Nigerian leaders a curse, bad govt policy killed my Calabar condom, syringe factories – 95-year-old industrialist, OlopadeNinety-five-year-old engineer, businessman and industrialist, Chief Obafemi Olopade, speaks to TOLUWALOPE KAREEM about his life’s journey, achievements and regrets
How do you feel at 95?
It will not be fair to say I don’t feel somehow. Naturally, as one grows older, there are some changes which are natural that would take place. I feel a bit, at times, lively; at times, not the same person at 21, 40, 60 or even 90 years. That shows that as one advances in age one is bound to lose something. Some people say I am lucky because my memory is still alert, some of my friends say they forget things. For instance, they leave the bedroom to go to the toilet and they forget what they went to do in the toilet. But fortunately, I am grateful to God Almighty that in my case, it is the reverse, I tend to remember and recollect, I may not be accurate with the date, but I can remember events.
Where were you born?
I was born in Lagos State, but I grew up in Port Harcourt. Those days when fathers were working outside their hometown, when their wives were pregnant, they tended to send them (wives) back home for them to have their babies at home. That was the case of many of the children in my generation. Parents wanted their childen to grow up the way they were brought up. That is why you find the disparity in the actions and reactions of the younger generation, because they grew up in an atmosphere which is not similar to what their parents grew up in. They call it civilisation, but it depends on how you interpret civilisation.
What was your father into back then?
My father moved to Port Harcourt in 1921, he was a timber merchant and a produce buyer, exporting produce to Europe and later he veered into contracting, building houses. According to the standard of that time, he was a bit wealthy to raise his family, and fortunately for him at that time he was able to have a storey building in Port Harcourt. Those who had storey buildings were supposed to be wealthy, that was the classification, and those who had vehicles were extraordinarily wealthy. One grew up under such a family tree, where your parents could afford things and in schools and churches, you were a bit prominent.
What are the fond memories you have of your childhood days in Port Harcourt?
Port Harcourt at that time, in the late 20s and early 30s, was the cleanest city in Nigeria; it was called the Garden City. We had gardens almost everywhere and schools had competition on what type of flowers they planted on their premises. There was an education officer who was an Englishman, who would go around, inspecting schools, to see the flowers and even children knew almost all types of flowers by their names. [/b] There were lots of gardens in Port Harcourt at that time and my father had one – Olopade Garden.
Growing up, I was a bit troublesome. Though I was the last born of my mother, they didn’t want me to be a spoilt child; so, I was compelled to stay with a reverend. I lived with him and went to school from there. Being a Methodist, I attended Wesley Methodist School. I moved to the United Kingdom for my higher education; I attended a college of technology where I did Structural Engineering.
Like I said earlier, I am a bit troublesome, and I take pride in it. I went to study but I devoted time to other activities. I was interested in church work and politics, and as they say you can’t serve God and Mammon, that affected my education at one time, but as God would have it, at the end, I completed my education as a Federal Government scholar, which at that time was very important. But before then, I spent so much time doing church work. On Fridays and weekends, I went to the little villages outside London to preach and talk to youths; I also went to choir practice three times a week. [b]That took so much of my time, and as time went on, I became involved in student politics, when we were all asking for independence in Africa, India. We were always around, spending more time doing those things, than facing our education. But our hosts, the British, were not happy with us that were involved in student politics; we were classified as communist because we were rebellious. We were asking for our rights but they didn’t take kindly to it. God works in mysterious ways, and He made it possible for Nigeria to get independence when we did. But what have we done with the independence? That is the million-dollar question that we should ask ourselves.
In my time, we had the best; we had ballroom dance, even in the prison, warders had ballroom dance on Saturdays. We ate good food and breathed good air. Those days, if you were at your friend’s house and it was late, you could sleep there, there was safety and you were not afraid. You could send a child to a long distance without any fear of the child being harmed or kidnapped.
Can you give some insights into your career trajectory?
When I was going to England I wanted to study Country and Town Planning; when we got to Sierra Leone, there was an English person on the ship, he was talking to us and asked what we were going to study, and I told him; then he suggested that I study Structural Engineering. I heeded his advice and that was how I changed my mind. I was interested in engineering as a child, because my father, at one time, was selling used vehicles by the military after the Second World War. I had an insight into some of those things, but then my wish wasn’t God’s wish. I achieved success and I am proud.
I had the honour and privilege of working in very big engineering firms, I worked with a Jewish firm, I gained an insight and used that as a springboard. I joined one of the three largest firms and because of my colour they put me in a sensitive section, where they didn’t put any white boy. I was working directly under my boss, a man from Poland. We were doing military jobs. I used to do the writing, stamp the envelope and dispatch it. The other boys wondered why I was the one chosen. At the time, I, too, didn’t know the reason. Then I later realised that it was for security reasons that they placed me under that special section.
Later, I set up my own company, had the opportunity of working also with some Nigerians trained under the same company. It was an eye-opener for me, I had the exposure. I was also in charge of a traffic survey in Liverpool which was a challenge to me. When I decided to set up my own business, I had enough area to draw from.
How does that compare to your work in Nigeria?
You want an honest opinion? You should be proud of what you have. In Nigeria today, you cannot give me 50 Nigerians who have set up practice or their own business for over 50 years. Why? Because the government changes the goalpost, there are laws every day, they keep changing laws. I have three factories in Calabar; making syringes, needles and condoms. Government, in their wisdom, through a minister, decided to ban the manufacturing of disposable syringes. She did no survey. Someone had told her to ban it and she did, the factory has been locked up for how many years now? It was opened in 2001; at 95, I have a burden on my shoulders. Reasons given were security and safety, and I asked her, “In Lagos, you find people selling medicines in buses, what did you do about that?” But today in Akwa Ibom the government supports Europeans manufacturing what they asked us not to produce.
With the money invested, I should be enjoying myself, travelling around, staying in five-star hotels, eating good foods, sleeping, and relaxing, but here I am languishing.
And to worsen the matter, the banks make life unbearable. How can someone borrow money and pay 28 per cent interest; what profit is he going to make? When I wanted to make the syringe company, I went to the WHO in Geneva, asked for their opinion and they advised that I should not manufacture destructive syringes, because nobody knows how to use them, and that it is too expensive. They advised that I should, instead, produce disposable syringes. In 1999, I started; it was commissioned in 2001; the quality of what we produced in Calabar is as good as what they produce anywhere in the world. I went to South Africa with my accountant and showed them my product and they were asking us if it was imported. I told them we made it from the scratch to finish. I will not encourage my children to set up business here. The country is blessed but those who are governing the country are not blessed; they are a curse. I am not happy; I am a bitter man because of what is going on in the country.
You also ventured into business, what kind of business did you do and what was your experience?
I used to do buying and selling with some English partners. I bought 40 per cent interest in that company. We were importing drinks, frozen foods, and food items from South Africa. We also imported cotton and sold to textile factories. We would go to China to source for what the textile factories wanted and bring to sell to them. We supplied to Ghana and South Africa, it was good money. All the big companies – UAC, Leventis – most of their food items, including baked beans, they got them from us. We were the first to bring Titus and Sardines to Nigeria. We were importing toilet rolls and paper napkins from England, and then we started producing here.
Off buying and selling, I went into manufacturing, that’s why I have the syringe and condom companies in Calabar, which has not started because of the government. Talking about millions of dollars, I didn’t borrow a kobo. I don’t do things to please or displease others. At one point, I had the largest and oldest travel agency in Nigeria; my clients were mainly accountants, engineers and architects.
Is it true that on return to Nigeria from England, you were given a job at the Nigerian Railway Corporation, but you turned down the offer?
Well, I didn’t turn it down; I was a Federal Government scholar and I accepted to join the railway. I went for the interview and as God would have it, my former head of department was on the panel. I got in for the interview, they questioned me and I answered all the questions. I got the job because of where I trained. I was asked to go for medicals, I went for it and a male doctor inspected me, called in a female nurse and asked me to read the alphabets, and next thing he asked me to strip naked to read the alphabet. I stripped naked, I am an abiding citizen, I did the test. I still have their dispatch book, which shows that they offered me the job over 50 years ago, but I never showed up after the test. I felt humiliated, if I can go through that looking for a job, what will I go through when I am there? Only few people know about this. I cannot work under such conditions where I have been humiliated.
Nigeria still depends a lot on foreigners to handle a lot of engineering projects. What do you think is limiting Nigerian engineers?
We have first-class Nigerian engineers that outside Nigeria they can hold their own, but the disadvantage they have is money. Engineering is an expensive venture. Today, the Nigerian government owes their contractors, the contractors are able to manage because they have parent companies out there and they go public, so they are collecting money from public investors to keep their investors happy and keep their companies going.
The Chinese learnt the hard way, and Chinese contractors are not contractors on their own, they are government-sponsored contractors. The government funds them, and they provide them with a chairman who is a party man; he reports the progress of the job to the party and they pay the company, give the government some parts of the receipts of profit. The government is earning, and they are using the money in the right way.
What do you make of the raging agitation for the creation of Yoruba nation outside Nigeria?
It is not a creation of Yoruba Nation; it is a creation of other countries within Nigeria. All is not well, and we know it. People are being unduly sentimental. Someone comes in now and asks you to leave your own country. People are disgruntled and are not bold enough to come out and say it. The joke amongst the northerners these days, they say if you see a snake and a Fulani man, kill the Fulani man before the snake. They tried to conquer Kanuri and Hausa, they failed, but were able to get the Hausa.
When we had the three regions; the North sent people out to study, non-Hausa-Fulani were sent to study courses like Engineering, Medicine and others, while the Fulani were sent to do administration. Others were spending years studying, while they (Fulani) were done with their courses in months. They were smart. I am not a fan of the Western Region; I was in England when it was created, we advocated for Nigeria, we didn’t advocate for the creation of small states, we wanted a unified country.
What people are saying is that couples live under a roof, and when there are differences, they work things out. We know people who have been divorced and come back together. Progress is being deterred; people are crying wolf. Benue State, 40 years ago, would not talk like this, because they were satisfied with the crumbs from the table, but they have been able to bring up men and women who are educated and they are speaking out now.
I should be the last person to talk about dividing Nigeria, because we were carrying placards in Britain, I was secretary for the movement for freedom from the colonial masters. We were talking about independence from developed countries, but what have we done with it? There is nothing to show for it. If we had gone the way we were going in 2001, that speed and tempo, we will be somewhere else today.
Last week, the British High Commissioner went on air to say they are prepared to grant Nigerians to stay and study, because they know Nigerians are going to America and they know the performance there. Let us go our different ways and see if we can achieve a measure of success, then we can come back. There are people who want us to go separately, but they are not bold enough to come out and say it. Let’s go our separate ways and see how best we can make it. But don’t force people to be under the same umbrella we are not comfortable with. Because it has not affected some people, that’s why they don’t want a change.
What inspired the writing of your book, Yoruba for Every Season and Citizen?
What inspired me is that I travel a lot. You find that the average Yoruba and Igbo Nigerian child outside Nigeria does not speak her mother tongue, but you’ll find a Hausa child outside Nigeria speaking their mother tongue. These children will come back home someday, so I wrote that book. Before independence, if an Englishman could speak any Nigerian language, he was given a salary increase. So, what they did was to make Nigerian boys to live with them and send them to school, so they could converse with them and learn the language.
Many say there is more bad news than good news about Nigeria, has it always been like this?
No, it hasn’t. The country is blessed, but those who are in it are the problem. The problem we have is that we are not honest with ourselves. How many people have come out publicly to say all is not well? Nobody wants to get involved because they are not affected. I am a disgruntled Nigerian.
With all you have seen over the years, do you think Nigeria will ever be a good country?
Nigeria will be better provided we go back and look at what we have done wrong and mend it and see what tangible things we can bring up in the future. Rome was not built in a day. I pray that God hear our prayers to get our act together once again. Restructure it without bitterness, but with the intention of moving forward.
Looking back, do you have any regrets, or do you feel totally fulfilled?
Yes, I have regrets; the regrets I have are that we made silly mistakes which we improved on, and we are going back into a bottomless pit, repeating the same mistakes. But my achievements and fulfillment outshine my regrets.
I am fulfilled, I am happy; happiness cannot be bought with money. My greatest achievements are my children, grandchildren and God has blessed them. One of my granddaughters in Singapore has been chosen as one of the 30 future leaders in Singapore. One of my daughters went to Germany and she came first in swimming. For me, these are achievements and my source of joy. I am content with what I have and what God has given to me. Up till this moment, I go to the market in Abeokuta by myself and go shopping for foodstuffs. I save my wife the stress. I enjoy doing it.
How did you meet your wife and what attracted you to her?
My first marriage collapsed. I met a young girl on the advice of a friend. I took that advice and now she has been with me for about 47 years and she has four children for me. I have other children and they are all doing well, all 16 of them are graduates. I am happy with my wife, and my other wives live under my roof in other areas I own.
What is your favourite food?
I am a very easy person to feed; I eat anything you can eat and enjoy, except snake and ponmo.
As a nonagenarian, how is a typical day for you like?
I am an early riser; about 6am I am up. I pray, I have a bath; I have my breakfast of two spoons of Quaker oat, with honey and water. I go out for the day and work until I finish for the day’s work and go back home, I go to bed around 11pm or 12am. I am a workaholic.
What is your secret to longevity?
I try as much as I can to be honest and God has blessed me with that. I am content with what I have. I don’t copy things and copy groups; I don’t drink at all. I don’t smoke. People say I am too rigid, I say I am principled. https://punchng.com/nigerian-leaders-a-curse-bad-govt-policy-killed-my-calabar-condom-syringe-factories-95-year-old-industrialist-olopade/?amp 58 Likes 5 Shares 
|
