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LAGOS Bizman, Otunba DEMOLA POPOOLA
Otunba Demola Popoola, an entrepreneur, politician, and socialite shares how he went from a tough childhood to great success. Growing up in a poor family, he faced many challenges, but never lost his determination. Even as a young boy selling oranges, and keyholders on busy streets in Ibadan, his strong work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit shone through.
Tell us a bit about your growing-up years. Many didn’t know that Otunba went through a lot of challenges.
That question is very deep. Usually, I say I’m a motivational speaker because I always deliver speeches at Youth Programs, I always enjoy talking to the youth. I use myself as an example that there’s nothing God cannot do. I’m a prayerful person, but people don’t know that aspect of me. You can see, my bible is here. People don’t know that aspect of me. It’s not about carrying pastorate on my head.
You have to be good. You know, I came from a poor family. My mother was helping our sister but she was using her more like a house help. I won’t call it a pure house help. Well, my mother was earning three naira. My father was issuing tickets at Dugbealawo, at the Molue garage.
And, you know, I came from a house where, if you don’t get up by 5 a.m. to bathe, you might not go to school. Because it was a face-me-I-face-you. We had two rooms, a family of eight. My brothers slept in the sitting room. We had two beds in the sitting room. We had two beds in the bedroom. The sitting room, as in, you know how these rooms are.
Me and my late sister slept in the bed, one bed at the back of mommy and daddy. While my older brother and sister slept in the sitting room with the transistor we had.
I came from a home where my mother, when they gave her three wraps of eba, when she got home, she would put water in it. She would put it on the stove, so that it would swell, and she wouldn’t have to prepare more eba for us to eat. That’s the kind of home I came from.
But my father, being a hardworking person, and my mother, being very religious and honest, kept pushing us.
You know, I sold pure water. I sold kolobo, eba kolobe. That’s how we call it in Ibadan. Because it was part of kolobe, eba kolube. You know this eba without soup?
We prepare the eba. I will pound yam, I will go and sell it. But I do that first round of poundo yam. I’ll do eba. Then, when my brother graduated, they gave my mother some money.
She started cooking herself. We got a shop. So we put a small table and chair. People could now come and sit down and start eating. Then she started selling beer, drinks, You know? So people came.
But I was the only one with her. My senior brothers were in school. One was in Saint Augustine, Oye Ekiiti. My other senior brother was in A-B-U. Zaria. So I was the last born.
I was the one with my mother and my father. So I was the one that was doing all the work. So I sold pounded yam, knife and cutlass, I sold oranges, I sold pure water. I sold in go-slow,It was in the go-slow that I met my breakthrough.
I wanted to sell a keyholder to one motorist that was driving. Not knowing that the person was an angel, God sent. He came from Malta.
So he saw me, I fell down and my knee peeled, where I wanted to sell the key holder. So the man suddenly looked back and saw that one boy was pursuing the vehicle. The driver did not stop.
So the man now told the driver to park. He parked. When I got there, I started panting.
He said, what do I want? I said, I want to sell key holders. I said, because we need to eat in my house today. He said, how much? I said, 50 kobo.
He said, how much is everything I carried? I said, five naira. He said, bring everything. You know, I used nylon and rope to do back bag. It is nylon that is at the back. I used rope, I tied rope to it.
So I removed it. The man handed pure water to me to drink. I drank the water. So he now gave me five naira for everything.
Then he called me back and said, I should take it. He’s just giving me five naira. And he said, he can see that I am a good marketer, how can he talk to me again? Do I have a telephone? I now remembered, my brother had started serving in Roche as a sales rep.
So there’s a land phone he gave us when he came home. I tied it to my pants. It was even wet. I quickly brought it out and I gave it to him.
The man said, I should go, that he will get back to me. And then two weeks later, the man had gone back to his country, Malta.
He called my brother. He told my brother he wanted to speak to me. That he should bring me to Lagos.
I’ve never been to Lagos before. That he should bring me to Lagos. So when he brought me to Lagos he said, Demola you are doing 419.
That somebody called and said you gave him my number. So he went and he took me in. So along the line, the man called. He spoke to me and now said I should give the phone back to my brother. So he told my brother to do a passport for me. That he wanted me to come to Malta so that we could do business together. And my brother said, this young man, he has not even entered university. He wants to write jamb.
That man is a pastor. He just said, that’s what God says to him. Okay, my brother went to do the passport.
I now waited with him in Oworonshoki. The man sent the visa. And he sent me $3,000 through my brother. We now bought an airflight ticket through Russia. The airflight was going to Russia. I can never forget. It was $3,100.
What year was this? Oh, I can’t remember. This was in the 80s? so, I went to buy my ticket. My brother brought me, took me to the airport. I landed in Malta.
You know the funny aspect of this story? When the man came to pick me from the airport, he took me to a hotel. That was the first time I’d been to a hotel.
And you know, the weather was cold, it’s Malta. Everything was different, the hotel he took me to when I entered, I was looking at it, this is heaven, heaven.
Do you understand? you know that kind of place? This is heaven. And the man said, okay, do I want to eat anything? I said Pounded yam. The man said, no, this is abroad, you can’t see Pounded yam. And my wife is a white. I said, okay, what can I eat? He said, do you want a sandwich? Ah, I’ve never eaten a sandwich before.
He said okay, will you eat spaghetti bolognese? when I heard spaghetti, I knew that’s the food I could eat? So, I ate spaghetti bolognese and he left. When he left, I now went to the wall of the room. I started to lick it. That’s how shiny it was. I now went to the corridor. I wanted to enjoy the AC, so I took off my shirt. Do you know three days later, I landed in the hospital because I developed pneumonia. You know, it was fun. I landed in the hospital. They had to pass water, drip to me.
I did my meetings. I went back to Nigeria,we started talking. That was the time Nitel that we used to tap then was reigning. So, when I want to talk to the white man, I will go and tap in Obalende. I was going as far as Obalende from Oworoshoki to go and make a call. I will be coming back around 2am. So we were communicating. He introduced me to some white guys and we were talking to them. So, I got a customer for the net.
It’s called a top katona. We used to bring it. The first customer I fell into, he was a 419, they call it Sunday shoot. He did an NC fake one, that was the time 419 was reigning
So, the goods were shipped. Along the line I was somewhere in Ibadan. We were talking. I said, I sold so and so, as i just mentioned it, they shouted 419. The white man didn’t know what he was talking about.
He didn’t know what he was talking about. So, because God sees my heart, I quickly went to go and call those people to stop the shipment. They were able to stop the shipment. And we directed it back to Malta. I think the shipment was Bulgarian or something.
That was how we stopped it. So, that night they invited me. When they invited me, I told my older brother, ah, this is imprisonment. They want me to come so they can put me in prison. My brother said, no, don’t worry.
I now went to meet my mommy. Mommy, I’m going if you don’t see my enemy just know that I’ve tried my best. I’m just trying to survive.
So, they are the ones that sent tickets, again. I went to Malta. As I was landing in Malta, guess what? The president of the country was waiting for me. The vice president was waiting for me. The whole house members were all waiting for me.
Why?
They didn’t believe a Nigerian would see such a huge amount of money and would not take it. So, they honoured me.
They took me home. When I opened the door like this, all the businessmen in that country came to meet me. So, that’s how they started to trust me.
So, they now made me an honorary deputy consular from Nigeria, for Malta, in Nigeria. So, they gave me a flag. They furnished an office for me in Oshodi.
Johnson and Johnson building, you will see flag at the back of my office, I now became the person that they were negotiating with. Anybody that wanted to travel to Malta, it was me that would give them a visa. And the visa was a paper. I would just fax the details.
They would send the visa. I was making $7,000. So, the money now came. Then I already entered university. So in part two, first semester, I already had three cars and two drivers.
They used to make fun of me because I always wear Jeans. You know Italy and Malta, they are almost the same, they wear jeans. So, everywhere I go I also wear jeans even in the heat. I used to knock on every room that time, to say, hello, my name is Demola. I just came back from Malta.
So, people, they were laughing. Magazine bugged me–Cobra. They called me Maltese Falcon. Falcon of Malta. That was the headline.
For three days, I couldn’t come out of the room, because everywhere I go people point and say that is, Maltese Falcon going.
Anyway, that’s how it started. From there, I was making so much money you know, the money was so much. It got to a point when I got to Part three, I wanted to stop school. I was staying in a hotel, Mayfair Hotel. I was paying 700 naira every day. So the man was saying, you this boy, don’t you have parents, see the way he is blowing money.
When you enter my room, it was full of dollars. Boys were always around me.
So when I was going to drop out my older brother came around. The son is the PGSO at the National Ambassador.
He came around and said, if I stopped schooling, he would beat “don’t be silly” on me.
Because I already said I’m not schooling, is it not money that makes you go to school?
Do you understand that mentality? He said, if he catches me, he’ll beat me blue-black.
So l said he should leave me because he doesn’t have money like me.
He just laughed. Because I did not know tomorrow. I didn’t know what it meant.
So I just got let my people go and graduated.
I’m very brilliant. But the problem I had is sitting down to read. So the only time I read is when they are doing exams.
Because most of the time, I’m always in Bulgaria, I’m in Italy, I’m in London. Every week, I carry 25 people abroad. Everybody knows me at the airport.
Because I’m the one that approved the visa. And I didn’t know it was prostitutes that I was taking to Italy. Guys, ladies, plenty of them went there.
All the time from Benin, you know Benin people. They bombarded me with money.
One day I asked them, why is it only ladies that go? They also carry men, men also do that job too?
They now told me that they were going for prostitution. I said, eh? That’s how I stopped it. Then God opened another channel for me.
That’s when I got the job of maintaining the airport. Professor Aborishade had become a minister then. So he gave me the opportunity.
I’m the first Nigerian that started using motorized sweepers to clean Nigerian airports. I’m the first Nigerian that used mechanized equipment to clean the airport, I’m also the first Nigerian that used mechanized equipment to remove rubber deposits on the runway.
I had a lot of history of being number one. So that’s how I started cleaning the airport with MMA.
This was my job. I was okay. Then I began to expand. Now, I have covered 20 airports, to the glory of God.
Along the line, when I was doing that, Senator Yolo Bishore saw me and liked me. Then Jelili Adeshina became the minister of Police Affairs. Because of my aggressiveness, because I’m very intelligent, I can get things done, he said, Demola, you are going to be a special adviser to the minister, so that’s how they took me to Abuja and I became the Special Adviser to the minister of Police. From there, come and see what God has done. From there we got to this point.
But bottom line, be straightforward, that’s one thing that God gave me. I am straightforward, I am not too aggressive for money, God provides, it will come natural. I always tell people, don’t be over zealous but be very hardworking with your job. Somebody somewhere will see you and find that this person is good, let me help him. That is always my story, so from there His Excellency was added to my name, and that is who I am today.
Thank you very much.
