The publisher of Lantern Books, Otunba Olayinka Lawal-Solarin, is 80. He marked his birthday with his 50th wedding anniversary last week with fanfare. With over 40 years experience in pharmacy and publishing, Otunba Lawal-Solarin remains an inspiration to young entrepreneurs. How did he do it? He shares his inspiration, publishing voyage and thoughts on Nigeria in this interview with Evelyn Osagie.
It’s beautiful to find people like you aging gracefully. How does it feel being 80?
Fine. I feel fine! I woke up this morning feeling very strong. My kids are here. Tomorrow, we are going out to play golf in the morning and I am going to beat them. And we would all laugh about it. “Aging gracefully”, that’s the word for it. I love being a grandfather. Being a grandfather is most desirable. I love dancing and I would still dance if I get good music. I may not be as enthusiastic as when I was 30 years old, but I like good music and still listen to them on my IPhone. I don’t listen to contemporary Nigeria music because I wasn’t brought up with such. I like highlife and jazz (play Lagbaja, Lagbaja be l’ode eru oni ba wa o) I like Lagbaja. My wife loves dancing and she is always dragging me to dance. And if we need to “dig” I “dig”. But as an 80-year-old man, you are a bit shy. But my wife would tell you that I can still dance.
With the activities you are involved in and the book industry no one would believe that you are actually 80. What is the secret?
It is not what you know how to do best, but the grace of God.
What is your advice for those who desire to live up to 80?
I would advise that they live a moderate life. I would also advise that they have a goal and be focused. The way you live life as a young man will eventually tell at old age. Some people drink, eat, womanise and gamble in excess, and stay out late; as they grow older it tells on their health and aging process.
At your birthday celebration, it was said you wrote a book to commemorate your 80th birthday. It is great to know that at 80 you can still write well; what inspired it?
The book is Entrepreneurship: The Courage to Succeed. It is a guide for entrepreneurs because in Nigeria, you have a lot of problems when you are running an organisation. Call it government policy somersault, infrastructure deficiency, financing etc. When you succeed, it is something to be celebrated, and sometimes you wonder how you made it. By the end of the month or early March, we are going to start marketing the book with reviews and interviews in the papers and television.
How did you survive as an entrepreneur?
It took painstaking efforts that spanned more than 40 years because I decided to make a difference in publishing. I am a pharmacist – I could have made a difference in anything I did! But sometimes, it is the grace of God as well. Everybody has a talent, but the ability to harness it is God-given grace. Nigeria has a lot of brilliant people. In seeing an opportunity, the ability to grab it with both hands is a God-given talent. Some people have opportunity staring them in the face and they look the other way. It doesn’t matter what it is, even meeting a woman. (Laughs). But it’s true. When some people are in love, the next thing is that they’d start looking for faults.
So, in the spirit of Valentine, are you saying being and staying in love also demands talent?
Not exactly, but being and staying in love demand accommodation, understanding, tact and not to think that everything is perfect. My wife is a white woman. I could have said “Oh, my mother won’t like a white woman…”, and thought of all the reasons in the world not to marry her. But that is not what I did. Since that is the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I went ahead to marry her. It has not been easy. I mean it is two different races, systems and cultures; to live together demands the desire to make it work. Nothing in life is easy. To succeed as an entrepreneur, you also need all of the above along with honesty of purpose. Nowadays, people want to start a business today and start riding a jeep tomorrow. That is the Nigerian way of doing business. It doesn’t work like that, while building a reputation, build a good one because that is what will speak for you. It is what we’ve done with Lantern Books. We make sure that every book we publish is educationally sound for children, and that has worked. My younger son is there now and he is still following the same policy, but we still have a lot of problems.
Does the problem include that of funding? Most entrepreneurs complain about the gap in funding, especially from the government?
Yes, it does, but who came to the world funded? I never got one government funding. So, you’ve got to go get family funding to start with and show the ability to succeed, and then seek bank funding. Even Aliko Dangote is being funded all the time, by the banks and the Stock Exchange, but one must first excel in what one does. A couple of years ago, a governor, who was trying to encourage young people, had asked me to talk to them after given them money to start businesses. Those kids were not prepared. Many considered it as government largesse, so some had used the money to go to Mecca, others bought cars and other things. Even market women survive through thrifts, so don’t talk to me about government largesse.
From pharmacy, you delved into publishing. How easy was it for you to go from pharmacy to publishing?
Whether then or now, it doesn’t matter what age, business start-up is never easy because you can fail very quickly if you don’t get your acts right. It wasn’t easy at all. I had difficulties, but the saying that “whatever your hands find to do; do it well,” had always been an inspiration. I had to borrow money from the bank, which I had to pay back. I had difficulty in convincing my bank managers, but once they saw I had honesty of purpose they yielded. I played my part in ensuring that I did not default on the pledge I made to pay back their money and got more support. Like I have said, “survival in the publishing industry takes painstaking efforts because publishing is a cerebral occupation that has long gestation period”. Unlike other business, its process is long and difficult. No matter the subject/genre, you have to find good authors, editors, assessors, then package the book for the market, promote and get it accepted. If it is not accepted, you’ve made a loss. I have made Lantern Books a household name in the Book Industry and I can now expand and improve on our books, but it takes a long time – more than 40 years to get to where we are today. Dangote is one of Nigeria’s richest businessmen because he produces what everybody needs. But books are different.
Over 40 years and still counting…could you share with us how the publishing journey began?
I started by publishing a book/ journal of Medicine in 1969. When I did Medipharm, I didn’t have the idea that it was going to be that successful. However, before publishing a book, you had to have a publishing house – that was how the publishing house was born. But I was still running the pharmacy then. So, I did the book with a partner but that partnership didn’t last. In fact, from the beginning, nobody gave the book a chance. For 40 years, a printer was printing the book for me. I used to go there to edit it twice a day because it was so technical and I couldn’t afford a mistake. When it succeeded and it became popular, I decided I had to build a printing press to carry on with the printing because my printer was always having problems. Then, came the question, “what do I do with the printing press?” That was when I went into full-scale publishing of children books. But before I built a printing press, I had published a book for children called Pussy Merry Birthday party. From day one, I had been interested in children books. I think if I didn’t do anything, I would have made the education of the child my main aim in life. Even if I had kept the pharmacy, I would still have been involved in something that had to do with children education.
So, what happened to the pharmacy?
In a country like ours, you can’t leave one thing for the other; people would ruin it for you. And that is what they did. Once you leave people and expect them to carry on, the first thing they’d do is to try to feather their own nest, hoping they’d succeed by that. But it doesn’t work out like that.
How would you score the Nigerian Publishing Industry in the last 40 years compared to its counterparts across the world?
We haven’t started. We haven’t got publishers; we’ve got booksellers, who feel the only way they can succeed is to bribe teachers and government officials to sell their books so that they can invest in something else and forget about books. No electricity. I spend a lot of money on powering our organisations all over the country. We are on generator all the time. These make it difficult to run a business.
Who is to blame for this?
Everybody. The people who are in publishing have no honesty of purpose. What is the history of publishing industry in Nigeria? The British, in order to educate us, imported their books to the schools they founded so that the graduates can work in the British administrations. So, what kind of books did we read? Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland and William Shakespeare’s books – stories that the Nigerian child cannot relate with. But how many Nigerian publishers today are publishing books that are relevant to our society, except textbooks? If our writers write books, publishers won’t publish them. And who are the publishers anyway? The publishers we have are foreigners, who import books all the time. Even when they call themselves Nigerian publishers, how much of Nigerian publishing do they do? Only school books. The university lecturers do hand-outs, and if you write a book in University of Lagos, University of Ibadan may not buy it because it is not by their own professors. And yet they go to India to buy books. Look, the African man has not started.
Parents who spend over N50,000 a year, talking on GSM to spend more on books for their children. We say government must give us books. And the government cannot afford it, but they don’t want to tell people because it is political. Now, everybody says they can provide free education; it doesn’t work that way.
Are you saying free education cannot work?
It can, only if government partners with parents to purchase books for children. Government cannot afford to give all books free. We must emphasise that the door to the IT age is not just the computer, but books.
As Nigeria is in the verge of another transition process, what can we do to correct this?
The government has plenty to do to correct this. All governments (whether military or civilian) that have come and gone don’t pay any attention to education. There is a National Book Policy that nobody is paying attention to. I have written a lot about it and nobody is listening. I said “if we don’t get things right this time as we have not done in the last 40 years, we may continue to grope in the dark and breed more illiterates”.
How can we begin to correct this?
Don’t ask me. What we need is a leader, who has a purpose and knows where he is going. The only person who has done that in this country is the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. He knew exactly where he was going in all facets of life. What we have are people, who are trying to imitate Awolowo, but do not have Awolowo’s philosophy. What the western states is enjoying today is based on his philosophy. And they called him all sorts of names like they are calling some of our leaders now, who are determined to bring about change. When I was chairman of the Book Fair Trust, they conspired against me, not minding that I built it up because they thought I was making money when I was sweating and investing all my money in it. Indians are now running the Nigerian Book Fair. Once, my battle cry was that we must build the capacity of the publishing industry in Nigeria.
With all the political candidates gunning for power, do you see any as the saviour Nigeria needs at a time like this?
I don’t want to be political. I have my views and I would rather keep my views to myself. Now on social media if you are not for party A or B, it is pathetic how people abuse each other – nobody talks about issues.
