When you create value, you make money —Chiori Peter Cole

Chiori Peter Cole is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of Ocean Glory Commodities Limited, an organisation with interest in entertainment, shipping, haulage, logistics among others. In this interview with SEGUN ADEBAYO, Cole speaks on how integrity and repute will always make one’s business thrive.

How do you combine integrity with merit in your daily activities at Ocean Glory?

These two words play important role in orientation and goals in life. How you want people to feel you. There is a certain way you have to position yourself upright, ensure that your word is your word. They drive your business as well. People will begin to have confidence in your word; people will know that this man keeps his words. So, integrity propagates merit. Integrity is uprightness; you apply it in such a way that inspires other people around. For me, I enjoy the Bible a lot. The Bible preaches a lot about uprightness because the way you live will affect the other generation looking up to you. You have a lot of people looking up to you. So, the way you have channeled your life, people are looking up to take the same direction you followed. Agreed, nobody is perfect but the key thing is that you have to maintain a high level of integrity. Merit entails that people will appreciate you and want to emulate your lifestyle. They would want to understand how you do it.

 

It is often argued that some of the challenges facing Nigeria have to do with leadership and corruption. What is your take?

Everything has to do with individuals. There are laws in Nigeria that guide everyone but people deliberately for self interests or needs deviate from that. So for me, it has to do with individual calls. For instance, you cannot just conclude that everybody is corrupt in Nigeria. There are many upright people I have met in the course of my business, even in government parastatals who don’t do anything that contradicts the law. Like I said earlier, everybody will not be 100 percent upright because we are all human beings; we can make mistakes and can be advised wrongly. We are hoping that the country gets better by the day. If you watch the new era, everybody is calm and watching. There is just this peace, even with the throw ups of the subsidy removal, yet there hasn’t been much pressure.

 

Aside being integrity-conscious, what are those other factors that have brought you this far in your career?

One of the major factors is not to push too hard, being careful and taking one step at a time. I don’t base my success on financial wealth. I base my own on value added services. I ensure that whatever we are doing adds value to the society. I always avoid anything that could take me out of the light and ways of the Lord. I don’t put myself in a position that could mount unnecessary pressure on me because when the pressure starts building up, I will start making mistakes. For me they are: uprightness, integrity, diligence, putting in my best at all times, ensuring that whatever I am doing is done on the right path. I reposition myself, if it is not working, re-strategize with my team and find appropriate solutions to issues and make them work.

 

Given the peculiarities of the Nigerian business environment, what are the challenges faced in your sector and how have you been able to overcome those challenges as an organization?

As you may know, I play in many sectors but let me talk about two: Maritime and agriculture. In the maritime sector, businesses have to be able to thrive without struggling. For smooth delivery, you need good roads. The main issue we have in maritime is demurrage because it affects the whole value chain system. You can imagine what happens if medical equipment are left in the port for too long. When you add up the demurrage, somebody is going to pay and how affordable would that be? Good roads are very important and limiting the usage of out-dated vehicles because they cause a lot of damages and even accidents. So, like many other industries, the Maritime is still a growing industry. Look at the Nigerian customs today, the clearance system is almost seamless compared to what it used to be10 years ago. There has been a lot of improvement in terms of cargo clearance. I will take the maritime sector as a case study; yes, there are still bottle necks but appropriate actions are being taken to address them. The Nigeria Ports Authority, NPA, has been providing necessary services that facilitate vehicular movement. The Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, and other government agencies are also playing their roles well.

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