An internet search for the name Efficacy Homes will redirect you to Efficacy Construction Company, a company owned and managed by Dr. Oyeleke Ajiboye, who is an Harvard-trained product. Efficacy Construction Company is into many things: real estate development, environmental problem solving organisation, agriculture and so on. The company, which was set up in 2009, specifically for real estate development, has now become a big brand, charged with many responsibilities and options.
Two weeks back, Dr. Oyeleke Ajiboye, who happens to be the Chairman of the company spoke extensively with City People’s Senior Property Reporter, ISAAC ABIMBADE, on why the company has diversified. This young and handsome man also reveal the secret of running a successful business during hard time and why his NGO has remained solid to help many people to have a better life/society. Enjoy the piece.
Who is the man behind Efficacy Construction company?
My name is Dr. Oyeleke Ajiboye, the MD of Efficacy Homes. Efficacy Homes started officially in January 2009, but it was registered 2008 August. Since then, we have been trying to reinvent ourselves, to continue to grow gradually in all spheres of the business and today, we have grown to be a fully fledged construction company, that does real estate development, building and civil construction, water treatment plant, sewage treatment plant, and we have also diversified into agriculture.
You were known as Efficacy Homes Limited, but that has changed to Efficacy Construction Company. Can you tell us the story behind it?
Desperate time, desperate measure, when recession came and it was obvious that liquidity in the country has gone down, people couldn’t’ afford real estate, we had to go back to the drawing board, to rearrange the business, started learning how to add more business lines to what we do. We used about 18 months to build our organisational system and to get us ready to become a construction company, to be able to do drainages, roads, infrastructure, build high rise buildings and do water treatment plant at a large-scale for a whole city. So, we took our time to learn all these things. We re-orientated the business, re-engineered the business, and brought in new people, learning new things and went for trainings. We did that for over a period of 18 months and we were convinced that we were good to launch at January 2017.
Efficacy Homes was known for the development of housing, especially for high-income earners, would that still continue with the company?
Yes, we are still building. We have projects on Victoria Island at Yaba, Lekki but again, we are positioning ourselves to be a much more environmental problem-solving organization. We want to solve environmental problems, which is water, sewage, roads, and housing. We want to be a complete fully fledged organization that can do all those things. We are still building high rise buildings
Also, we are at present going into social housing, partnering with government. Now, we are working with Akwa Ibom State Government on a 55 hectares development at Eket in Akwa Ibom State, targeting the people of Akwa Ibom.
But we cannot do social housing without the help of government.
How do you grow real estate business in this recession period?
In a hard time like this, there will always be hard time, it is a circle, it comes and goes, I remember when I started my business in 2009, I understand that most businesses don’t survive the first 3 years. So, I make sure the strategy I used in 2009 is different from 2010 and unfortunately, 2011 was an election year and we did not grow financially that year, by 2012 I knew that every election year is always a turbulent one, so we were really ready for 2016.
So, we made sure we did many works of paying projects that would keep us in business for 2016, but nobody saw the recession extended beyond 2016. Towards the end of 2016, last quarter, with the way we saw things were going, we had to start adding more business lines into what we do, look out for more opportunities, we are not just stereotyped to what we do, we had to start re-inventing new method of doing business, cost effective way of delivery, reducing our pricing, making ourselves much more competitive, providing more services around real estate developement construction. By 2016, we brought equipment and we started doing large-scale land clearing, and much of that we were not doing before, but because of the time like this, we had to add those things to make sure we stay afloat at hard time and we were also able to diversify into agriculture. Yes, agriculture has not given us money now, but we have been able to see possibilities there, which is one thing that would put our business up there and growing/go overtime.
In staying above failure during recession, one has to define and set purpose for his business and one also needs to be on top of his game, educate yourself more, be around right people, listen to people who make decisions. Information actually helps us and with our ability to quickly rearrange ourselves to make sure that we are not just running a business.
Did you diversify mainly because of recession?
Yes, in every business, there must be a purpose why the business was set up. One of our goals when we started was that, by the time we are 10 years, we wanted to be a public quoted company in the Nigeria Stock Exchange, we are not yet there, but we are hoping that, from 7 years, we should start taking that steps. Yes, we are 8 years plus now. So, we are not just saying this because of recession, but because there was the plan and it is a need to do now, to have more options that can generate incomes.
What are the steps to take into grow real estate business in hard times?
One of the key ways to grow a real estate business in recession is through partnership. In recession, you need people you can work together with. During hard time, you can’t be winning alone. So you need people to come together. In this business (real estate), media is important, estate agents are important, land speculators are importan(Omonile), and Lagos State government or the state where we do business. So, these are the key players that we need to partners with, to make sure that we are in business.
What has recession taught you as a company operating in real estate?
Well, Nigeria’s recession did not teach me anything actually because I have learnt this overtime. As a businessman, as a real estate company, you must have assets that can easily be turned to liquid and you must have other source(s) of income. All your incomes cannot just be on houses you are building because the moment you are unable to sell, your business go down and bank would start knocking on the door. You must have multi-stream income. In 2016, our US company helped us much, the bulk of our income came from the US’s company, 80 per cent of our income, and Nigerian company was doing nothing.
We started our US company in 2014, what if we had not taken that step, we would not even survive 2016 and we also have a branch in the UK, it is been a little bit slow there but we know one day if that also picks up, it would help our bottom line.
Tell us about your diversification and how far you have gone in agriculture programme?
Yes, according to our plan and purposes of business, in the 5th year of our business, we started expanding into real estate to other countries. We first of all, went to Ghana, we studied the market business in Ghana in year 2012 and we saw that it wasn’t too fantastic so, we tried UK in 2013, tried to do business there and things were a little bit stiff. We went to the United States in 2014 and it was good. Our other diversification is in water treatment. Last year, we started water treatment plant. Now, that is what we are doing for Dangote Refinery and it is 22,000 workers capacity, it is almost 3 million litres of water treatment plant, and we have also diversified into agriculture. We started diversifying and investing in agriculture since 2014. First year, it didn’t do so well, we learnt our lessons. We did yam in Osun State but the land was not too good, especially in the raining season. But in 2016, we became much more better in agriculture. Now, we have more than 7 hundreds acres of land across the country for agriculture. We are doing palm oil. We are also trying to acquire some acres of land in Ogun State for cattle. All these things are the plans we have to make sure that, one way or the other they would be bringing incomes. Ogun State has been a very good partner with us on agriculture, they support us in so many ways, in land documentation, land acquisition, training and giving us volunteer people to work with us in the ministry of land.
What is the future of real estate in Nigeria?
Without real estate there is no Nigeria because people will live in houses, it is a basic necessity. As long as there’s life there’s real estate and people will build houses and those houses will be bought.
You have a good background in real estate sector because you studied engineering courses at Harvard. What are we not getting right in the Nigerian real estate?
I think in Nigeria real estate, there is no regulation and that is killing the professionals, everybody wants to be real estate agent. In the US, before you can become a real estate agent you have to go through trainings, you have to become certified in some courses, you have to go through 3 months course at least, so that you know all the basic things to do, That would prevent people being duped and it would bring much sanity into the system. It also concerns our corporate affairs commission, when you are registering a business, they should check those who are behind the business(es), who are the directors?
Now that you have changed the name of your company from Efficacy Homes Ltd to Efficacy Construction Company, what has really changed?
It has increased our capacity to do more things and there’s so much expected of us. You know when you say you are a real estate developer, it could be just that you want to be a developer to make money. Now, we want to be an authority, that when you do construction and they tell you that our concrete is C35, is C35, and we say it is 40C, it’s 40C. Some people who could not be on our payroll before must now be included. we need to have soil engineer, we need to have quantity surveyors, we need to have geologist, and these things must be accommodated to have a better service and this will help us build a better brand. When I see an organisation and they write that it has been existing since 1970, we also want to be like that, and that journey starts now.
What project have you done recently sir?
This year, we are working on 2 projects basically, one of them is water treatment capacity design and sewage treatment plant at Dangote refinery, for 22 thousand people and we are also working on project in VI, it is an 8th storey building, comprising flats, maisonnettes, and pent house. We also have one at Allen, Ogundana Street, we actually did that last year, but we had to slow down because of economy. We also have our Eket project in Akwa Ibom. A lot of people are interested in the project. It is going to house five hundred families and that is the dream of the Governor of Akwa Ibom State. We are really hopeful the project would become a reality by God grace.
What are you looking at in Lagos State?
What we are looking forward to in Lagos State is tax reduction, land allocation and expediting C of O procurement. I would urge the government to establish an expediting office.
Can you also share your NGO project details with us?
We have an NGO and it is called Oyeleke Ajiboye Foundation in Iragbijiboripe local government, Osun State for about 3 years now. We identified about 3 schools in Iragbiyi, where we employed teachers to teach pupils after school, called Extra Mural Class and also teaching SS3 students Extral Mural Class in Maths, English and other subjects. To the glory of God, they did very well in the last WAEC results, it was better than the previous year. With the awareness of our NGO, we have some Iragbiji indigenes, who have supported us. I am actually from Iragbiji and in that place there is little emphasis on education because many of them want to work on the farm and some of them turned themselves to motorcyclist but emphasis is more on education there now. This year, we want to also do something on agriculture. We are planning to meet 3 agricultural associations at Boripe local government, Iragbiji and see how we can provide tractors for them free of charge because mechanised farming is the way. We don’t need to start sharing money for them, but give them the require equipment, give them resource to actually prosper in what they are doing. We are hoping we can provide and give out 3 tractors to the farmers this year.
