Kate Obalim, Managing Director, E.C .Oba Industrial, Highplaces Travel and Tours, Highplaces Logistrics and Highplaces Real Estate tells Gboyega Alaka her story of little beginning. The Region 8 Chairperson of Lions Club District 404B2 also speaks on women in leadership, challenges for female entrepreneurs and more.
You’re Managing Director High places Travel and Tours, High places Logistics, High places Real Estate and E. C. Oba Industrial Company limited; that’s a handful for a woman. How did you begin?
I started my career in 1987 with NCR (National Cash Register) as a youth corps member after I came back from the United States of America. I was so impressive that they gave me automatic employment on completion of my service year. Even as a corps member, I rose to the level of Accounts Manager. As an American company with office in Nigeria, they were finding it difficult remitting their dividends; so when I got into the company, they gave me some things to process for them at the CBN. In the process, I met then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who said to me, ‘this young girl, what are you doing here?’I told him I had been given this assignment to carry out this dividend warrant. So he took it upon himself to assist me, and what usually took them four years, took me just two weeks. Instantly I became talk of the town in that company. It also caused me to be given automatic appointment. I also got the CPC (Century People’s Club) Achievement Award. NCR were into so many things: computers, printers and ATM machines. They also had a subsidiary company called Systemedia, which had to do with sheet spread forms and the likes. I later headed that company for like three years as account manager. Barely three years after, I left to set up a company called E. C. Oba Industrial Company. It had to do with what I was doing in NCR; we were into flow lines – forms used in printing bank statements and other related printing items. We were like a third-party into what NCR was doing. In fact, NCR gave me the right to handle the third-party sector of the business. So instead of going directly to NCR, they had to come through me. I was the sole middleman, and I became very popular.
Was it NCR’s habit to retain corps members, even promote them?
What they normally did was to retain you if you impressed or tell you to go. There was a guy from their Kenya office, Clem Lucas, who really understood what I was doing for them. The fact that I could get what normally took them years to do in two weeks made them see me as a kind of different species. I was putting in my best, even when others were calling me ‘eye-service.’ I was using my car to my car to do the marketing runs.
You just said something about being labelled ‘eye-service’; how did you cope with that?
I simply overlooked it because I was just being myself. What I discovered when I came back from the United States was that the habit of lying and stealing was in our people’s blood; they wanted to co-opt me into things like robbing the company, which I really wasn’t in on. So they started labelling me. But I really never gave a damn.
Tell us about E. C. Oba.
I actually moved E. C. Oba to Abuja, because I was using it to get other businesses, like real estate and other developing company. After E.C. Oba was Highplaces Travel and Tours, because I love travelling. I was a cabin crew before I went to university, so it had always being on my mind to set up something like a travel office, where people could come and discuss their travel plans and we start perfecting it for them. I found out that in Nigeria, nobody talked about holidays, just work, work, work; and I really didn’t like that, so I started meeting people, families, and offering them prospects.
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I also initiated this to Lions Club. Hitherto, we didn’t have anything like travelling, which wasn’t proper. I joined Lions Club first as an observer at Ikeja Pearl in 2011. A lady, Mrs Caroline Enuha introduced me. I was impressed with what they were doing and I paid my dues and joined. But I found that the leaders of the club weren’t really carrying people along, and that didn’t go down well with me. That was aside other bickering. Anyway, I started talking to the governors on what we could do to inculcate the culture of travelling into our people. Fortunately, there was to be a convention in Hamburg, Germany, we got the list of members, submitted it and structured interviews for members. So it was easier for members to get their visas because of my involvement. After that success, I started trying to incorporate travelling in our system, but a lot of people felt I was so inclined because I ran a travelling agency.
Tell us of your progression at Lions Club. How did you become Region President?
I really never got to like Ikeja Pearl for some reasons I stated earlier, so I discussed with other leaders and they told me ‘If you have 20 people as Lions, then you can set up a club’. And that was what led me to start Ikeja Crystal Lions Club in 2017/18. Later I became Chartered President, President; and then I handed over – because it’s usually a one-year tenure at Lions Club. I rose from being a President to become a Director, Zone Chair, after which I became a Region Chair. Before I became Zonal Chairperson, I was chairperson for the Las Vegas Convention in 2018.
You single-handedly funded the renovation of the Oregun Junior School ICT Lab, what inspired it?
When I was a zone chair, my region chairperson donated a solar panel and other things to help the senior secondary school; so immediately after that service, I visited and discovered that they needed so much more. I discovered they didn’t even have computers, nothing. Their computer room was blank, terrible. All the equipment there were outdated or spoilt. So immediately I became a Region Chairperson, something just said to me, ‘Go to that school and assist those children.’ So I went there, met with the principal; she gave me a long list of what they needed, which included the renovation the entire ICT lab. They had good computers, but nearly all of them had one issue or the other. So I engaged a computer company which went there, assessed what they needed and came up with the cost. So I went ahead to do it without bothering anybody from my region; I then told the zone chair to key in, or if they have their own project, we should showcase them together. We did so much in that school; we replaced the toilet keys, redid all the toilets and did a thorough painting of the place. Before then, the place was looking so horrible and you couldn’t even go near. Then we replaced the computers, bought UPS to ensure such that their works don’t disappear when power goes off anymore. That was why it turned out we unveiled several projects on that day.
Aside the Oregun School ICT lab, which other projects have you single-handedly bankrolled?
There are several. I have donated drugs to St. Leo’s Catholic Church, that was when I was president. I also did so much at the palace of the Oba of Oregun. That was even before I told my members that we should have a project there. Later I ministered to the Oba and he became our member. I also started talking to our then president to let us donate to the market square.
What project donation would you say has affected you the most emotionally?
There was a time I was going along Ikeja bus stop and I saw many beggars looking so unkempt and hungry; you could literally read the hunger on their faces. So one day, I called a caterer to do a hundred plates of food, which I went to distribute to them. It turned out that even that hundred plates wasn’t enough. I literally wept on that day. Why should people go hungry in a country as endowed as ours? Also seeing children suffering from paediatric cancer always get to me emotionally – you know that’s part of our core areas of focus at Lions Club. I always wonder how children could suffer those kind of illnesses. So that really gets to me and we do our best towards wiping out these things that make people suffer.
As a business woman in leadership position, what would you say are the challenges of leadership in a country like ours?
Look at what is happening in the banks, where women are taking leadership positions. If you give women the chance to take up leadership positions, we’re going to turn this country around for the better. Back then at NCR, it was all men, until I joined and performed that feat. Having lived considerably in the US, what I’ve found out is that in Nigeria people beg to apply and once they’re offered the job, they are found wanting. But in America, when you’re given an appointment, the moment you resume, you put in your best. If all of us can work together, team work succeeds better, things would be better. But here, once they discover that the boss is not around, they relax. That’s not the best. If you’re working with all your strength, you will get there. But if you’re comparing yourself with your boss, rather than being committed, you will never get anywhere.
Tell us about your education.
I went to Our Lady of the Apostle, Yaba, Lagos. From there, my elder sister travelled out; then I got a job as a cabin crew with Central Airline, which is affiliated to Scandinavian Airlines. We had our training in Sweden. I was doing well, but after a while I pulled out to go to school at Strayer College, now Strayer University in the US. On completing my first degree in Business Administration, I went in for my masters in Public Administration and then came back to Nigeria for my Youth service. Before then, I had worked in the United States. Then I did an Executive Masters degree here in Lagos, with a foreign university.
What’s your word for young ladies trying to reach for the top like you?
Be yourself at all times, and be focused.
