Adekunle Adekoya
4 May 2008
interview
Lagos — YOUTHFUL Kolawole Ogunbajo is the managing director of Avis Nigeria, the global car rentals giant.
Ogunbajo cuts the picture of someone who is impatient with the system, as it were, in his country, Nigeria, and he has reasons to be, as will be seen in the conversation below which held in his Apapa office. Responding to a question about airports, his impatience with the system became palpable when he said that running efficient, friendly airports is not as difficult as it is made out here, and subscribes fully to the bid to concession airports if it will make them more business friendly.
HOW do you think the car rentals business could thrive in our kind of economy?
For car rentals in Nigeria, I would say it is the best in terms of providing short term car rentals to individuals and corporate bodies and big organizations that do not want to bother with fleet management as part of their services and with the introduction of renting of cars in Nigeria we are here to provide such service. I've been all over the country in the past seven months and we are located in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Warri and in the next three months we'll be in Uyo, Calabar, Yenagoa and Benin.
What is the profile of the business like; how do you get customers? How do you get people to patronize you?
That's a very good question. Now you would agree with me that the world is a global village now and there are different means of communicating with the customers. What we are doing is to create the awareness in terms of advertisement - advertising through different media, the radio, the television, the website, direct marketing of our services with individuals and organizations and God has helped us to move fast because we are on the global Avis network and we are connected to seven thousand, two hundred (7,200) locations in one hundred and twenty-one (121) countries all over the world. So, with that performance, the business flows in on the individual side and on the organization side as well and that helps a lot and that's part of the advantages of having a franchise.
What is the competition like?
In Nigeria today, there's no competition because we don't concentrate on the competition. Though we study them, we don't concentrate on the competition because, as I said, the market has been going well.
What is the clientèle structure like?
I would say our clients are divided into three groups. I would say the first one, which is about fifty per cent, comprises Nigerian individuals and corporate bodies; another thirty per cent are the multinationals, while the remaining twenty per cent are foreigners coming to Nigeria that want to use our service.
How does the peculiarity of the Nigerian environment - state of the road network, the security situation and other systemic hiccups-impact on your operation?
Well, you will agree with me that every region in the world has its own problems associated with running a business. With Nigeria, so far, the problem we face or the challenges are the bad roads. The roads are bad but not all the roads are bad, there's the problem of traffic, problem of power, the fuel situation. Now, what we've done with each of those factors is to try and build at least a wall that will protect our business. Now, because the roads are bad, we will be running the business on high cost because we will have to be changing tyres and spares; so what we do is invest a lot in training of our chauffeurs, and when we train them, we try and get them familiar with the road network especially in the north or south-west area.
In terms of traffic, traffic is only intractable in Lagos and part of Port Harcourt; if you go to other parts of the country, the issue of traffic is less. With Lagos, what we've done is work one or two hours ahead of schedule, like if a client calls and says he needs a car at a particular place and at a given time, we try and make sure we are there, especially if it's advance booking. Once it's advance booking, we can plan very well. If you want our drivers to be at your house by 4p.m. or 5p.m., they'll be there. Sometimes in the service industry there can be problems; take for instance UK's Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, they spent billions of pounds, yet the problem are there.
Even in the service industry, problems will come up but you have to deal with those problems as you go along and when you are solving problems, it creates new ideas of how to create new ways of doing business, those are the areas we try to concentrate on. On security, we make sure they are where they are meant to be at the right time. So far we've had our problems but we've tried to cope in the kind of environment we operate in.
Are you into tracking?
Yes. In fact, tracking is good for performance. When you track a vehicle, you know when it is due for servicing, you can check the mileage, you can know know exactly the ending parker, to show you all the movement from day one. So tracking is very good, apart from security, it helps a company to know the bottom line and you will actually know where all the vehicles are.
Part of your operations are around the airport, either you take people from the airport or return them to the airport. How do you see our airports?
With the airport and the relations we have with car rentals, Nigeria is really under developed. Every continent, apart from Africa, like Asia, North-America and Europe, all the major car rentals have their offices near the airport and they have hotels because hotel business, car rentals are inter-related but here in Nigeria, it took us months to get a place at the airport.
What was the problem?
The problem was..........you see, I can't really say (shakes his head in frustration). Even when one director agreed to it, all the other directors approved it almost immediately but the problem with the airport was too much. Meanwhile we had agreed to start in almost two weeks. The director of commercial investment agreed and approved it but there's always this problem. Even up till now it takes time to secure space in all the other airports and we tell them that this is an added advantage as an emerging market if we have this kind of thing running. People coming into the country, we want them to feel safe. For those who don't know, once you travel out, you can book your hotel, you can book your car rentals, you can buy a mobile phone, you can do everything at the same time but here they think it is a luxury whereas it is a necessity - all the things that businesses need to be online. The other one is logistics.
There is only one airport here now that is actually trying to do what airports in the rest of the world are doing. Of course they have their shortcomings, but I give credit to them because of what they've done. The other airports in the country, I don't know what they are really up to, but we're hoping government will invest more and make sure that all these airports are brought up to standard and all these additional businesses like hotels, car rentals, logistic companies are all situated in the same heartbeat so that at least it provides a free flow of this business.
This underdevelopment you talked about, don't you think it's a matter of attitude, or mind set?
Well, I've noticed something, you know in Nigeria we always like going through the back door even though the solutions are always very easy. That's from my own experience. I've made applications to two or three airports now and nothing has come out of it, even when FAAN (Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria) has approved. Some airports are actually okay, some are difficult, the people there you tell them what you are doing and they know what you mean but some of them are difficult.
Airports are the first entry point of any country that visitors come in contact with. If you get to most of these airports in Nigeria, it is true that they are under developed and it is bad and I will implore the government to do more on these areas, make sure all the facilities are working. Nigeria is the giant of Africa but the people want to frustrate people like us that want to encourage these things because when you travel abroad and you see these things, it's not a difficult thing, it's so easy to do. We are not telling them to give us money, we are the ones to provide service, we want to present the country in good light, all these things are possible, it's no magic, it's so easy to do.
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