Please let me start today’s piece by playing the comical finger-pointing card: “The positively guilty party in today’s storyline is SUNDAY PUNCH newspaper! Yes, this paper is guilty as charged below.”
About three years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, a seminal text message came in on the mobile phone number that’s regularly advertised as this column’s “text only” contact number (which is permanently held by the Bulldog): “My name is Olawumi Gasper, an official of the Lagos State Govt, can I call you because in the PUNCH it says ‘text only’?” “Yes, you can,” was Gbola Oba’s reply to the text-message.
That was how the former two-term rector of the Lagos State Polytechnic who was then newly appointed as the pioneer executive secretary of the Lagos State Technical and Vocational Education Board, the office he still holds, initiated the contact with us after having read this column one Sunday afternoon.
When I returned home from a foreign tour I was undertaking when the above collaboration was birthed, we met with the management and board of LASTVEB (an agency whose statutory brief is broader than the vocational training in the automotive industry) and decided to kick-start a special automotive mechatronics training institute for the skills upgrade of roadside mechanics. Importantly, to get young school leavers and graduates to acquire market-ready auto maintenance/repair skills that will make them easily employable and/or start their own businesses.
In about a year from the date of the aforementioned inaugural meeting with LASTVEB’s board, the first class of the LASTVEB-Automedics automotive mechatronics training institute was rounding off on its curriculum with the “enterprise development class,” when the Bulldog, Automedics’ Chief Strategist, thought aloud, “Kunle, if we don’t want to end up like the typical Nigerian training programmes, we must work out a form of enterprise development scheme to aid many of these youngsters in taking the step of faith…”
I asked, “Gbola, what’s the percentage of the young graduates in the graduating class?” He replied “Sixty five.” (We enrolled ninety-two candidates in that maiden class and graduated eighty-six).
Our ideological resolve not to see any of the young persons leave the programme and go back to roam the streets made us to buy some high-end auto diagnostic equipment (for cars, SUVs, light- and heavy-duty trucks) for a dedicated equipment rental service. The initiative allows the institute’s alumni to come and pick the expensive sophisticated tools and commercially work offshore (some went with the tools to work in as far flung places like Abuja, Owerri, etc) with them. Many of them literally launched their own businesses from the incomes they made from the use of the equipment rental service.
For different reasons, Gbola and I were not quite satisfied with the palliative enterprise development measure that we believed the equipment rental facility constituted: First, we observed that some of the gifted alumni were marketing-impaired (therefore, they couldn’t visibly benefit from the enterprise scheme); Second, we honestly believe that because of the ever unfolding prolificacy of electronic cum technological innovations in all areas of the automotive industry, it’s imperative to have an enterprise empowerment scheme that’ll ensure the life-long learning of the beneficiaries (it’s almost a fact that in the next five years, before any technician can work on any ECU controlled system of any modern vehicle then, he literally will have to connect the system directly with the manufacturer’s server abroad, through the internet, to effect any substantive maintenance or repair work).
This made us to strategically decide to launch a chain of Automedics Autocare outlets in the lube bays of any major oil/petroleum marketing company with lots of well located high-street filling stations as our “synergy partner,” where our alumni can be junior partners (co-owning the shops and are fully integrated in a post-graduation continuous training/skills upgrade programme). As beautiful as the strategy sounded, it presented some roll-out challenges, albeit the greatest asset of any shop will be the well-trained personnel/co-owners, whose cutting-edge knowledge of automotive maintenance/repair will stand them out as oasis of relief to vehicle owners in the desert of ignorance that largely presently defines the sector. The first “oil marketing plc” that approached us (yes, approached us) was too inflexible for our liking. The prohibitive cost of equipping ten outlets too (about N7m per shop) became a vision stagnating concern until a mutual friend of Gbola and I, Kehinde Ekishola, started showing interest in co-investing in the launch.
Kenny, when confronted with the sizeable amount needed to actualise the unique business model that’ll similarly serve as an entrepreneurial umbrella for the youngsters, approached Dr. Oluwole Farinde, a seasoned “business angel” who injected some funds and his invaluable entrepreneurial wisdom into the project’s planning. But at about the time the financial configuration was taking shape about six months ago, the important issue of the oil/petroleum marketing company to roll out with was becoming a nagging logistical problem for us. One day last November, while I was running from one state to the other in the US buying the requisite equipment/tools for the proposed shops, the Bulldog gave me a call, “We now have a company with a chain of nationwide filling stations to work with!” “Which oil company is that Gbola?” “NIPCO Plc” he replied. I think I said something to the effect that I’d never heard about them before, but I knew I could trust my life to the Bulldog.
Last Tuesday, May 7, 2013, the very first of the chain of Automedics Autocare shops commenced operations in the lube bay of the Ojokoro NIPCO Filling Station at Meiran Bus Stop, before the Ojokoro Housing Scheme, on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway with a three-man team that’s headed by a 25-year-old HND Business Administration graduate of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Isolo Campus, who, like his colleagues are smoking-hot automotive mechatronics technicians that’ll stand toe-to-toe with any mechatrician from anywhere in the world.
Tuesday evening, just after Gbola left Gasper’s office, subsequent to his visit to the lads, to inform him about the launch of the enterprise facilitation programme, he called me in London, England, where I am presently and said: “Egbon, Engr. Gasper was so elated and he said ,‘This is the kind of story the governor likes to hear about the board; train the youth and get them gainfully engaged. This is a partnership that works!’”
And in a very emotion-rich tone that Gbola is sometimes known for, he said, “This, for me, is not about the money it’s about these kids, their secured future and our legacy. Twenty young entrepreneurs to start with in the first phase and many more to come… To God be the glory.”