- Akintola’s rise to fame from Mushin is testament that stars abound everywhere
“Looking at a king’s mouth, one would think he never sucked at his mother’s breast”. This proverb is true of Daniel Akintola, the Nigerian entrepreneur who has emerged the first African to win the Entrepreneur of the Year of IAMBCU Award 2024 at Birmingham City University, England.
Akintola is co-founder of Oh Prime TV, an online television bouquet which is available on all smart TV, smart boxes and mobile platforms. The journey to its founding by Akintola, along with the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), began in some cyber cafes in Mushin, Lagos State, about 17 years ago. It boasts about 2.7 million users.
“The Entrepreneur of the Year Award category recognises budding and seasoned entrepreneurs, who are making waves in the business world”, Akintola said.
Akintola lost his father when he was six years old. The responsibility of nurturing him thus fell on his mother, who, rather than resigning to fate, courageously faced the challenges as a single parent.
“In order to give me an academic edge over my classmates in public schools, my mother gladly wore rags, so as to afford the tuition of after-school tutorial classes of Ifelodun Group of Schools at Papa-Ajao, Mushin (an Ivy League school in Mushin rating of those days),” he said. He added that he lived essentially on ‘Ewa Otili’ (pigeon peas), a type of beans that take about six hours to cook, and ‘’Lebbu’ (ground cassava).
“My life is nothing but an amazing grace story of a man cruising on the covenant highways of his divine destiny fulfilment,” he said.
Akintola acquired his National Diploma in Accounting from Ogun State Polytechnic, Abeokuta, and later a B.Sc in Accounting from the Lagos State University (LASU).
His internship at Precise Financial Systems (PFS), where he started his corporate career prepared him for the job in the accounting industry. His impressive performance there made Philip Ayeni, deputy managing director, to retain him.
Despite his remarkable achievements in the company, he bowed out in 2007 to, in his words, “experiment with the findings of my two years of research on video streaming technology by founding Danny Brooks Technologies.” His aim was to provide a full suite of end-to-end online broadcasting and streaming solutions. This was how several cyber cafes in Mushin became his second home, so to speak.
“How can I forget those nights when some of those cafe managers who go to the toilet to invite the police over, telling them food was ready (police raiding cafe in those days was corruptly lucrative).”
However, it was the corona virus that brought his invention’s activities into limelight. Danny Brooks Technologies’ collaboration with RCCG was a huge success as it brought freedom to “African media consumers by liberating them from their Pay TV slave masters through the launch of Africa’s 1st zero subscription online TV platform named Oh Prime (Open Heavens Prime).”
From then, the awards started coming in. First was the ‘BusinessDay’ Top 100 SMEs CEO award in January, last year; followed in September by the “West African Winner of the Global Start-up Award: Diversity Role Model.” And now the Birmingham City University honour.
We salute Akintola’s determination to succeed in spite of his very poor background. Not a few people see Mushin, where he did his research to stardom, as an area dominated by bad boys. That he could achieve his ambition there is a pointer to the fact that computers and cyber cafes, by extension, could be used for functional and dysfunctional purposes. That he chose the former is what has made the remarkable difference between him and many others who sleep in cyber cafes for the wrong reasons.
Akintola has, by this UK achievement joined the growing list of Nigerians who are helping in rewriting the Nigerian narrative abroad. The main difference being that he cut his teeth at home, meaning that there are still opportunities in the country for people who want to excel, in spite of the shambolic state of affairs
We congratulate Akintola and wish him more successes even as we call on governments and well-to-do Nigerians to continue to expand the frontiers of opportunities for people like Akintola who are in search of self actualisation.
