Nigerian
Multi-billionaire businesswoman, Folorunsho Alakija, the second richest African
woman is a business tycoon involved in
the fashion, oil and printing
industries. She is the group managing director of The Rose of Sharon Group
which consists of The Rose of Sharon Prints & Promotions Limited and
Digital Reality Prints Limited and the executive vice-chairman of Famfa Oil
Limited.
In this interview with ‘NONYE BEN-NWANKWO and GBENRO ADEOYE, the third richest woman of African descent in the world, Mrs. Folorunsho Alakija, speaks on her childhood and how she cut her teeth in business
There is a beautiful picture of your
grandchild displayed proudly on your table. You must be proud to be a
grandmother…
Absolutely
proud! But then, there is no way the
grandchildren can take the place of your children. They are another level of
joy that you cannot really put a finger on, but each time you look at them and
interact with them, they remind you of the old days when you had your children
so you tend to spoil them. The things that parents don’t allow these little
children to do, you find that grandmothers and grandfathers tend to be a bit
softer than they were with their children. I think it’s because one feels a
little differently at that age and of course, as you are getting older, you
tend to slow down on some things. You are beginning to appreciate time with
your ‘new children’ unlike when you didn’t have much time with your own
children as you now have for the grandchildren. As a result, you are being a
bit partial. When you have your children, you are very strict with them because
of the way you want them to turn out. But it is not that you don’t want your
grandchildren to turn out even better than your children, but you have a softer
spot for them because it is new and a different level of joy, they have a
special place in your heart, so you tend to be a bit partial.
At 65, is age just a number to you, do you
look forward to be 100 years or do you wish you were younger?
For me,
every day of my life is a new day, a new beginning. It is a testimony. I look
at everyday as something that is a new challenge. I don’t see my age to be
something that tells me, ‘Oh! You are getting older and won’t be able to do
this or that’. I appreciate every new day and take it as it comes. I tackle
everything I need to tackle. I don’t feel tired easily. I feel as young as I
was many years back. Yes, now and again, you get the odd pain here and there
but you think nothing of it. You get your regular medical checkups and just
move on with whatever you need to do. You do it and then it is about what is
next.
Are there things you used to do in the past
that you no longer find joy in doing?
For now,
there is none. I don’t know what I would say when I’m 100 years or 120 years
old. Now, I can just thank God for his grace and for giving me strength to feel
the way I feel. I’ve been enjoying God’s grace and just wish it would continue.
Obviously, age doesn’t affect your looks
because you still look good and dress good. What is the secret?
I’d tell you
that I hate exercises. I love food and do all the wrong things. I eat late. I
know I’ve added weight. I’m not near the size I was as a teenager. I’m
beginning to learn to diet, which was not a part of my lifestyle three or four years ago. But
now, I’m paying more attention to that, although, not as much as I should. If I
did that, of course, I would be slimmer than I am now. I do have a trainer that
I always have an excuse to make sure that he doesn’t come. I always tell him, ‘Oh! I have a meeting’;
‘I’m rushing to so and so place’ or ‘Do you know what? Don’t bother to come
tomorrow’. It is only three times a week but guess what, I haven’t allowed him
to come in the last four months.
What made you go into fashion designing?
I’m no
longer a fashion designer, though I’m still a passionate supporter of the
fashion industry considering the fact that I am still a life trustee to the Fashion
Designers’ Association of Nigeria. So fashion is my passion, it is something
that I will always be a part of. I
wanted to leave the bank to set up my own business. I wanted to ensure that I’d
be leaving the bank for a career that I would enjoy and that would be
lucrative. I wanted a profession that would not make me get out of bed
grudgingly every morning. So I looked at my talents. I had always known that I
love everything beautiful and had to do
with creativity. I knew I had creative abilities. I looked at everything to do
with textiles, colours, merchandising and things that adorn the body because I
come from a family of textile merchants. I put all of that together and looked
inwards as far as the economy was concerned and knew it was the right time to
get into the fashion industry because Nigerians were beginning to appreciate
what was being made locally. And because I come from the background of
businessmen and women, I just thought fashion was what it had to be.
Didn’t your friends and family wonder why
you had to go into tailoring as it was called in those days?
Yes, back
then it was known as tailoring but when I was getting into it, it was being
seen as fashion design and it was getting fashionable to be called a fashion
designer. And I noticed that each time I wore something that was locally made
abroad, I got a lot of attention and compliments. So it was also one of the
reasons I chose fashion designing. I believed it was the right time because
Nigerians were looking inwards and the economy was also crying for it.
So why did you get out of fashion design?
I started my
fashion line in 1986 and as soon as I came into it, I won a national fashion
competition, which brought me fame and fortune. It helped to advertise my
clothing line- Supreme Stitches. The clothes I made were very appealing to the
public. They were different and fresh. People were not only making clothes for
themselves, they were placing orders to go and sell abroad. Some of the clothes
found their ways into some stores abroad. And I was enjoying myself. It was
hard work, I must say, because I had women lining up with suitcases full of
fabrics they wanted me to design and make for them. And I wasn’t having enough time to even grab some food. It was that good. I was seeing my creation. I
would ask them what their profession was; where they were wearing the clothes
to and so on to get a feel of the kind of designs I needed to do because they
varied from client to client. I designed for the high and mighty, the middle
class and young people. With time,
people got to label me and my designs for the special occasion designs, maybe
when they wanted to attend a special occasion, they would find their way to me.
They didn’t mind what they had to pay because they always got the compliments
and they were always proud to show the label.
I carried on
like that for years and got to a point where the Lord started telling me that
He had finished with the fashion part of my life and needed me to move on. I
got into the oil industry and that was taking a lot of my time. I was
travelling a lot to attend meetings with our partners. I had to begin to listen and listen to the
voice of the Lord and it was calling me into the ministry and I needed to say
‘Lord, send me’. When that time came, I decided to diversify into an area that
would not need my full attention. I
decided it was best to leave when the ovation was loudest rather than carry on
and struggle to do so many things at once and be Jack of all trades, master of
none. So I decided to get into mass production, which would not need me to be
there on full time basis. However, I
needed to source for the fabrics locally and in large quantities. Soon, I
realised that we could not get the right textures we wanted to be woven locally
and to be dyed to the colours we needed in a way that they would last like the
imported ones. That was where we had a problem. I went as far as Taiwan to try
to get machines to produce my own textiles. When I realised the amount I needed
to put into that alone, it was too much for me to afford at the time. So I
decided to carry on sourcing locally. I
had to start planning to look into what else I could do. As we started making
T-shirts, fez caps and so on, people started asking for monograms on them.
People didn’t want to wear them plain. So I sourced for monogram machine and we
added that service. We were monogramming on bed sheets, towels and there were
big demands. Then people started to ask for screen printing and monograms were
more expensive than screen printing. When they wanted volumes for events or as
souvenirs, we needed to look for a cheaper source other than monogram so we had
to get screen printing machines. Then
there were those who wanted gift items. So I started travelling to China to
bring in different types of souvenirs for companies to give out at the end of
year or other events. I was having great fun. So here we are; it is five years
old now.
When did Rose of Sharon Foundation come
into the picture?
That was
also something I asked the Lord about. When I was still transiting between
fashion designing, monogramming and oil business and all of that, I was still
visiting my store frequently. I used to get a lot of people who would walk in
to ask me for financial assistance. I had become a born again Christian at the
time. I am talking about 25 years ago when I was 40 years old. They were the
people I was ministering to initially. I was telling them about Jesus Christ. I
was printing tracts, booklets and giving them out to these people who came to
ask for alms ad assistance. Then they would go and tell others ‘there is a
woman in the building over there, go and tell her your problems, she will help
you’. I was doing all of that willingly and I still do it with a lot of
passion. So I took the matter to the Lord in prayer. I asked where exactly He
wanted me to serve Him. That I had come to discover that He had a purpose for
every one of His creations. And He dropped a scripture in my spirit- James
1:27. I opened my Bible to see what the scripture said and it talked about
visiting widows and orphans and to help them in their situations. And I was
excited. So I decided to set up a Foundation. I called my friends together. And
we didn’t know what to do. We knocked on a few doors to ask how to set up a
Foundation. And we also agreed that we would teach people how to fish rather
than give them fish. Since we registered
the Foundation and launched it on May 23, 2008, it has grown from three or four
widows and reached out and assisted at least 1,322 children with scholarships
and 88 orphans with scholarships.
You said your family was into textile
business, did you have a privileged background as a young girl?
The word
privileged background is relative. But I can say that we were comfortable. I
come from a polygamous family of a father with eight wives, 52 children. I’m
child number eight, Muslim background. One of my half sisters and I were the
first children of my father to be sent abroad to go and study at the tender
ages of six and seven. I was seven while she was six. I would say that sending
children abroad at that time at such young ages proved that the family was
affluent. Usually, it was people in their 20s or 30s that went abroad to study
in those days-. It was very rare to find children of about six years being sent
abroad to study at the time. So we were all over the newspapers the day we were
leaving. It was big news. I still have photographs of the day we were leaving
in my autobiography where my dad, my mum and my step mum were seeing us off. We
travelled by sea. In those days, people travelled by sea, and it took us 14
days to get to England.
After four
years, we returned to Nigeria for further studies. My parents were in the
textile business for a good part of our lives. There was a time my father was
also in the business of leather sandals and he was making a lot of money. There
was also a time that he was dealing in stockfish. He was a very big businessman
and there was hardly anything that he touched that didn’t turn to gold. He only read up to Standard Six but had his
wits about him. He was a very jovial man but business was something that he was
born to do and he excelled in every area that had to do with business. He
invested in shares, real estate and things like that. By the time he died, he had enough houses to
go round all of his children that were still alive- 46 of us. My mother and my
step mother were also into textile trading and they placed orders with him
which they in turn sold to market women.
When my
siblings and I came home on holidays, we had to open the store and be my
mother’s assistants in our store. So we got quite proficient in the
merchandising area of textile. We learnt how to combine colours and be creative
with textiles before they were sent to my dad’s office for him to make orders
from Switzerland and the Far East. So we got to interact with those who would
come to town from neighbouring countries, usually early, before other stores
opened. So my mum always encouraged my sister and I to make sure that our store
was opened very early. My mum was very strict. She taught us how to make money
so that was how I cut my teeth as much as trading and being a businesswoman is
concerned.
We learnt some of your colleagues in the UK
used to call you Flo because they couldn’t pronounce Folorunsho. Did you keep
that as a nickname till much later?
Many of my
colleagues in the bank still call me Flo. Many of them later became managing
directors of many of the banks in Nigeria. Those who were my contemporaries age
wise, would call me Flo and those much younger than me would call me Mrs. A.
But the Flo was short form for Folorunsho because it was long, complicated and
too challenging for them to master.
What was it like growing up in a large
family?
Flo and Doy
(my sister) had partnered together even before we went to England because there
was just one year difference in our ages. We had been sent off to a guardian to
live with and go to school from there. Our guardian lived in Yaba and our
school was Our Lady of Apostles, also in Yaba. So we only had to walk to
school. We were taught table manners, etiquettes, how to be a young lady before
we were bundled off to England. When we
came back, we were like little princesses. We had done a lot of shopping before
coming back. Anytime we were going out, people in the neighbourhood would be on
their balconies waiting to see what the young girls that had just returned from
England would be wearing. They were always eager to see what we wore. We had
lovely clothes, shoes and had begun to lose the Yoruba dialect. Few months later, we were bundled off to boarding
school. We came back home at the end of each term to live with our other
siblings. And our parents didn’t want to separate so we were living together in
my half-sister’s mum’s place. My mum’s place was on the next floor and then I
began to experience some preferential treatment that my step mum’s domestic
staff were giving to my half sister so I decided to stay with my mum. Although
the two mothers were reluctant but you know how it is with human beings. They
would feel this is the child of our ‘oga’ (boss), so we would give her more
meat than the other one. So I decided to go and stay with my mum. My
half-sister and I are still very close. We started interacting more with the
other children. Despite the fact that we all came from different mothers, the
children were very close. It was like we formed our own government and the
mothers formed theirs. Sometimes, they got on well with one another and
sometimes they were at one another’s throats. But we children chose not to look
their way and we carried on being one another’s friends and loved ones and that
is how we carried on with one another in close communication. Even after we
started living apart, the children were always constantly in close touch with
one another. And some of us were in the same boarding schools and we loved
coming home after school when we would bond together again- it was fun. We also
looked forward to a time when it was the Ileya festival (Id el Kabir) because
it was when everybody would converge at Ikorodu. All the mothers would come
home with rams, some would bring two or three and then there would be
competition among the boys. They would organise games among the rams to make
them hit one another with their heads.
The girls would be more interested in ‘what are you wearing for Ileya?
Show me’. And everybody would be looking forward to the day we would kill the
rams, eat, party and attend other parties. I remember those days with
nostalgia.
You have been married for close to 40
years. Are you still in love with him the way you were when you met him many
years ago?
If anyone of
us is abroad, for instance, the two of us would make sure that we call each
other a minimum of twice a day. We have spoken three times already today. If it
wasn’t that I was running late for the interview, I would have picked up the
phone again to ask him to buy me three brushes but I had to give the job to my
assistant to do. So every little thing, we are talking throughout the day.
You are still friends?
Very much so
too. We are lovers, friends, brother and sister.
Where did you meet him?
We met at a
party in Surulere, Lagos, two weeks after I relocated to Nigeria from
England. The party was in the evening.
So my brother, his fiancée and I were attending that event and we were all
seated together. Then came along my husband-to-be; he said to me ‘why are you
following your brother about’? I said ‘what do you mean’? Then he accosted my
brother who he knew well and said your sister is a big girl, why are you
allowing her to follow you about? Then my brother said, ‘stay away from my
sister. Leave her alone’. Anyway, we got talking and after the party, he
suggested that I should sit with him in his car rather than sit in my brother’s
car so we could carry on with our conversation and we would be driving in a
convoy back to our abodes. So we carried on talking and said goodnight. But
from that night, unless one of us is abroad, there has been no day that we have
not seen each other. Ever since that day, we have seen each other every day
unless one person is away and the other is somewhere else.
Your name is more popular than his. Do you
know if sometimes in his sober moment, he asks himself ‘why is my wife more
popular than I am’?
I believe
that that is on the contrary. You know why? He is extremely shy. He does not
like publicity. I’m an extrovert; I don’t mind publicity. I like to throw
parties; he likes to listen to music.
Nowadays, marriages fail a lot but what
would you describe as the secret that has sustained your marriage for so long?
A lot of
things make marriages break. What I have noticed over the years is that a
marriage doesn’t break suddenly or in a day; it is a gradual process. And the
earlier you nip it in the bud, the better. And it is always better to know what
the dos and don’ts of marriage are before you get into it so that you don’t get
your fingers burnt and so that you can enjoy rather than endure your marriage.
One of the tenements of marriage is that you must communicate with one another.
If you do not talk to one another regularly enough, your love can begin to grow
cold. You may begin to drift apart and then other things begin to set in. The
Bible tells us that if one person offends the other, you need to take care of
that matter immediately and not let it degenerate. Do not let it degenerate
into something that you will still be sulking about the next day because with
every action, there is reaction and with every reaction, there is a counter
reaction. I counsel partners and one of the things I tell them is never to make
the mistake of having separate bedrooms from the very start. Make sure you
share one bedroom even if you have 10 bedrooms.
And not only
that, if you tell the carpenter to make your bed to be from one wall to
another, you are making the biggest mistake. It can separate you. When you
quarrel, it won’t help. But when there is nowhere to turn and you end up
kicking one another, you will make up quickly.
One of the things I do to break the ice rather than let things degenerate
is to ask my husband to help do my zip even when I can do it by myself. I have
broken the ice.
You are
bound to quarrel because you are two human beings. If anyone tells you they
have a perfect marriage, it is a lie.
Yes, they may be compatible and be having a good time but that does not
mean it is perfect. It doesn’t exist. Make sure that you set up the values that
you will use to run your home and bring up your children. I greet my husband good morning with a
kiss. There are different ways of
showing submission. It is not that we are asking you to put your head on the
floor so that he can trample on it. No! We are saying show your husband
respect. It is the will of God. Speak to him nicely. There is no man that you would treat like that
and would not honour, respect, appreciate and do whatever you ask of him when
you ask for a favour. He would go all out with pleasure and even go the extra
mile to do whatever you ask of him. That is what a lot of people don’t
realise. Likewise, a man should love
his wife; that is what the Bible says. He should honour and respect his wife
and not bring a girlfriend into the matrimonial home and say what can she do?
Are you supposed to do that? Is it fair? Is it right? Is it because you are
stronger than her physically? If you decide to give her a slap, she can’t beat
you, but all she has got is her mouth and she will abuse you very well. One
thing will lead to another and the marriage will degenerate. Once it starts
degenerating and you don’t quickly nip it in the bud, it may lead to separation
and then divorce.
Why haven’t you thought of going into
politics?
God has not
called me into politics. There is nothing that I do that I would not ask Him
first. I don’t have an affinity for politics; I’m a businesswoman, a
philanthropist, a wife, a mother and a grandmother. All of those things keep me
very busy. If he calls me into politics, he will direct me, equip me and it
will be a matter of it’s your call Lord, if you send me there, I will obey. And
he has not called me into politics.
As a young girl, did you ever think you
would be globally known?
I never knew
that I would be globally known but I did know that I would be a businesswoman
and I also knew that the Lord had planned that I would be successful.
So how do you feel now being known as the
richest woman in Africa?
I’ve never
called myself that and I just live my life. I do whatever I need to do with all
joy and pleasure. It has not changed me; it will not change me and there is no
amount of money that can change me, my husband and my children. That is the way
we have lived our lives; we will continue being who we are as a family.
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