The new chairman of Odu’a Investment Company Limited, Chief Bimbo Ashiru, shares his plan to take the South-West giant a notch higher in this interview. Sulaimon Olanrewaju presents excerpts.
CAN you give us an overview of the economy and how you are going to navigate through current challenges with a view to turning them into opportunities to give shareholders better returns?
I always believe in one thing, which is making the best out of a bad situation. Economic challenge is all over the world, but people will still navigate and get things done properly. I will give you a good example, which is COVID-19. Look at what happened as a result of COVID-19 and how people become billionaires. I did not say became billionaires because people are still making billions. I know what people are making in America and I know how many people made money in Nigeria. Some people sat down, thought out of the box on how to make the best out of it. What did they do? They started logistics and they became billionaires overnight. I remember growing up and seeing Odu’a as a conglomerate that was actually competing with the likes of the UAC of this world, but what happened? Odu’a had a property in England at number 51, Kensington Gardens and many more.
What I am saying is that the founders of Odu’a had vision, they had mission and they were probably in their 30’s and their 40’s. The likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo and others built the Cocoa House, which was the tallest building in Africa, the first television station in Africa and the University of Ife through the funds raised from cocoa.
Some people came to Nigeria to take our palm oil and palm kernel in the 80s to Kuala Lumpur, they went as far as using those palm kernel to make chewing gum. So you think out of the box. Economic challenges are not meant to kill us; they are supposed to bring the best out of us. If there is a fire outbreak here today, we must look for a way of getting out of this place. So that is my own vision and my own point is that I do not think anything is difficult. It is just making the best out of it.
So, the parameter of challenges of economy and what we have done so far, we made about 150 per cent progress and do not forget that all of us came in on the May 7, 2020. I was part of it and I commend the governors for picking the right caliber of people, people with pedigree, unblemished track record. We have people that have worked in different industries as board members. I was in banking for almost 30 years before I went to serve as a commissioner in Ogun State for eight years and the records are there. My records are there in the banking industry. DrSegunAina, the immediate past chairman, was a banker and he left as a Managing Director while I left as a director in the bank. So we have things we are doing. We have a consultant with Accenture, who is doing his own thing. We have a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), we have a medical doctor who became a politician but still a professional and we have an accountant who became a commissioner. My own point is that how do we make the best out of it? First of all, you have to have commitment then secondly, the issue of integrity. Integrity is when you are doing the right thing when nobody is watching. We have come to Odu’a with a good mind, we want to serve the people, we want to make a name for ourselves, we will do it and that is the only way forward. You cannot sit down and say there is a problem with the economy and say there is no way.
We have been able to get our oil licence and the marginal fields and we paid for it fully. We have 42.86 per cent and it is called Beta Marginal Field. We have our licence and we have started seeing people who are willing to partner with us. From what we have seen Chevron is on that plate. We should be able to do a minimum of between 4000 and 5000 barrels per day and there is gas there too. It is in Ondo and I mentioned it to the governor that we would need his help so that when we start working there, people do not come out to disturb us.
Our hospitality business will witness a major turnaround soon. I have good news for you, Premier Hotel, Ibadan, is as good as sorted out. We are doing a joint venture with a company, which I don’t want to name now. They are spending over N10 billion to turn Premier Hotel into a five star hotel and that is what we are looking out for. We have started talking to other investors because we know we are sitting on a gold mine. I tell people that Nigeria has no business being an import-dependent economy. We are blessed with lots of natural resources. Why should we take food out of this country raw and bring it back processed? Normally, when you go to the market, it is the seller that will determine the price of goods, but now the buyers are the ones dictating the price. Odu’a is a gold mine. Gold mine in the sense that we have the resources and with the caliber of people we have here we can do so many things.
Are you going to run with the people you met on ground?
Let me tell you, the people that we met on ground, you will be surprised that they are useful, it depends on how you manage them. One of the things I am going to focus on is training. We will spend a lot of money on training our people. In the banking industry I started with Chartered Bank in those days in 1989 and after some years in the banking industry, I left to another bank with the old people we were saying that we had to downsize, but I said no, we cannot sack them, but train them. If you give people the right education, right training, they will understand and we cannot do things the same way and expect results. The only permanent thing in life is change. So what I am saying is that I personally will not encourage that old people should be sent packing. When you give the people the right kind of training like for example, I believe that our Group as a whole, including our subsidiaries, they must have training programmes. I will encourage the Managing Director of each of the organisations to ensure that they identify their successors and I am not going to be an armchair chairman, I am going to visit all our subsidiaries. I want to see what they have on ground and like I was telling someone, if I am a governor or the president of the country, I am not going to announce when I am coming to your state. I will arrive and I will say let us pass through this route and you are not going to take me through the best route.
Let me tell you this before I continue, Odu’ahad over 40 per cent of Lafarge. We had permanent seats for two directors and the present Chairman of Lafarge today is a director and representative of Odu’a, but what happened, they sold those shares and where are they today? We also had Odu’a Telecoms and we spent N10 billion on that venture. I was the chairman of the committee set up to look into it. We are making progress on that now. By God’s grace over the next four years, we are going to change so many things and we will go to individual subsidiaries giving one day notice.
Do you have any specific plan for investments in agriculture over the duration of your tenure?
My focus even as a commissioner was agriculture that would lead to industrialisation. I will tell you this, the first ethanol factory in Nigeria, I happen to be one of the people that commissioned it. There is a farm in Ososa (Ogun State) producing over 250 tonnes of cassava per day and they were rotting away. But immediately the ethanol factory started, it required about 500 tonnes per day. That means good business for the cassava farm, and the farm started smiling to the bank. The factory created jobs for about 15,000 farmers. So I told SWAgCo (South West Agricultural Company) to take advantage of the opportunities. Our focus is that we want SWAgCo to go back to what Chief Awolowo and co did to get results. We have given them seed money and we do not need to own 100 per cent of SWAgCo. They can bring in investors and there are so many private equity firms that are ready to invest and they are working on that.
Now to what Ondo State governor said, we will go to each state and look at areas where they have comparative and competitive advantage when it comes to agricultural products. So the dairy farm he was talking about at the Odu’a AGM, rest assured that soon it will be done. So SWAgCo is doing very well in Ogun State in terms of cassava, I think they are also doing well in Oyo State. In Osun State, they mine gold there and we are going to partner with them towards mining. So we are going to take advantage of the commission and ensure that we do the agriculture we are talking about and focus on that, but you cannot achieve a lot in agriculture if you do not have access to infrastructure. So, now that we have those tips, we will encourage the government to do the rural roads where those rural dwellers will be able to bring in those goods and we are trying to see if they can get some funds from the CBN Anchor Borrowers Programme, which is a cheap fund and I know that they are talking with some banks to get some funds.
So, in the area of agriculture, we need to invest more, we need to get proper infrastructure in place. Those are the things we are going to focus on and I am happy that our state governors are now supporting. We are also looking at Information Technology (IT), it is the way to go in this world and we are looking at all strategic places and Odu’a has invested so much in IT infrastructure.
You are planning to create new businesses, are you also thinking of revamping the moribund ones like Nigerian Wire and Cable?
You see people get it wrong because some of these companies do not belong to Odua’s anymore. Don’t forget that they went to the bank to borrow money and banks have acquired them. However, those that were sold fraudulently we will recover them, an example is Epe Plywood. We are looking for people that are going to invest in it. We are going to revamp the moribund companies if it will be worthwhile to do so. If it is not, we sell them off.
What will you like to be remembered for after your time as chairman of Odu’a Group?
I want all the board members’ names to be written in platinum and not in gold. To say when Bimbo Ashiru was the chairman, we started producing crude oil and Odu’a has created that environment whereby agriculture has now led to industrialisation, Odu’a has created a high tech hub for our youths and all the states in the South-West. We also want people to say that while we were there, this is the number of jobs we created and these are the things we have left and by the time I leave, I pray that the Airport Hotel would have started a joint venture and Premier Hotel by God’s grace in the next few months we would have signed off and we will see the notice that we are closing down the place to revamp the place. Baba Awolowo and co were the ones that built the Western House, the Cocoa House and all the Odu’a assets, so somebody had the vision and they did it. General Gowon, when he was Head of State, built the national theatre, so people can do it, it is just for you to have the focus, be committed and have the vision and we will achieve it. When I am leaving, I want my name to be written in platinum and for people to say when I was chairman, Odu’a’s profits improved drastically and the shareholders were getting billions of naira and not millions. I want people to say I distributed billions, which all the six states benefitted from. Those are the things I want to be remembered for.