Sam Onigbanjo is the CEO Consulting4London and GP Business Club. With his wife, Tola, they organise the annual Women for Africa Awards in London, an award in which top female achievers from Africa are honoured. He was recently named by by the Nigerian Cetenary Awards, UK, as one of the 100 most influential Nigerians in the United Kingdom in the last 100 years. He spoke with OKORIE UGURU on his childhood, the economic crisis that crumbled his career as a government contractor in the UK, his marriage and his plans for Nigeria in the near future
CONGRATULATIONS on your rating by the Nigerian Cetenary Awards, UK, as one of the 100 most influential Nigerians in the United Kingdom in the last 100 years. Why do you think you made the list?
First and foremost, I thank God for that. But I think one of the most important things is that I follow my heart and my dreams. I have always wanted to be an influential person, someone who can discern right from wrong and one who can be pointed to as a very good example of something. There are so many things I want to see happen, and one of them is to see Africa rise. I want to see African men and women in a better place. As a Nigerian born in the Diaspora and someone who has lived in the Diaspora for long, I yearn to see my own people climb the ladder.
Truth be told, sometimes I see people in the United Kingdom and I ask myself, how on earth can this people produce more than us? How can they have more technology than us? I see their work ethic; I see the kind of mischief some of them get into, and I know that even though some Nigerians are into 419, I see something that is much worse from them. But then, living over there for so long, I have learnt to take things and be a leader.
What makes Europe and America great is the fact that they are prepared to sacrifice their own comfort to do something for their country, and that is what I’ve said I want to do. I am tired of seeing the African business community at the bottom of the platform. So, I have decided to take the bull by the horn, resign from the Institute of Directors and the London Chamber of Commerce and put together a business club that looks at Africans and Africans needs. It does three things: it can serve as a bridge between Africans and Africans in the Diaspora; it can create an opportunity for Africans in business to network and create a peer to peer opportunity so that African leaders can network and do meaningful things.
For example, we can actually do what we call joint venture banks. By that I mean we can disregard bank rates and bank credit. We can put our money together, invest in other people that have business and run it with the competency that we have had in business. The leadership opportunities that we have had in business, we can actually drive it and make a change.
The second thing that I have done, which I know is a real wow for the women, is that when I was a boy, I remember when there was a coup in Nigeria, my dad was a businessman. I remember that he put all the money he had in Lagos State because he used to do business with them. For years, his money was stuck there, and he could not do anything about it. My mum had to work harder and harder to make sure that she brought in money. Even though I was a boy, I remember when she made the money. She was a fashion designer. She used to put them in packets and give to my dad. He would come out like the man, and spend the money and do things. I knew from that early age that if you can empower the real African woman, you have empowered the man. You don’t really need to chase equality with men or women. Sort out the woman, she will feed her children, and she will honour her husband.
I know that about 54 per cent of our population is women. I know that if we are going to come forward as a people, we need to focus on the majority, and the majority is not men but women. My passion has been to focus on our women. Let’s empower our women. Let’s celebrate them. Let us inspire them because when women are inspired, they can add value to our men and children so that as a people, we can go forward. Those are the two things that set me on.
What did you mean when you said that you followed your heart?
What happened was that I had a wake-up call. Prior to 2007, I had a very lucrative contract. I was making good money. There was a change in government in the UK from Labour to the Tories. What the Tory government did was that they cut back on spending and stopped some contracts. Mine was among the contracts that were stopped, and it hit me. It made me think that what was the difference between me, even though I employed between 10 and 15 workers, and an employee, if a government can change and terminate my contract and I was almost like an employee? I said I didn’t want to do this anymore; I wanted to live my own life and be free.
I went on a holiday and I did a lot of thinking. I remembered that as a boy, there was something I had wanted to do. I wanted to make sure that I became a great African leader. I wanted to make sure that I became influential. I wanted to make sure that there was equity. I wanted to make sure that women were treated right. I wanted to make sure that I was part and parcel of a decent African society. Those were the catalysts that moved me to say you know what? It is time for a change. We are not going to wait for someone to make that change; we are going to be the one to cause the change that we want to see. That was how it started.
How have Nigerians impacted on the British society in the 100 years?
I think Nigerians’ impact on the UK is understated. The majority of Nigerians are phenomenal. I know that when we go through some of the core areas in the city of London, that is the life wire of Europe, we have a good number of Nigerians in financial services. I am talking about Nigerians at the level of Vice President upwards. We have executive directors and managing directors. So, there are a lot of Nigerians in J.P. Morgans, Golman Sachs, HSBC and so on. They are really helping to steer and turn around the UK economy. In fact, when the UK was going through recession, a Nigerian, Adebayo Ogunlesi, helped to bail out the country. He bought the Gatwick and City airports. The UK was trapped and a Nigerian based in New York bought these airports and made sure that the UK economy had a kick to help it grow.
So, Nigerians in the Diaspora are incredibly influential. It is just that we have not been sung enough. Our PR machinery is not working properly. Our PR machine needs to focus on people who can deliver; not people that can pay. So, it is time for change and I think this is the beginning of that change.
If Nigerians are that influential in the UK, how come that negative stories about them dominate the western media?
I think you have asked me a question that is going to hit you. So, I am going to apologise before I say it. One of the reasons is that our own media are not serious. What happens is that people are made or broken by the media. It is what the media chooses to signpost or highlight that comes out. It is not what happens. When people want a company to fall, they talk about the negatives of that company in the media and it crumbles. If they want people to lose and election in the UK…A couple of years ago, the former, Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone offended the Jewish community. The Jewish community owns the media. They wrote everything nasty about him and made him lose the election.
The media is an influence tool. So, naturally in the UK, the media is used to elevate the Europeans and not Africans, because they are not ours. In turn, our media in Africa ought to be elevating those that have made impact on the society; not those that you don’t even know where they got their money from. This is the problem. People in the media should know that one of your key responsibilities is to focus on the best of Africa, the best of Nigerians, the best of our men and women, the phenomenal people in the city of London. We need to be searching for them and highlighting them.
I think that change is here now. The time has come. If we don’t bring out the best of Nigeria, we are going to remain at the bottom. That is why there have been more of the negatives in the media than the positives because the people in the media of Nigerian background have not been focusing on people from Nigeria who are not willing to pay them.
You said the GP Business Club decided to take the bull by the horn by leaving out some business organisations you believe had not been fair to Africans. But you know that it is difficult for your kind of business to fly without capital…
I haven’t solved everything. What I have done or what I intend to do is work in progress. One of our goals is to align people who have cash with people who have initiatives. The interesting thing is that what we have found is that there is actually a balance between those two. Ten years ago, there were more people with cash that we knew of in Europe than in Nigeria. But things have changed. With the fast growing housing sector, there has been an emergence of so many Nigerians with available cash, who are actually reinvesting in Europe. Finance seems to grow faster here in Nigeria. But in the UK, people are investing in Nigerian business for safety of funds.
For example, Nigeria is the main producer of cassava. In their natural state, we have things like garri, ekuru, and so on. Those are staple foods. We have people in the Diaspora who have gone a step further. What they have done is that they have started to remove the glutton from these cassava products, which means that if people eat them the way they have done them, their blood levels will remain the same or even fall. It will be useful for people with high blood pressure or people who find it difficult to digest food after 7 pm.
There are Nigerians who have put all their life savings into creating these things and they have got them certified. We are aligning them with Nigerians in Nigeria who have cash to invest and create a distribution chain for these worldwide. That is something that we have done with the business platform. And there more like that.
You took to the United Kingdom a galaxy of female achievers from Africa for your award. What informed that?
You know what, it was vision. In Women for Africa, the female element is actually my wife, Tola. My wife really has something for female empowerment. I think being a very wise woman, what she did was that she tried to hook me into this and she thought that the only way she could bring me into it was to bring in my passion: Africa. If the women have the Africa element in it, then I will be interested. And even in the Women for Africa, my key area is inspirational people, credible people, people who when people hear them, jaws drop and the next thing they will say is ‘I want to be there, I want to win that award because it is credible and there is no voting.’
By the way, we don’t do any voting, no popularity contest; it is based on your works. We have two sets of elimination. The first is from our selection panel. This year, we had about 540 people nominated. The responsibility of our selection panel was to cut it down to about 69, and they did that. We had another panel of judges made up of credible people. I think from what we did last year, the echoes of their greatness went around Africa. We were so privileged and humbled that people from Rwanda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Chad, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Benin, Gabon and so on, all flew in. I was really humbled by it. It is testimony that if you have a vision and a passion for good and you work and invest in it day and night, it will yield result. It is time for Africa to produce its own sons and daughters who will help this continent to shine.
How successful was the programme, by your assessment?
I thank God, it has been good. I know that there is still so much more in me. That is why I am here. The more the people we speak to, the more the Nigerians, Africans and young people we will inspire. Because one of the outcomes is that every time that this happens, we want to make sure that young people have focal points. Why I am saying this is that the reason some people fall into crime is that they don’t really have a vision. They need to see that there are women who have become top lawyers, top police people and billionaires. They need to have their vision and their dreams re-energised. So, it is one thing to celebrate our African ladies whom we love, it is another thing to make sure that we are able to sustain and nurture the next generation so that they don’t grow up without a vision.
One thing I noticed in the video of the award that I watched is that most of the recipients were women in their 40s and 50s. There was none in her 20s. Was that deliberate?
I am glad you said so. There are two reasons for this. For you to be a phenomenal achiever, you probably have a credible background; you have the experience. So, if we were to put young people in that category with people who have 20 years and above experience, it becomes unfair. What we have done is that we have a specific category for young achievers. Unfortunately, that category was not in the video that you saw. The winner of that was an absolutely young phenomenal woman from Ghana. She actually advises the current Prime Minister of UK, and she is below 25 years. The first runner up was a Nigerian, Tarah Adiagbo. Her mum is a former ICAN President, Ronke Adiagbo. When it comes to judging, I don’t get involved, even though I saw her.
From the way you talk, women have a lot of influence on you; your mother, your wife, and so on. Why is it so?
I think if I am to say the truth, people are often in denial. The real influences on men are women. It does not matter what you say, there is always one woman who would likely sit you down and tell you things that make you think. That is why women are lifelong partners of men. They think and look at things differently. Some of them may not have our business prowess or leadership drive, they have some insight that if you tend to listen to them, you will think twice before doing certain things. In my war cabinet, I always make sure I have women so that I can always listen to what they have to say as well.
How did your mum influence you?
She did by example. She woke up before everyone. I hated her for it. She would wake us up. I didn’t want to wake up very early like her, but she made me wake up early, maybe to wash my clothes. There are some things that she set in me, which even now are nothing because I was set that way. It was just a few days back that I was in my friend’s house and we were joking and talking about how many dishes we used to wash. My friend is very successful. He works in Ikoyi, Lagos. Our parents gave us those tasks. So now when it comes to getting down and doing work, it is nothing because it has been inculcated in me. Work is nothing to me; it is like my second nature.
What would you say about your wife?
She is actually known as Wise Tola on Radio in the UK. The station is called Bang FM. She writes. She is a social media person. She goes by the name Wise Tola and she is very wise. She is very detailed and meticulous and very organised. She is the opposite of me in business. She is more of an administrator. She is well organised. She keeps data, does audit. Anything to do with systems, she is very good at it. I am much more driven in terms of growth, development, growing a new business. Between us is a very strong team.
You have done a lot in the UK. Are you thinking of bringing some these things to Nigeria?
From the beginning, we know in business everybody has an idea. We said we are going to do this for three years in the UK, because when we tell people in Nigeria, they will ask us, have you done this before? What is your track record? Do you have any information? It is all here. So, those preliminary questions don’t exist. We have done it. We are the biggest and the largest for African women in the world. If you want us, let’s talk, let’s partner. It is will be phenomenal; Women for Africa, Nigeria Chapter. We have one global event which we will do in the UK and the other 54 African countries will have a chapter, including Nigeria. Latest by 2015, we will do something in Nigeria, if not this year.
How did you meet your wife?
I met her at a wedding. I had actually seen her before and I told a friend of mine to tell her to come to that wedding so that I could see her again. At that my friend’s wedding, we were about going out and there she was. I played the old game to win, and the rest is history.
Do you have children?
Yes. We have three children.
