1 September 2008
analysis
Ajibola Emmanuel Olayinka was born in Ile-Ife, Osun State, the cradle of the Yoruba race in Nigeria.
He grew up in his own town but his upbringing was never a smooth story. He lost his father when he was just five and growing up in a polygamous home was not tea party. Whatever the mother could raise then was hardly enough to feed the home not to talk of sending Ajibola to school. "So more or less, I had to fend for myself and struggle through schools," Bola as he is fondly called said.
He was quite good academically. But because there was no guardian, so to speak, there was no mentor, so to speak, after the primary school, he had to veer off and learn bricklaying. That was a good point for the not serious minded to stray away from their destinies. But Bola knew where his destiny lies and would not allow the set back to blur his vision.
He did the bricklaying job for about a year but then he got convinced that he needed to go to school, within the limit of his resources, he enrolled in a Modern School. Modern school in those days was a step above the elementary school but not up to a secondary school.
His humble background and the determination to be educated pushed him through the three years he spent at the Modern School. "For me, it tells the complete story of my life because the three years were spent basically on the basis of what I already learnt. For example, I was already a bricklayer so every weekend I had to work, Saturday and Sunday. I also learnt two additional trades; I was a baker, so I could work in the bakery.
I was doing baking over night and going to school during the day. I was also a log wood cutter. So the combination of the three jobs was what I applied for, not just for myself but for my mother and my siblings to ensure some level of existence and survival. Those were very rough days," he said.
In this interview conducted by Lucky Fiakpa in his office in Lagos, Bola spoke on how his qualification as a chartered accountant launched him into his dream life. He also spoke of the challenges faced in the paint industry, the incidence of fake producers of paints and the quality of the DN Meyer's products. Excerpts:
Early Life
It was very tough completing the school but because he was consistently the best in the class, the teachers saw that he completed the studies because what he was making from those menial jobs was hardly sufficient to see him through. Immediately after the Modern School education, he moved to Ibadan, the Oyo State capital to stay with his uncle who was working with Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria and he was later employed as a labourer at the Institute, cleaning toilets and cleaning the premises.
He was on this job until one day a very concerned senior staff of the Institute advised him very strongly to proceed for further education. "I think he is late now. He was reasonably elderly at the time he intervened in my life. His name is Mr. Makanjuola. He actually bought the form for me when I could not raise the money for the form. He encouraged me to attend Wesley College Ibadan. I attended the interview and was successful. That was the beginning of my sojourn of another three years as a teacher trainee."
He spent three years but was lucky because it was during the first era of late Bola Ige as governor of Oyo State and education was one of his cardinal programme so he had very strong support from the government. Those three years really prepared him for the future because, according to him, "the basic training from a teachers training institution is to be self dependent."
As he was concluding the teachers training education, he also had the privilege of an individual who bought the General Certificate of Education, GCE, ordinary level, form for him. He is the son of his brother's landlord. He raised N35 to buy the forms for him. "That was big money then and I will forever be grateful to him."
The N35 was only enough to pay for five papers. Bola sat for the GCE exams and with God on his side, he had very good result with the five papers while he was teaching, because he taught for about three years. Spurred by this result, he enrolled for the GCE advanced level and again, he passed with flying colours. "So I had very solid GCE ordinary level and GCE advanced level. With that, I proceeded to take the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, examinations and was admitted as an accounting undergraduate at the University of Ilorin. When they saw my GCE advanced level certificate, they wanted to consider me for a direct entry but I resisted it because that was a new life and level for me and I needed sufficient time to prepare me for it. And with the benefit of hindsight, I can say it was a good decision for me."
He spent four glorious years at Ilorin. One he was able to actualize his self academically because he graduated as the best graduating student. He was also privileged to be elected as the president of the Nigerian University Accounting Students Association. So he had some dose of leadership and was also lucky to meet the girl that was to end up as his wife in that university premises.
Because of his determination, self discipline and self dependency, during his National Youth Service year, which took place in Lagos at the Ministry of Finance, he enrolled for the professional exams in Accounting and became qualified as a chartered accountant. "I was one of the few lucky ones who qualified at the first attempt and that changed the scenario of my life," Bola stated.
Career Path
As a young chartered accountant he was able to get quality jobs. He started off with Peat Marwick Ani Ogunde & Co because "I said I needed a solid foundation to prepare for corporate leadership. After some months, I told myself that I wasn't getting the best in terms of preparation for the future so I moved on to Arthur Anderson where I spent about three years and I think that was the biggest break through in terms of exposure, in terms of training, in terms of opportunity to link with the top and get involved with a lot of activities not just related to accounting but related to business, related to leadership, related to life and with that I had sufficient intellectual capacity to begin the journey of my career."
Now well equipped with the various trainings at Arthur Anderson, he moved on to Ecobank Nigeria Plc as the head of control. "That was my first stint in the bank, very tough one, starting at the top, so to speak. But again because everything was dazzling in those days, you know when you are young and the world is philosophically at your feet, you felt you can touch the sky. I didn't stay too long and I moved on to join a company called Cashlink Finance and Investment Plc."
It was the first finance house to become a public limited company, Plc but like someone in haste to catch up with lost time, Bola had to move on again from there after spending about 18 months. He joined Esso Nigeria, a full subsidiary of Exxon US, when Esso came to Nigeria as the pioneer Financial Controller. He stayed there for about three years and had the privilege of preparing the ground for the drilling exploration of Esso, which today is a huge success.
He left Esso and had the privilege of working with one of the most astute entrepreneurs in the country, Dr. Oba Otudeko, (OFR). He was employed as the chief operating officer for the Honeywell Group. Along the line, he had the opportunity of managing one of the subsidiaries as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. "In all, I spent six years in Honeywell and I also developed enduring relationships not just within the Honeywell Group but within the corporate sector. Honeywell was the stepping stone for DN Meyer Plc where I am today."
Given the path he charted, it would have been safe to say that he is a self made man but he decided to ascribe it to God. "I would say God made man," he said.
Arthur Anderson Experience
At Arthur Anderson, Bola had the privilege of having Remi Babalola, the Minister of State for Finance as a colleague. "I met him but he was slightly ahead of me. He has always been a brilliant and well focussed person. He is a team player and never self assuming. He is one person even though he made most contributions to a project, would want the credit to be given to the team. I'm not surprised at the progress he has made in life. I believe that with people like him, the country still has a future and should continue to believe in the capacity of our youths to rise up to the challenges, which are quite peculiar of our country and make a difference out of it."
How He Met His Wife
As a student in the university in those days, the first and last year in school, the student was guaranteed an hostel accommodation within the campus. But for the second and third year, the student may need to fend for him/her self as an off-campus student. That was how Bola he met the lady that ended up being his wife. "When I was off-campus, I needed to live somewhere and I got a room somewhere and interestingly, that was the same compound my current wife was living as an off-campus student of Kwara State College of Technology, now Kwara State Polytechnic. That was where we met and that was where the relationship developed and it blossomed and I thank God today that we ever met."
DN Meyer's Challenge
With youthful exuberance gone and maturity setting in, Bola seems to have learnt how to face challenges in the corporate world instead of jumping in and out of jobs. He also seems to enjoy what he is doing at DN Meyer Plc, the challenges of the job notwithstanding. "DN Meyer is a totally different ball game from all my other experiences in life because this is a company, which already has a name. Hagemeyer as it then was happened to be a famous company in this country. Very rich in terms of experience, performance and results.
"Now when it became DN Meyer, sequel to the acquisition by Dunlop Nigeria Plc, it continued the same trajectory, therefore my coming on board is a big challenge because we already have a good foundation laid and what we build upon must equally be strong. Moving into a new industry, so to speak, was also a challenge because of the learning curve relating to new set of people as well as new set of stakeholders in the industry.
"We did not do very well in the first two years but after that I gained better insight. This did not happen automatically. I had a very supporting and understanding Board of Directors who took upon itself to do everything possible to sustain the precedence of the company and with their support and our own determination that DN Meyer belonged to the top, we have to do everything humanly possible, to reposition and now we believe we should move to a new level with the company.
"We have distinguished ourselves in the industry. Among the top three, you will always find us there and we believe in terms of leadership, we have what it takes to be the leader in the industry. We operate the entire gamut of products in the paints and coatings and we also identified the areas of growth and what we need to do in order to be there within a definite time frame. That is the goal we are pursuing at the moment and to assist us to achieve that the board has graciously approved that as a public company, we should approach the capital market to raise funds so that we can have sufficient money for our expansion and our business ideas.
"We first of all decided to concentrate on our core business. We are known for paints, we are known for quality and we are known for innovations. We have done well in those areas and I tell you that in terms of being a company operating in a difficult environment like Nigeria, DN Meyer has managed to calve a niche for itself and to sustain the expectation of the customers.
"So we continue to redefine ourselves even within our core business and we also identify those vertical areas of growth within our core business that will assist us not just to be leaders but to widen our market share and play a more crucial role as Nigeria is redefining it self towards year 2020. We also believe that we must be doing something because Jack West says when the rate of change externally exceeds the rate of change internally the end is near.
"So if changes are moving at the fast rate as we are witnessing in this country, then it behoves us as micro players to also begin to evolve in line with the change we are witnessing externally. All these we are doing and whatever result you are seeing would be the combination of so many things we have managed to put together to achieve the perspective plan of the company and continue to achieve the expectation of the stakeholders."
Market Strength
The number one strength of our product is that they have quality like no other. We sell unique paint products and we sell for everybody. We have products that satisfy the requirements of the individuals, corporate or projects depending on your pocket. In terms of products, we have different categories. We have the premium products, we have the standard products and we pride ourselves as the only company that does not put a below standard product on the shelf.
That is a very important philosophy for us because we don't want to put up different faces for our customers. The key premium products, is Meyer Long Life, MLL, otherwise known as living paints. They are suitable for high-rise buildings and those projects being constructed around riverine areas because of the danger of the sub-strait changing colour over a period of time. MLL is specially formulated to take care of that. And in terms of durability, there is no other paint like MLL because it stays up to 15 years on the wall. We have notable buildings and structures in the country that are wearing MLL and they are looking better with each passing day.
The MUSON centre and Mobil house are living examples and the Federal Ministry of Housing is now insisting, as a matter of policy, that all new Federal Government structures, which are high-rise in nature, must wear the MLL because of the maintenance management. It is easy to maintain. You don't put up the scaffold and start painting almost every year. It is one product like no other and the market has not succeeded in replicating that. It is a secret which has been kept secret till now.
Quickly following that is the Meyer Wall Satin, MWS. When you see satin on a lady, it enhances her beauty and that is what the MWS does to the wall. It enhances the beauty of the wall. It is a water-based paint with a glossy finish. That sounds inconsistent. People are used to gloss being a shining paint but here we have a water-based paint that is shining.
It doesn't generate heat, it doesn't emit odour, it is quick to dry and its coverage is really the best. In terms of the consumer's pocket, it is very cheap. In terms of maintenance, when it is dirty you just get water and soap and clean it. We also have the ultimate paint, which is also premium paint. Both the gloss and the emulsion give you very high coverage, very durable and it meets all the beauty requirements of our clients.
Across the line we have the standard products. They are called imperial paints. But between the standard and the premium we have our Meyer texcote. You can use it to demonstrate any kind of design on the wall. You can do it in any format and we can deliver what we call as per customer's sample even beyond the descriptions in the colour chart. So we can customise the paint to suit the customer's needs and we can meet any requirement of paint from any part of the world. We are as good as any paint produced anywhere and I can assure you that you will always have value for your money when you buy Meyer category of paints.
These are just the decorative or architectural paints. We are also the industry leader in auto paints as well as wood paints. These days, the industry is gearing towards playing a bigger role in the marine and oil and gas sector with the push of the local content policy being championed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Policy, NNPC. Our products are well known in those areas as well and they meet very rigorous standards because we meet the latest ISO requirements, ISO 9000 and 12000. We are certified both locally and internationally and we are pursuing higher certifications to ensure that our quality minded customers get exactly what they want from the industry.
What we do consistently in DN Meyer is to adopt a global standard not a local standard. We combine our knowledge and our experience locally in the last 48 or 49 years with the international standards to benchmark the cutting edge technology. We don't think we are a local company because along the west coast of Africa we have customers patronising us and we know as we are pushing for better participation in the local content, we are going to operate beyond the shores of Nigeria.
We are not doing this alone because we believe we are not isolated. We have relationship which we are developing with world class paint companies, well known and reputed who definitely are enriching our experience and our quality in terms of formulation and services and all these we bring to bear on the quality of paints that we deliver not just looking at the local competition but looking at the best practice, that is what we do.
Challenges of the industry
The biggest challenge that we have is the set back of infrastructures. This has made us uncompetitive because by the time we factor the cost of infrastructures into the cost of production, we become uncompetitive when we meet our colleagues outside the country. As at the last count, the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria, MAN, computation shows as high as 40 per cent additional costs as a result of deficiency in our infrastructures. That is the biggest challenge we face. But that is not the only thing.
We also have challenges with sourcing of raw materials.
We don't have any petrochemical base to source our raw materials locally even though Nigeria is among the top seven, top eight, oil producing countries in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. We have to source a very high percentage of our raw materials from abroad. Apart from the danger it posed to the industry, it also encourage imported inflation because the scarce foreign exchange now have to be utilised to import products either from the euro zone or the dollar zone. For a company like DN Meyer that would not compromise on quality, it usually eats deep into our margin, which should have created a bigger pool for our stakeholders.
That is a big challenge which the industry on its own cannot resolve.
In the last couple of months, the cost of funds has started going up again. We continue to rely on funding from banks for our working capital purposes and this has made business a bit more difficult. Beyond that, we know the issue of adulteration and faking of products is a challenge that we continue to encounter.
We operate pan-Nigeria and we found out that because we are top brand in the industry, our products have suffered a lot of adulteration in the hands of the wicked charlatans who really have no business in the industry but are taking advantage of that because the issue of policing and implementation of Standard Organisation of Nigeria, SON, has not been as effective as expected. What they are doing is to use the brand name of companies like DN Meyer that has surpassed the SON requirements and are using our packages to take advantage of our name in the market.
But of recent, we have tried to close ranks with SON and series of interactions are ongoing to see how best we can manage the menace of adulteration which is very rampant all over the country. We know there is adulteration in almost all the industries but when it is as high as between 30 and 40 per cent, then there is a huge danger.
It is not only those who left the industry as workers that are into this business of adulteration. Even some very creative people manage to set up shops either in their garages or their rooms and they call themselves paint manufacturers because they thought it is a lot easier. But they are short-changing the public and unfortunately the consumers are the losers. That easy entry is there and I don't think there is anything anyone can do about that. But I would say the more the merrier if they can rise to the challenge of meeting the SON requirements. We are not afraid of competition but we don't want some nuisance producers to take advantage of our brand name.
Returns to Shareholders
In the last two years, our company has done better. We have responded better than we did some four years ago and we are equally poised to improve on what we have delivered so far. It is on the basis of that encouragement that the shareholders overwhelmingly approved that the company should approach the capital market to improve on our level of capitalisation so that we have sufficient funding for expansion.
We will be looking at raising about N2.5 billion and we believe we will deliver greater value with that level of funding.
Our focus is two fold. We are looking at expanding our factory, upgrading, retooling and ensuring it meets the world standard to produce paints that meet the most stringent standards and quality requirements and specifications. In the upstream oil and gas sector, heavy protective coatings are a totally different ball game compared with what we have done before. We believe even in decorative that our customers deserve something better.
We have researched into that and we are coming up with something that will definitely shake the industry. There is a need for us to back that up with adequate funding so that we can really be who we want to be. We are also looking at our brand repositioning. We want to reposition our brand and make it a household name and a preferred supplier of paints across the board. We are also looking at upgrading our information technology. Since we operate pan-Nigeria we need to have some measure of linkage of our operations so that we can get information on the click of the mouse. And of course, we need higher working capital now that we are looking at a bigger share of the market.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
