In this review of THE RIGHT WAY, a new book
written by ADEDAMOLA ARE and published by
University Press Plc, DR KOLADE MOSURO
recounts how, in spite of overwhelming odds, a
family business was nurtured through thick and
thin to a huge success
Everything has a beginning. And in the case of
business, it begins with a vision. Even vision has
its origin. Vision draws from lineage, training,
experience, exposure, rigour of thoughts, measure
of luck and God’s grace. All these virtues are
covered in this publication stretching into 210
pages and across 16 chapters. I shall attempt to
highlight a few of them.
For lineage, Lalekan Are draws his surname from
Are Obadoke, his great grandfather, the 12th
Aare-Ona-Kakanfo of Yorubaland, the first warlord
of Are Obadoke family, an acclaimed warrior, who
was reputed for the expansion of Ibadanland.
So Lalekan Are is proudly Ibadan, his
expansionist vision of Ibadan frontier is with his
company, Kakanfo Enterprises Ltd, upon which
Kakanfo Inn and Conference Centre is built. He
has done so with valour, confidence, creatively
and fearlessly – and I must say reputedly in the
right way. Happily, there goes the title of the
book, The Right Way.
So much for lineage and training, Mrs Bisi Are,
has a degree from Michigan State University in
Home Economics and Human Ecology. Added to
this is God’s given talent to cook well. When she
returned to Nigeria after her studies, she had a
weekly 30-minute TV programme on the WNTV
captioned, ‘IT’S A WOMAN’S WORLD’, where she
tantalized viewers with mouth- watering dishes.
Salivation comes mostly through sight and smell.
The programme created a unique interest and
followership. Viewers were clamoring to have a
taste of what they were seeing on TV. A
restaurant was, therefore, born in 1971 to meet
the demand and the Ares called it Saba Saba
Restaurant.
This restaurant was located in Oke-Ado and was
hugely popular for quality and service. Such was
its popularity that a renowned physician in Ibadan
had his ambulance come every day without fail to
pick up his lunch. The doctor may have
recognised the need to have his meal and he
sped unabated through traffic to preserve the
food temperature. Who knows?
While Mrs Bisi Are held the kitchen, it was not
unusual for Dr Lekan Are, a Professor of
Agronomy, to serve as waiter, taking food orders
and generally serving the customers. Both
husband and wife were combining culinary and
administrative skills to run a system.
Adedamola Are, the author of this book, even as a
high school student, cut his teeth serving as a
waiter in the restaurant. While many would have
considered this hands-on approach beneath them,
the Ares used it to learn. They were able to pay
attention to details, interact with their customers
and respond to their needs. Unknown to them,
they were preparing grounds for higher service in
the hospitality business.
Ultimately and painfully, the Saba Saba
Restaurant without on-site supervision of the
owners stuttered, shrank and closed down in
1984. However, it was an experiment that would
form the base of the future to come. It would turn
failure into success.
When a man has travelled the world over, it
should also imply that he has, in all probability,
slept in the best of hotels and in the worst.
Traveling that widely enables discernment when it
comes to hospitality. Hotels no longer become
just rest stops, they become schools to imbibe
the lessons of hospitality. It was only a matter of
time that, Lalekan Are, a fastidious man, active
both of mind and in society, was going to
replicate some of the best hotel services that he
had experienced worldwide traveling as an
international scientist, in Ibadan.
Sooner than later, retirement from the public
service loomed for Dr Are and the thoughts of
what he would do in post-retirement had to be
seriously contemplated. He had observed the
dearth of good hotel facilities in Ibadan and his
property at Joyce B Road, which he bought in
1968 was lying fallow. Bang! an hotel could be
built, would be built and was built. The
construction took seven years. A good hotel can
be built in two to three years, perhaps less, but
this took seven years. It was indicative of funding
and other obstacles. The construction had to be
phased in. Finally, it opened on October 17, 1988
and was test run before it officially opened in May
1989.
The struggle to construct and open was a lot of
financial burden because Kakanfo Enterprises had
drawn a strangulating loan from the IBWA Bank
under very harsh terms. There was also the
Structural Adjustment Programme under the then
President Ibrahim Babaginda. This was a scheme
that enormously devalued the Naira overnight and
went on spiraling down, impoverishing everybody,
just about, in its wake. Such was the debt burden
that Kakanfo Enterprises was closed to
bankruptcy and Sheraton Hotels, Lagos was
waiting in the wings to prowl.
As one bank failed them so did they find salvation
in others. To their rescue came Nigbel Merchant
Bank led by late Chief Nathaniel Idowu and Wema
Bank led by late Chief Samuel Adegbite, both
providing funding and valuable advice. Ibadan can
hold its head high that this establishment,
Kakanfo Inn, was truly nurtured to fruition by the
financial influence and support of Ibadan
indigenes at a time they needed it most.
The twin leadership of the founder and the
managerial skill of Ajay Singh Bawa, an Indian,
took the hotel through its teething stage to a
formidable standing, all done against huge
challenges. There was the phased-in construction,
the innumerable challenges with staff, most of
which bordered on lethargy, unimaginable stealing
and other leakages, as well as low patronage of
the hotel at the start of operations and a heavy
debt burden.
But luck soon came in. Nigeria was going to host
the Under-20 FIFA World Cup in 1999 and Ibadan
was to play host to some of the matches. FIFA
was in need of good quality hotels in the hosting
cities. Sadly, Kakanfo Inn was not selected during
the initial selection. At 42 room capacity, it was
adjudged too small by the selection committee.
Leading to the competition, the Secretary-General
of FIFA, Sepp Blatter made an inspection tour to
Ibadan primarily to see the Liberty Stadium. But
just before he was going to return to Lagos, he
needed to make an urgent call to his office in
Zurich. He wanted to make a direct call as
against an operator-assisted call. None was
readily available, but his driver suggested that he
should go to Kakanfo Inn. As he pulled up at
Kakanfo Inn and alighted from his car, it was Dr
Lalekan Are that he ran into. He was led into an
office where he made his direct call. Naturally, Dr
Are’s business instincts kicked in after the call
and he took Blatter on a tour right round the
hotel. The only place he did not show him was
Oke-Are.
Later that week, at the close of his visit to
Nigeria, Sepp Blatter addressed a press
conference in Lagos in which he claimed a lot
more still needed to be done by Nigeria to be
ready for the competition, but the good news was
that he discovered a good hotel in Ibadan that
could host officials, pressmen, fans and teams.
Blatter had given Kakanfo Inn visibility on the
world stage, free publicity and huge marketing for
free. Thereafter, doors opened and several NGOs,
foreign embassies, world organisations, top
companies etc took account of Blatter’s
promotion and made Kakanfo Inn their hotel of
choice.
From patronage, the hotel grew in size from 42
rooms to 82 by 1997. Expansion was a risky
venture and had to be gutsy. When guts are in
demand, Lalekan Are is in his elements and rises
to the occasion.
The book also gives account of how clear
thoughts led to diversification and the creation of
the Kakanfo Conference Centre, the hall in which
we are in. The ultimate sacrifice was shown here
when the founder rather than draw a loan from
the bank at a strangulating interest rate of close
to 30 per cent, liquidated most of his assets
acquired over 50 years of honest and hard labour
to provide the financial resources to prosecute the
project. In any event, debt is nothing to be feared
particularly if it is a good debt. The company was
expanding to a niche of need that was
complementary to the services of the hotel and
today they reap their reward with its success.
After 20 years of meritorious service at the helm
of affairs, Mr Bawa retired to return to his
country. There was an interim leadership of some
years involving two trials that followed, but they
merely and barely held the reins. And then came
Adedamola Are, the author of this book.
There was a convergence of coincidence that only
God’s grace and unseen hand could effect. About
the same time that Lalekan Are was
contemplating starting a hotel in Ibadan, his son,
Adedamola, was graduating in Public
Administration in the United States and was now
transiting to study Hotel Management in Graduate
School. Only God could conceive and design such
a plan where father is designing a hotel in his
mind and son is training in hotel management
without either knowing or premeditated.
Adedamola’s training was to take him into the
bowels of hotels from across the US, working at
managerial levels at Marriot Hotel in San Diego,
Cypress, Vail – in California, Vail in Colorado and
the Hilton Hotel in New York, South Carolina,
Georgia, Florida and Colorado.
Against this background and given the root of all
that is good, Adedamola returned to Kakanfo in
2012 at a time when the business had reached a
crossroads and was coasting on its oars.
It was Adedamola, a man with a different
education, and his team who creatively energised
the company and gave it a renewed impetus and
expansion. He was forced to reassess the future,
to go ahead with the future, or the future would
have left them behind.
The state plays a huge role directly and indirectly
in the outcome of businesses. First, business can
only thrive in an atmosphere of peace and
stability. The book narrates the setbacks and the
challenges the hotel went through in the years
when the state was in turmoil. The state also
plays a role in infrastructure. When roads are
built, movement for whatever purposes are
enhanced, accommodation and activities are
improved, higher tax revenue is generated. The
greatest challenge for a hotel is electricity
because, even if there is only one guest in the
premises as occupant, the generator must be
switched on, driving the operations as if in full
capacity. With the generator at full blast, every
working day is commenced at a deficit.
Nothing quite succeeds as the story of success.
This book is partly autobiographical and largely
the story of success, about how a family business
overcame the challenges of Nigeria. It celebrates
the vision and steadfastness of the founder as
much as applaud the contribution of the board
and the dreamer who have taken it to the next
level. It also shows the transition into the future.
It is also a hand book on how it was done – how
to grow business through thick and thin and how
to preserve the core values in the process.
The foreword of the book was written by Architect
Ayodeji Olorunda, someone who is eminently
qualified to do so. Architect Olorunda has been
there as architect cum consultant to the company
for the past 30 years, designing and erecting the
structure that you refer to either as the Kanfanfo
Hotel or the Kankanfo Conference Centre. It is to
the architect that we go to lay our housing
dreams for him to turn them into structures.
When the architect is briefed, he gains further
insight into the client. He has both our dreams
and privileged insight to introduce this company
or its book.
When Adedamola Are completed his manuscript,
he did not have to go far to seek a publisher or
for a publisher to seek him out. He found a
publisher in University Press Plc, the biggest
publishing company in Nigeria. Coincidentally, Dr
Lalekan Are is the Chairman of University Press
Plc and you should expect some semblance with
Kakanfo Inn in their conduct and values.
I should expect that the UP Plc took on the
publication of the book, not because Lalekan Are
is their Chairman, but on the merit of the book.
The book is a veritable account of growing
business in a very harsh environment through
experience, stability and core values. For the
excellence that they are used to, UP Plc will do
well in the reprint of this book to minimise the
grammatical errors encountered in the publication
and make the spreadsheets in the appendix more
legible. They must also note the importance of
the blurb to give a short description of the book
because the blurb to this book tells us nothing
about the book, except to tell us about the
careers of the authors.
What we call company is nothing but family and
it takes the character of the founding fathers and
the people in it. From dream to reality, there is an
Are stamp on this establishment for ruggedness,
pragmatism, clear-sightedness, service, patriotism
and integrity.
If you are like me, you will pick up this book in the
morning, even at a total of 210 pages, and by
evening you would have finished reading it,
simply because it holds you as a book that you
will be riveted to. You will not want to put it
down. If you are like most people, you will pick up
this book and read it, taking your time and
savouring every page of it and drawing lessons
from it. Whether you read it at a seating or
leisurely at your pace, I wholeheartedly
recommend this book as one to read.
Source:
punchng.com/a-celebration-of-vision-and-steadfastness/
