Grace Olowofoyeku: Why I can’t foretell the future of ASCON Oil

(THE CREST EXCLUSIVE)

By Shola Oshunkeye

In the first tranche of her no-holds-barred interview published exclusively by The Crest, Tuesday, Barrister Grace Ndidi Olowofoyeku, Group Managing Director of ASCON Oil Company Limited, Lagos, poured out her heart like she had never done before on her frustrations doing business in Nigeria.

Among others, she revealed how the obnoxious ‘estimated billing’ system by the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs)has been killing Nigeria and Nigerians. Not the one to call a spade by another name, Olowofoyeku revealed that she spends a staggering N3 million on electricity bill in one of her 52 filling stations, and rarely gets electricity for three days in a week!

Indeed, many are the excruciating experiences of the ASCON boss that she confesses that she may be unable to predict the future of her company should things continue along the present path.

Though she has had to lay off 80 percent of her workforce, and continues to operate in a business terrain that toughens by the day, Barrister Olowofoyeku likens her current travails in business to gold that must pass through the furnace for it to glow and dazzle.

“I am going through refining fire,” she says, “and I want to come out shinning like gold. And when I begin to shine, and you ask me, I’ll tell you it is hard work.”

In this final part of the exclusive interview with The Crest, the ASCON GMD discusses her leadership and survival strategies, her expectations from her beloved nation at a time like this, and the need for government to do something urgent about the swelling population of youths, who, faced with little or no opportunities, are unleashing their frustrations on society.

She calls it a ticking bomb Nigeria could easily avoid. With some good thinking; and creative strategies.

Please, enjoy the remainder:

Are saying the FIRS also use ‘estimated billing’ for taxation? They also impose estimated tax?

Yes. They ask you to pay tax on each station. After paying tax on each station, after paying tax on each station, they come to the headquarters again and bring a lump sum for you to pay. And you are not doing any business!

That is multiple taxation. Isn’t it?

It is multiple taxation! And you are not doing business! And you can’t even complain. Who do you complain to? Who do you write to? You go to court, you don’t get judgment on time. What do you do? The economic and business climate in Nigeria is just not conducive for most of us.

 How many stations do you have nationwide now?

52.

 You have had to shut down some?

Yes. We had some on lease but we had to let them go because we were not making money from them. We are not making money from importing. If you want to import, and you bring products, because of the non-stable exchange rate of the dollar, you are not able to make profit.

 

‘Estimated billing is criminal and it is amazing that government is watching as the electricity distribution companies continue to milk Nigerians and businesses illegally’

 

How is the order that oil companies should relocate their tank farms from Lagos affecting your business?

We haven’t been given that order. The last I know is that we contributed money to repair the roads leading to the tank farms. Are we supposed to be doing that?

I thought somebody said you have to relocate your farm tanks out of Apapa because of the gridlock.

But that is not what is causing the gridlock. It is the state of the roads leading to and around the two ports. The roads are terribly bad.

So, if they fix the roads, the problem will go? Not the tank farms?

Yes. It is more about the roads.

 One problem that people often talk about, which is not necessarily your business, is the frequency of the turn-around maintenance of our refineries. We have spent, still spending so much money on turn-around maintenance, yet the refineries  are not working up to their optimum capacities. As a major player in the industry, what is the way out?

That is for the Minister of Petroleum Resources to answer.

For the minister? You mean the president?

That is not for me to answer because I don’t work in the refineries. I can only answer for the ones that I know. If they put the right people there, the refineries will work. I don’t see the reason why the refineries will not work.  But one major problem is that the refineries were built long ago, so they are obsolete. They should be changed. We don’t have good maintenance culture in Nigeria, even in our homes. Drive round, look at the homes we live. We don’t even paint them. We don’t change our colours.

How often must we be changing the colours of our homes?

At least once in two years. You should paint your house once in two years to maintain it in good shape. You must change your bath at some intervals too. Some people keep their bathroom for as long as 30 years. They have not changed it in 20, 30 years and when the thing spoils, they complain. Is your bath tub meant to last till eternity? Apart from the ugliness, how about the risk of infection and other problems associated with it?

It is the same attitude we carry to public utilities. The same culture runs down. We lack the culture of maintenance in Nigeria. We don’t maintain things. We build a road today, then leave it for 30 years without maintenance. In 30 years, nobody is thinking about maintaining it. Nobody will touch it until it goes so terribly bad and it’s killing people. The same thing with our refineries. Are we maintaining them?  It is not only the refineries, you go to our airports. The Custom, as well as the Immigration cubicles are ridiculous. The chairs are an eye sore. And nobody cares.

And that is the first place a visitor will see once he lands in our country…

(Cuts in) Yes. Yes. The other time, I almost fell at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos. There was an A.C (air-conditioner) that was faulty and water was dripping from it. I didn’t see the water and I slipped. I was heading for the floor. Thank God for the people around me. It would have been something else. Maybe I would have broken a leg or something. We lack good maintenance culture. If government would realize that they can’t do everything, they would outsource some services. They would create sub-divisions for every major service.

I interviewed somebody in America that was cleaning the airport.  I said to her that the place is always very clean. She told me it is not the airport authority that cleans the airport; it is sub-contracted to an agent. That is why it is very clean. If the agent doesn’t it very well, they will take it from him and give it to another agent. Our government needs to learn to do things like that.

Ghana does it. The Kotoka International Airport in Accra is always sparkling; very clean.

If we do that, we would get the same result. But if the Nigerian Airport Authority will be the one who employs  people who clean, and it is done in the usual Nigerian way of ‘this is my brother’, ‘my brother is the M.D.’, ‘M.D. is my sister’ our airports would continue to be smelly and dirty. But if they sub-contract these things to people who know the job, competent people who know that ‘this is where we earn our living, and we must give it our best shot’, our airports and our country would be better for it. But we don’t do that.

 

‘Being an executive is hard work. As an executive, you have to think of yourself, think of your staff, think of your families. In fact, a good leader puts the families of her staff first before her own’

 

 Do you see an economic ticking time-bomb in Nigeria? Because if a company can lay off 80 per cent of its staff, and the problem is not peculiar to it, don’t you see a problem there? When you lay off on such a massive scale, and the problem is almost countrywide, not something that is peculiar to ASCON Oil, are you surprised that we have all kinds of crimes now?

I am not surprised by the current crime rate because people are angry; people are hungry. Everywhere you turn, you see anger-on the road, in offices, in homes, even in places of worship. People flare up these days with the slightest provocation, or with no provocation at all. That is why, for instance, I tell my driver, when you are hit on the road, just move on. Don’t wait to assess the damage because you can get killed. Because they think that you have a good car, you wear nice clothes and you look generally good, people thing you are ‘one of them’. But in reality, you are not ‘one of them’; you are also suffering. You are just managing to get by.

Because of the way you carry yourself, people think that you are not feeling what is happening in the economy. They don’t know you are feeling even more than the downtrodden because there are so many people on your neck, wanting you to do one thing or the other for them without realizing that you are also going through a crisis. And you must help.  There are relatives, friends, people looking up to you to give them something, and you dare not say you don’t have. Even if you are starving, you must give.

Government should look at youth unemployment and give it the attention it deserves.  Government must help the masses by building roads, building factories, supporting cooperatives and agriculture so that they at least feed themselves. It breaks my heart when I see people asking you for N100, N200 because people no longer ask you from N1, 000. They ask you for the amount that you cannot say you don’t have. People have become scavengers, looking for food in the dust bins.

What about churches? When you go to church on Sunday and you are coming out, people loiter around your car, waiting for you to drop money.

Yes, that is what you see.

Do you feel safe because the anger of the poor? Like you have rightly observed, you drive in a good car, you live in a big house, regardless of how long it took you to build it, and people think you are ‘one of them’. Do you feel safe?

I don’t feel safe. That is why I told my driver that if they hit your car, don’t stop. Just move on. It is a standing instruction. The average man that is angry does not know the difference between the people who have ‘chopped’ the country’s money and people who are struggling to make the money through their honest sweat.  The last time I went to the village, I was attacked by herdsmen.

In Edo State?

Yes. Between Benin and Ekpoma, at about 12 noon. We met about 10 members of RRS on the road; they could not go near where the shooting was going on.  Everybody parked. I had to go back to pack in my station that is close to the place.

What year was this?

Last year.

What month?

I can’t remember the month but I was going for a burial. Since that experience, I swore that I would not go to the village in the next 10 years. I don’t have parents anymore; so, who am I going to visit in the village?

If you add all these things, what is your fear for Nigeria?

The government should do something about the poverty level.  The poverty rate has gone dangerously up. Even the people you can never imagine would beg, are now begging for N5, 000 to fill their tanks. Some people don’t even take their cars to work again.  Some people who have two cars, have started to use one car.

People have continued to suggest to government that they should diversify the economy. We are still focused on oil and gas and not much investment is going to agriculture. Yet, we have arable land across the country suitable for subsistence and commercial farming.

Even agriculture is expensive because we are not doing mechanized farming. I am into farming now, commercial farming. I can tell you that labour is expensive. Farm inputs are very expensive. Despite your massive investment on the farm, when the time comes for harvest, and you have many acres of cassava to sell, people will come and offer to buy it for N20, 000. (Laughs) So, you ask yourself: so, N20, 000 is the worth of all the work and investment I have put into the farms. Last year, I had a lot of cassava and the pricing was so bad that I had to resort to frying it into garri and packaging for sale. That was how I was able to make little money.

Government should encourage agriculture, but encouraging people to go into agriculture is not enough. Are you teaching people how to do mechanized farming? What are you doing to subsidize farm inputs? Is labour cheap? Labour is not cheap and electricity is expensive. Even if you have electricity, once NEPA knows that you have a farm there, they begin to give you estimated bill and the cost of running the farm becomes so much that you want to abandon it.  So, when NEPA comes and cut off your light, you just say to hell with NEPA. You are no longer interested. And if you don’t do mechanized farming, how do you recoup what you have put into the farm? I have a farm like 300 acres in Epe and the inputs are expensive.

The farms are not giving you the anticipated returns?

No. I do rice and cassava, but I am not getting much from it because the environment is not friendly to investors and all that. In all facets of the economy, you encounter problems one way or the other. If you don’t have problems with NEPA, you have problems with miscreants stealing your crop; your farm produce. Then, tax is very discouraging. Sometimes, you ask yourself, is it not better you just sit at home and not work, because they tax you for so many unnecessary things that make nonsense of your expectations.

You submitted, earlier, that this government is not getting the economy right. Is it because they are not putting the right people in right positions? People with appropriate knowledge, putting round pegs in round holes.  We have very brilliant Nigerians home and abroad.

I don’t want to answer that because when they are in their country they don’t do well. When they go abroad, they do well.  The same people that leave this country are doing very well in America and Europe. Why are they doing well there, and are not doing well here. That’s is for the government to answer. That is not my own. I don’t know why it is like that. There is a lot of brain drain right now; a lot of Nigerians are migrating to Canada. Even a lot of my staff are going to Canada.

 

‘I am going through refining fire and I want to come out shinning like gold. And when I begin to shine, and you ask me, I’ll tell you it is hard work’

 

What is the prospect for ASCON Oil in five, ten years’ time? Where do you hope to take it despite all the problems? Or you think the problems are insurmountable?

Yes.

That’s scary. Are you saying that as far as oil and gas is concerned, there may be no future for ASCON Oil?

I didn’t say so.

But you just said the problems are insurmountable.

You don’t want me to be frank with you? That is it, now. Unless the policies are changed…

 

‘My advice to the youths is that, they should learn to work hard. They should aspire to be something in life through hard work, not desperately looking for the easy way out; looking for shortcuts to make money’

 

Finally, your being a woman chief executive, is it a plus for you or a minus? Do you suffer any challenges on account of your gender?

I will say no. People look at you and say this one is an achiever. The young ones look at you and say this one is an achiever. How do I become an achiever like her? So, we mentor those of them that are willing to learn. We tell them what to do. The problem with the youths today is that they are not ready to work as hard people like me. I am a regimented person by nature. I have time for everything. I have time to go to work. I have time to have my bath. I have time to eat, and so on. Everything in my life is structured. Time to pray, time to do all that I plan to do. But the youths of today want money by all means. They want money without working. They believe that they can sit down, look at the Internet and make money. They don’t want to work because, if you ask them to work, they tell you they want to earn so much. But can you physically justify why you should be paid the amount of money you are asking for? Are you ready to work as per to earn that money? If you work as a doctor in the U.S., you will be working 12, 13 hours in a day. If you are working as a pharmacist in the U.S., you will be working 12, 13 hours. But back home, Nigerians can’t work that way. They are not ready for that. If a young person sees you and say I want to be like you, without a work, is he ready to go through what you have been through and what you are still going through?

Like I say, I am going through refining fire and I want to come out shinning like gold. And when I begin to shine, and you ask me, I’ll tell you it is hard work. Being an executive is hard work. As an executive, you have to think of yourself, think of your staff, think of your families. In fact, a good leader puts the families of her staff first before her own. That is what a good leader does. Sometimes, I pay my staff, and for months, I don’t get salary. I can manage but their families need to eat. My advice to the youths is that, they should learn to work hard. They should aspire to be something in life through hard work, not desperately looking for the easy way out; looking for shortcuts to make money. That is why we have these Yahoo-yahoo boys, Yahoo-plus and all that all over the place. The Bible recommends diligent, hard work. God blesses diligent, hard work. The Bible says anything your hands find to do, do it well. If you sell pure water, be diligent in it. God will bless it. If you do your work diligently, you will make money.

But ma, another problem is that some of the youths are not even employable. I have been on interview panels where graduates couldn’t write simple English, not to talk of showing proficiency in what their degrees say they studied.

I know. That’s not strange to me. We see them every day. But what do you expect in a situation where students, secondary school students will not pass in the first class and they will jump to the next class, because their parents have paid money for them to go to the next class. If you ask one hundred people to come for interview, you can’t get three that are employable. It’s as bad as that. Even those ones that you think are employable, you are just managing them. Their spoken English is very bad. They cannot even write. You just wonder whether they were taught in their local dialects, or whether they wrote their exams in their dialects.

There is no logical thinking. They can’t think analytically.

You ask somebody, what you want to be in future, he does not know. Where do you want to be in the next five, 10 years, he does not know the answer.

I think that is why they are taking to cultism and Yahoo-yahoo, etc.

As a young girl, when you asked me what I wanted to do, I knew precisely what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be, where I wanted to go. Now, if you ask a young girl, who is in the university: where do you want to be? She will most likely tell you: I don’t know. God have mercy.