Bode Akindele
In this interview with OLUFEMI ATOYEBI and ARUKAINO UMUKORO, business magnate, Bode Akindele, who turns 80 today, speaks on how he built a successful business empire
Tell us about your youthful days.
The Nigeria of today is quite different from the one I grew up in. Life was peaceful in those days with no barrier between northern and southern Nigeria. We all regarded ourselves as Nigerians.
My father, Pa Joshua Laniyan Akindele, was a chief tax clerk for the whole of the Western Region. His position was equivalent to that of the chairman, Inland Revenue, today
My mother was Rabiatu Adedigba. She was a businesswoman, and I think she was the first woman to go to Mecca in Ibadan in those days. At that time, there were no aircraft, they took train from Ibadan to Kano and from there, the journey would continue at the back of camels and donkeys. Sometimes they continued on foot. It could take up to three years to make a round trip.
How would you describe the influence of your parents in your life?
I have to thank God for the kind of parents that I had. They were disciplinarians. Even though my mother was not educated, she had a firm grip when it came to discipline. If they said something, you could not question, change or protest against it. My first daughter can best describe my mother, because they went out a lot together. For instance, if you are offered anything, you must not take it without her permission.
My mother never left me alone. Even though she was far away, she was constantly supporting me with money. She was a successful businesswoman so she could afford what I needed. When she was to choose a deputy, she chose a Hausa woman. The grandson of the woman is still working with me. So I was close to my mother even though she was far away.
How were your school days like?
My school days were also different from what we have today. I started by helping my brother carry his school bag to Baptist School, Idikan, Ibadan. We lived in Mapo and we had to trek the distance. When I eventually enrolled in school, I was already part of the system.
What were the differences between the admission process of your days and now?
In those days, there were strict education rules. Your test scores determined where you should start from. You could start from the basic beginning or preliminary, where you spent more than six years. You would have to put your hands over your head to touch your other ear before you were admitted. This was what prevented me from going to Grammar School and Boys High School, Ibadan. I passed the written tests, but when they asked me to place my hand, it could not reach my ear. So I had to settle for Lisabi Commercial College.
I did not know that God was preparing me for something great in life. All my friends were in Grammar School or Boys High School but I had a different kind of education, which was strictly commercial.
Can you still remember some of your friends?
Some of them are alive, others are dead. One of them is Justice Adekola, who later became the Chief Justice of Nigeria, founder of the PUNCH Newspaper, the late Olu Aboderin was my friend, and quite a few others.
How did going to a commercial school make a significant impact on your life?
In those days, most parents wanted their children to become lawyers and doctors, so commercial education was not so popular. The subjects were different; it included business and commercial training. Top accountants and business people went to commercial school. That was where I received the training that would later help me build a successful business.
Today, what we have are technical colleges and polytechnics. That was where they transferred the commercial subjects to. There are some universities today which offer commercial education. But it is essential for a country to have it. It helps economic growth which lawyers and doctors may not understand clearly.
In your biography, ‘I Did it God’s Way,’ you gave so much credit to your mother for encouraging you to become a businessman. Can you shed more light on this?
In those days, the economy was not as big as it is today and parents had great influence on the career of their children. They had a way of manipulating them to do what they wanted. My friends and I thought about going to the UK to study law. But getting a passport required a long process then. I was given money to obtain a passport like my other friends who were already preparing to go.
Before then, I had already started a small business in primary school. For instance, there was a powder we used to mix with sugar, which I was selling then. Later on when I was in the college in Abeokuta, I started going to other schools to sell to them and I was making profit.
I realised that becoming a civil servant which my father would have liked, was not what I wanted to do. My business in college had developed into something good. My mother had a factory in the North where they prepared dried meat for the market in the South. One day, I told her to appoint me as one of her agents. She was sceptical at first but I convinced her and she started sending the product to me. I sold the first consignment and quickly sent the money to her. When I considered my profit, I knew that I could do better in other businesses.
Instead of getting a passport, I used the money to place an order for a sewing machine and sold at good profit. When I was placing the order, I used my commercial class skill by placing an order for a sample of the machine. So the company told me that I should pay just half of the cost while they would bear the rest. I paid £9 and sold at £21. The war had just ended and the Japanese were beginning to copy original products from Europe. But good product sold at high price.
How did you arrive at the name Modandola Group?
That was one of the names of my mother. If you’re familiar with the business terrain, there is a similar name in Italy called the Modandori Group. But Modandola is Yoruba. The story was that my mother’s parents had been praying for a female child before she was born. And when she came, they said this one would become something in life and gave her the name Modandola, which means, ‘God, if you give me the wealth, give me a child that can take care of it’.
You wrote in your biography that you declined a better job offer to take up one that paid less. Why did you do so?
My father was very powerful in the Western region in those days. He was in charge of all the taxes collected by community’ leaders, from where he paid them commission. So, they respected him.
He wanted me to become a civil servant like him, particularly when I came out of commercial college. Then, I was writing about 90 words a minute in shorthand and typing about 120 words per minute on the typewriter. So when I came to the Resident’s Office in Ibadan, they said they were looking for an assistant secretary. And my father was not one to throw his weight around. He would not give you any letter because he wanted you to earn whatever you desired to get.
About 40 applicants wrote the test and I was the best. I was offered £13. I also did the test for a job at the Western Nigerian Union of Importers and Exporters. You would not get a license to import or get foreign exchange if your company didn’t belong to the association. I was also offered a job there at £6 salary. I accepted it because it pointed to my future. Civil service did not appeal to me.
They took me to the building they wanted to use as headquarters, which had been renovated and they had ordered a lot of business magazines from abroad. They were supported by the London Chamber of Commerce, and many international bodies. I realised that I would be in charge and would learn a lot from reading all these papers.
But the problem was telling my father about my decision. He sent for my mother and told her that I had done something no one must do in our family by rejecting a better offer. My mother cried, but I explained the reason for my decision and got a friend of my father to explain to him.
At what stage did you become an independent businessman?
I was around 20 years when I registered my first company. I sold everything, including medicine, which I got from a pharmacy in Lagos. I also sourced for goods from anywhere in the world. After resigning from where I worked, I didn’t want to work for anybody again.
I built my first house (in Ibadan) at the age of 26 and it took me three months to complete it in 1959. When you are focused and honest, you will be successful in life.
Did you raise your children the way your parents trained you?
Some of my influential friends have criticised my strict way of training my children because they think children of nowadays should have freedom. It is not allowed in my house. When they say children of nowadays must have freedom, I say no to them. This is where we disagree as friends. I have derived a lot of benefit from the way I was brought up by my parents and I would not do less for my children.
Since you became successful early in your life, how did you keep your friends who were not so fortunate?
I have a special grace from God. I have interactions with foreigners because after I did some training in 1962, the whole Western region was too small for me to operate. So I moved my headquarters to Lagos in order to go national. I established 16 branches in the North, buying pepper, ginger, shear nut and other things. I shipped them abroad to sell and make profit.
So I had interactions with very prominent families and good companies. When you expand your business to the extent I reached many years ago, smaller business proposals will not appeal to you. These are the businesses I introduced my friends to and they make money through them. I have never demanded returns from them.
ARAMED Medical Centre is a huge structure in Ibadan. What led to its establishment?
My mother was a successful businesswoman and a philanthropist. She helped many people. ARAMED stands for Alhaja Rabiatu Adedigba Medical Centre. That is the healing ministry of Bode Akindele Foundation. It was founded to continue from where my mother stopped. We thought about what we could do to honour her legacy after she passed away. Patients are poor people who cannot afford treatment. They are treated free at the hospital.
There was a professor, Oyewale Tomori, at the University of Ibadan who used to be the head of virology department. He wrote a letter to me that we should help save 300 children or they were going to die. I invited him and he explained that foreign donors and sponsors have stopped giving free vaccines to Nigeria because it was considered that we are a rich nation. By buying the vaccines, he said more than 300,000 children would be saved in Nigeria.
It cost $16,000 but he refused to take the money, He said we should help pay to the company abroad and bring the vaccines to Nigeria. I did so and I was surprised that the ceremony that greeted the coming of the drugs was more than the money I spent. It meant that with more money, we could save millions of life. I was thinking of a dispensary but ARAMED idea came and it was fantastic. The Bode Akindele Foundation also purchased vaccines for Nigeria for many years.
What keeps you going?
I want to leave the world better than I met it. In our own days, there were no short cuts, you had to work hard. The business I do here, I would not say is small compared to what I do abroad. I was one of the leading men who acquired a company in Europe. When you’re a black man presiding over companies abroad, you would be inspired. But then, you wonder if our rulers don’t go abroad and see the development taking place there, and when they do, they implement it in the wrong way.
Why are you not taking part in Nigerian politics?
I am too busy to be involved in politics. I travel around the world and politics would have taken that from me. I was actually involved at a time when I supported a friend to become a governor in the North. But that was as far as I could go.
When are you going to retire?
I am retired. If I wasn’t, I won’t be sitting down with you now. You retire by slowing down. I have reduced my business interests but I cannot hands off completely.
How close are you to your other siblings?
I am the 16th child of my father and I have other siblings after me. When we cooked food in our house, you would think there was a party going on. We were very close because we were from the same father. Like I said, before I enrolled in school, I was already going to school with my other siblings. It prepared me for the life ahead.
I am from a family which, by all standards at that time, you could call us a top family in the society. But we tried as much as possible to help others.
At the end of the Second World War, commodities were hard to come by. Sugar and salt were being rationed, but we had sugar in our house. So whenever we went out, we would take a few cubes and exchange it with some quantity of salt from our neighbours.
One of my brothers had a problem in Ghana and he returned home to Nigeria. As God would have it, my business had grown and every place in our house in Mapo was filled with foreign goods that I was importing then. My aunt came to me and said we should help him out. I couldn’t refuse my big sister who literally spent everything she had on the family. I had to help because of the family bond. So the family is one despite the fact that my father married more than one wife.
You still look young at 80. How do you exercise?
I don’t do physical exercise. My body is trained to be active from what I have been doing over 60 years. By exercising my mind with ideas and taking part in business activities, my body will remain active and fit.
What would you like to be remembered for?
I would like to be remembered as somebody who came to life and left it better than he met it.
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