbo woman. The man who is running my organisation now is from the famous Ashiru family from Ijebu Ode. So, I am not limited.
What do you see as challenges in the oil and gas industry in present day Nigeria?
A major problem has been the reluctance of the International Oil Companies (IOC) to recognise the indigenous companies. Since the international oil companies started operations in this country in 1958, they have, unfortunately for the country, been given and enjoying such free hand to do whatever they like. So they have kept their operations under wraps. Until recently when the government began to put pressure on them to open the field to indigenous players, not only in exploration and production but also in services, they used to give all the contracts in support operations to companies from their home countries. So we ended up having a situation where until recently, every dollar that was spent in the oil and gas industry was sent back to their home countries. The jobs went to natives of their home countries.
They kept giving the excuse that we didn’t have the experience. But there was no way we were going to gain experience without being given the opportunity to try and train and become professionally alright. But now, the government has put in place a legislation concerning local content. Now there is change. But we are not yet there totally until the field is opened up and more and more Nigerian companies are involved before we can totally say that change has come. So, a major challenge is that the major foreign oil companies are not opening up opportunities for indigenous firms. Some of these IOCs are however better than others. But they are still hurdles.
Do you see the situation improving soon?
It is for the government to stay the cost by insisting that the major IOCs accept their commitment because the government has compelled them to sign on this. By the time this is done, we shall improve. As it is now, they are forced to do it, and even if they are doing it reluctantly, they still have to do it.
Nigerians also have a fault. We are so individualistic. Let us even take our eyes away from the IOCs; some of these contracts are beyond what one man’s company can do. The average Nigerian businessman’s attitude is not helping matters. We are not thorough and we are always looking for short cuts. We collect contracts and look for ways of getting the money without doing a thorough job. We spend the money on what is not even related to the business. The persistence to sit back and do long term thinking and take long term actions is not there. We need to develop attitude to learn and become good. The oil industry is so big there are so many aspects of it. Whichever aspect one wants to go into, it is better to learn, train and develop. The owners of the business, that is the foreign companies and a few indigenous companies, will be more comfortable if they are sure that when you are given the contracts that you will deliver and you won’t cut corners. That is not easy to find among Nigerians. We are short-term thinking people.
Then, of course, there is the challenge of finance. And here, the Nigerian banks are the problem. The things they ask for, you wonder what they are after. We have banks that we have been using for decades but they have never supported us on any business even when the contracts are from blue chip organisations. Loans in Nigeria, when they decide to give, the interest rate does not help long term investment. You can’t be borrowing money with interest rate above 20 per cent. It is killing. Such situation is unfortunate for businesses that are international in nature.
Meanwhile, we are in competition with other organisations all over the world providing same services. If they are borrowing money on two or three per cent like it is happening in some countries around the world, and you are borrowing money at 20%, you can never compete. Meanwhile, the world is now a global village and we have to compete. Other companies support local businesses by making funds available, but that is not taking place here. There are funds that are available overseas for you to fund your businesses here. But the catch there is that you borrow in hard currency; that is FOREX. You use it for business in Nigeria, but before you say Jack Robinson, the exchange rate has changed. So, what you thought you were going to pay back changes and you need more money to pay back. Before you know it, you are in debt.
But you are also into business in the West Coast. How easy is that kind of operation?
From experience, I can say that it is easier with the English-speaking countries than the French-speaking countries. That is why it is easier for us to operate in Ghana. We have principals that we are agents to on the West Coast, up to Angola, though a bit more difficult there because they speak Portuguese. Very few speak English. The concept of ECOWAS is a good idea but we still have a long way to go with the processes.
Are we making any impact with gas as an alternative to heavy dependence on oil?
It is unfortunate that Nigeria has continually been flaring gas. We have not harnessed our gas and used it the way we should. Take the case of power generation; Nigeria is celebrating because we are generating 4000 kilowatts of electricity for a population of over 160 million people. Meanwhile we are flaring unbelievable quantity of gas. During the military era, investment in development of the oil industry was more or less abandoned. Generation, transmission and distribution were all neglected. The civilians came to tackle it but there is not enough understanding and planning in their desire. They are busy in the wrong direction. One can recall the case of the generating plants set up and commissioned without the thinking of where they would get gas from.
So, what we have on ground is places that can generate power but no gas to go there. The only gas pipeline that comes to Lagos passes through the Gateway. The government has liberalised the field. People want to come and set up. Even we too. But there is no gas. There are about 900 derivatives from gas that can be produced here. Meanwhile, we are importing all of them and flaring gas in the Niger Delta. Nigeria is actually a gas zone. We have more gas than oil. So, the government should look more in this direction. If government goes after gas, much will be achieved.
As oil producing company operator, why in your own estimation are we having repeated fuel queues at our filling stations?
That is easy to solve. Government has no business in the importation and distribution of oil and gas products. As long as government, because of political convenience, insists on controlling the selling price of fuel, we will never get out of shortage. The reason we do not have dollar investment in the building of refineries in Nigeria is because of the control of fuel prices here. It’s so totally illogical. You want people to come and invest their money to build refineries here and refine fuel, but when they finish building them, you tell them what price to sell. So, if you tell them to sell at a particular price and their cost of production is more than that, how will they make their money back? You tell them at that point that you will subsidise by paying them the difference. The problem that arises at that point would be how they will be sure that you will keep your word, especially for a government that is not famous for being consistent and in a place where promises change immediately after elections and the personalities in government also change.
When Obasanjo came, he gave licences to prospective refinery builders, but none of them has broken ground to set up refineries. The only ones we still have are those built by the government. They are drain pipes. They are not efficient, commercially-driven organisations. And when they sold them in OBJ’s last days, Yar’Adua came up and he was blackmailed into suspending the sale. I don’t see Nigeria coming out of fuel shortage soon.
