*’How we built NAHCO from the scratch into a billion – dollar company’By Wale Akinola & OSENI YEMISI
Mr Ganiyu Tunji Adebayo made his name in the aviation sector where he rose to become the first indegenous General Manager of the National Aviation Handling Company of Nigeria (NAHCO) and building it to a firm worth a billion dollars. Now in retirement, Adebayo continues to serve humanity through Tunji Adebayo Foundation. The philanthropist speaks on the Foundation which clocked 10 on August 17 while the anniversary will be celebrated on September 26.
You are no doubt a success today. How did it all start?
My mother died when I was six, my father followed when I was 17. Since then, I have been beating around the bush to get to where I am.
I am a pilot, an accountant, an aviator, an administrator, a philanthropist.
I attended Siria Academy of Aeronautics, California where I got all my licence for flying. I came back home in 1971, joined Nigeria Airways as second officer; I left because I wasn’t satisfied with what was going on. I went back to the university in the United States. I attended Loyola University, Chicago where I graduated in accounting and did finance at the master’s level. I worked for Johnson and Johnson, Chicago section, US and flew for Midway Aeronatics as pilot. I came back to Nigeria and picked up a job with the Ministry of Aviation as a senior accountant. I moved from there to the Nigeria Airports Authority when it was created in 1978 as Chief of Operations in the new MMA. We were the people that opened the airport under the leadership of Mr Bamidele Nwaje. From there, I was posted to local airport (present MMA2) to convert it from international.
I was then posted to Port-Harcourt as the first Airport Manager and later to Kano also as Airport Manager. I came back from Kano for reasons best known to northerners who did not want a Yoruba Airport Manager but an officer from the North, whereas a northerner was posted to Lagos as Airport Manager and there was no noise. I was returned to Lagos and asked to do what I was doing before I was posted to Port-Harcourt and I quit. I joined NAHCO as AGM and later as the first Nigerian GM.
NAHCO is my baby, that is where I made my name. We started with N500,000 and equipment; by the time I left, we were a billion-dollar company. I am so proud of NAHCO and my team then as NAHCO is one of the Nigerian government agencies that became a Plc and is doing very well. It is worth so much money. Most government agencies don’t do well.
You spent some part of your life abroad where you went to school and also worked. You also worked in Nigeria. What comparison can you make out of the two environments?
I am writing a book entitled, From Grace to Grass to Grace. I had thought I would complete the book ahead of my 70th birthday, but couldn’t. The first grace was when my parents were around and I was fed with the golden spoon. When they died, I suffered for eight years. That was the period I spent in Nigeria after my two parents died and shortly after my arrival in the US until I understood the system. That is the grass. And all of a sudden, things started working until I came back home, and the grace is still there.
Everytime I go to the US, I get out of the immigration, I say thank ‘ God for bringing me to this country’ . And when I return to Nigeria, I say ‘ thank God for giving me the opportunity’ because for Nigeria, I wouldn’t have been in the US; and for the US, I probably wouldn’t have made it in life. So both countries are so dear to me.
That is why after I finally came back to Nigeria, I decided I wanted to contribute my own quota to this country. I don’t have money but I am comfortable. Yet I was entrusted with billions and I was never found wanting. This was out of my parents saying that if you take somebody else’s money, it will ultimately have consequences.
You take care of the underprivileged. You started doing this because you had some childhood experience that you did not want other to go though?
My childhood experiences were fantastic. I had a wonderful upbringing. My father was a produce buyer. We counted about a million in a day to buy goods. There was no suffering. The grass was when they died. What motivated me are two things. I went to school in Abeokuta. In Form 4, we as students had a strike. They dismissed all of us from school. They asked us to go and bring our parents. But I dared not go home to tell my parents who lived in Zaria.
I came to Lagos and started looking for job. I lived in Surulere with a friend and I was supposed to go to Daily Times production office in Apapa for an interview for job. I didn’t have enough transport fare. So I had to trek. When I got to Ijora, I fainted out of fatigue. Passersby had to revive me. The first thing I thought about after I was revived was my six pence. I still went for the interview but did not get the job. So, I used my six pence to transport myself back home.
There and then I vowed to God that if he ever made me somebody in this country, I would do something in this country, I would do something to affect humanity positively. Now, add this to what I went through between the time my father died and the time I went to the US, terrible things. I felt that if every orphan had to go through such experience without intervention, then only God’s grace could make them survive. Two, when I returned to Nigeria, I found that poverty was widespread.
I thought about the little I could do to reverse the situation. They call it social responsibility in the US. And I keep telling people, ‘you don’t have to be super rich until you help your fellow human being’. I have been helping even before I founded the Foundation by way of scholarship and the rest.
I am very proud of the little I have done because most of those I have assisted with scholarship are doing well. Many of them are doctors, lawyers, engineers across the country. But I don’t scream about it. And I don’t have to scream since I am not into politics because politics is a cult where personal interest is the priority.
The interest of those young people and my children is paramount in my mind. So, far, we have given 121 children to childless couples for adoption in 10 years. That is my joy. When I see the couples and the children, I feel happy. I am doing what I like doing to make people happy. And I told God, the more He gives me, the more I would give to people.
So the Foundation is basically about helping abandoned children, childless couples?
It is about helping the downtrodden, especially children, abandoned children, children thrown away by mothers who didn’t want them apparently because they didn’t want the pregnancy in the first place. We work in collaboration with Lagos State Ministry of Social Development, Youth and Sports. People come to the ministry, they give them papers, they bring the papers to us and we talk to them. Now, we have a vocation centre, where we train people for free in computer studies, hair dressing, barbing, bead-making, tailoring, etc.
How do you screen these people who come for these children to ascertain they are childless couples genuinely looking for children to adopt?
They come for interview after they get the papers from Lagos State government. I fill the form, we talk. If they tell me their story and they cry I also cry because their story is so pathetic; everybody has his own story. The most important thing is that they have to bond with the child because if they don’t, when the child is being taken home, the child will cry. By the time Lagos State Government clears you, you take the baby home.
The Foundation was 10 in August but you are not celebrating until September 26. How do you want people to celebrate with you?
We want people to come and celebrate with us, drink, dance and also see what we have achieved.
There would be a press conference talking about what we have been doing all this while. We will also invite adults and neighbours, a professor from university is coming to talk on a topic. Award will be given to those who have been with us all these years. Also the late lady who started the home will be remembered and the new hall we are about to open will be named after her.
These children that you gave out, do you monitor the way they are being treated?
We do; Lagos State government, through social workers, especially does that.
What dreams do you have for the home?
My dream is to expand the home gradually and, most importantly, to make people happy.
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