Mrs. Fayo Williams President, NECA’S Networks of Entrepreneurial Women

By Olakunle Olafioye

Quitting a well-paid job to set up ones’ business is one decision many would hardly think of way back in the 1990s when employment situation in Nigeria was still believed to be much better. But for the few who took such decision, the prospect of improved income, to a large extent, played a major role. Mrs. Fayo Williams, first vice president, NECA’S Networks of Entrepreneurial Women, has an entirely different motive for taking a similar decision.

Twenty-two years after she called it quit with paid employment, Williams superintends over a business organization, Rely Supply Limited, a company, which deals in pharmaceutical and medical supplies. Like most successful business owners, Williams has a scary story about growing business in Nigeria. She is, however, optimistic that the challenges are not insurmountable. More heartwarming is her revelation on yet-to-be tapped business opportunities in the health industry.

You left paid employment to set up your own business over two decades ago. What has been the experience?

It was what I would call a strategic decision to leave paid employment to set my own business. My husband and I took this decision. My husband felt it would not be good to have the children around the house and for the mother to be far away. At that time I was working on the Island and we happened to live on the Mainland. This decision was made particularly because my husband, being an agriculturist wanted to really have hands-on experience in agriculture. He was not one of those agriculturists who wanted to sit behind the desk; he wanted to really be on the farm. He was always away and didn’t want me to also be away. So, it was a decision both of us had to arrive at and that led to the birth of Rely Supply Limited. My husband and I are co-founders.

The business environment at the time you took that decision was relatively better than what is obtainable now. Looking at the situation in the country now, would you offer a similar advice to anybody?

I think the challenges have always been there. I remember we had the challenge of telephone. We had to share one telephone between home and office and I really went through the eye of the needle to get that telephone. Light challenge was there; we had to get a generator. These challenges are still with us today. In spite of these challenges, I will say Nigeria is blessed with a lot of resources including human capital. There are lots of gaps an entrepreneur can fill. In  Nigeria, there are so many things that are yet to be done to the standard that we can sit back and have a good time. For instance, I practise in the field of health and safety; you and will agree with me that so much still has to be done in terms of improving maternal and child care to reduce the maternal mortality rate. So much has to be done to improve safety awareness right from the home to the work place and even at the level of government. So much still has to be done to improve people’s attitude and their practice when it comes to health so that we can encourage people to actually do screening. If they can make that as part of their culture such that as you celebrate your birthday every year you also have a complete physical examination, may be when you cross a certain age, it would be nice. That is the kind of culture I am hoping we can encourage in Nigeria. So, when you look at the opportunities that present themselves around these gaps, there are numbers of health initiatives and entrepreneurial pursuits that could be taken up in order to take Nigeria from where we are now to where we want to be.

Did you at any time regret your decision to quit paid employment?

I won’t really say I regretted it but there were times that the business environment was really daunting. Even up till now the power situation seems to have gone worse. But some people say things get worse before they get better. It’s always darkest before dawn. So, we are hoping that we will get to that final light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, things have been daunting but I will not say I really regretted leaving paid employment because being self-employed has given me the opportunity to utilize a wide range of skills. It has been fulfilling but has not been financially rewarding as one would wish. Even that is being worked on, because everyday, as a business person, you would review your business plan, come up with new strategies and see how you can create a better market for yourself. So, that is what really drives the entrepreneur. I will say it is a challenge, it is a motivation for entrepreneur to go out there and just do his or her best to excel because that is the name of the game.

There has been a raging debate over the employability of the Nigerian graduate. What is your view on this?

My view is that the issue of employability skills being deficient in some of the Nigerian graduates is true. It is a disturbing situation. As an employer of labour, I have had cause to interview people and found out that they could not really comprehend simple things like weight and measure. You may wonder how that affects a pharmacist. The truth is the world is a global village; we often need to send goods, possibly, by courier or to relay the size of particular equipment to a customer. And if you have a graduate who cannot differentiate between centimetre and kilometre or who cannot put something on the scale and give you an accurate reading of the weight, it means the head of that organisation virtually has to do everything by him or herself. We need to look at things like business communication skills. We are having issue with letter writing, we are having issue with numerical skills, people writing invoices that are incorrect. The implication is that you could actually be losing a lot of money when there are a lot of mistakes being made within the organisation and everybody knows that you need people to make it happen, you need people to build a successful business. There is no way you can build a business all by yourself. In this day and age, you need people who can multi-task, who can flow, who can contribute and bring something to the table, so that at the end of the day you increase the bottomline. Employability skills are big source of concern for a lot of us now. I will like to salute the initiative of SURE-P. At first it took me sometime to accept what is being done but I now believe it is a step in the right direction. We need some finishing schools or training grounds. And I will like to give a shout out to all employers and CEOs that when we train them may be they will leave. In some cases, may be, but we cannot stop training. Even today in my staff meeting, my staff brought it up again and I have agreed and I will look at how we can be doing the training once a month because it is essential.

What would you attribute this problem to?

I believe a lot of it has to do with the curriculum. If we start from the curriculum, for instance, having gone through pharmacy school myself, I found myself as a graduate of pharmacy, who could not really read financial statement. And that is not really good enough because pharmacy management is being taught in school but probably we didn’t go far into accounts. And accounts are key because figures tell stories on their own and they help you to know whether a business is doing well or not. So, I believe that we need to complement professional courses with some business management courses so that by the time you come out of the university, you can actually set up business, you can write a business plan, you can understand accounting principles. Even if you have to engage an accountant, you will be able to breathe into your cash flow yourself, read up your profit and loss statements, know about your balance sheet, your asset, your liability and make necessary amend. These are the skills that I had to learn through the university of hard knock and I don’t think that should be it. We should learn through our system and be able to set up conveniently when you are graduates. I will be proposing that entrepreneurial skills be introduced in a very sincere and practical manner. In pursuit of this, I have made a contribution myself in creating an audio CD series, which was co-authored. I believe this is the kind of initiative we need to encourage our youths and graduates to learn about entrepreneurship, become more rounded and be able to create job once they have vocational or technical skills. You can come out and create your own business provided you have those entrepreneurial skills as well.

You co-founded this organisation with you husband. How has it been?

It has been a situation one can say you must have that interest, the perseverance, to keep on going in spite of the challenges. You have to rub minds together, you are to find out what is going on with the business and jointly take decision to move it forward.

How have you been able to reach compromise on conflicts arising from the running of the business?

Well, I have been responsible for the running of the business on a day-to-day basis as executive director. And that has just worked for us. Nothing is ever perfect, no one is perfect. But somehow, one has managed to persevere for 22 years in this line of business, which I think, is something noteworthy. I have  learnt a lot of lessons along the way.

How have you been able to insulate the business from domestic affairs?

To a great extent, I have been able to insulate the business from domestic affairs because for one, I am earning a salary. So, in that case, you don’t just come and dip your hand in the company’s purse. As a director, you have your emolument set by the board and that is what you enjoy; so you should not dabble into the company’s purse. Sometimes, the business may lend you money; sometimes you may lend the business money. It goes like that. At the same time, the account should be properly set. To a large extent, with that in place, one has tried to shield the business from domestic interest.

One major problem in the pharmaceutical industry is the issue of fake drugs. How would you assess the fight against fake drugs in Nigeria?

I may not be able to say so much without undertaking a study. I believe that as a scientist, you must have your empirical data to back up anything you say. But suffice to say I had a recent experience, which I believe was quite commendable. A customer had cause to notice a dark spot on one of the tablet in our organisation and I immediately took it up. It was one of one of the anti-malaria, which has the short code SMS authentication system, which I believe is a good development. And of course, we immediately found out if it was an authentic batch or not. Then it gladdens my heart that it was an authentic batch because I would not expect to have run into a spurious drug since one is aware of this challenge and one would always being careful of the source you buy from. So we were happy it was an authentic batch but that did not take away the fact that there was this little speck. On contacting the company involved, the drug was immediately replaced and apparently this product has been recalled with the aid of NAFDAC. So, I will like to say that NAFDAC is trying to make sure that the consumer out their get value because for that company to have informed me, that this is a known fact and we are actually trying to recall the drug it means that the process was on, it just hadn’t come to my door step. But once we noticed it and informed them, action was taken. If we can have more of that, and that was even a drug that was really authentic, if we can have more of pharmacists, doctors and other medical practitioners actually going as far as reporting this, taking it up and letting NAFDAC do the work of sending these batches for analysis and doing the recall, then I think we will gradually get out of the fake drug syndrome. We all need to be more observant and everybody has a role to play; it is not NAFDAC job alone. NAFDAC cannot act if we don’t give them information. So, I believe as a citizen of this country I have done my bit. Whenever you notice anything spurious, you should take up the mantle to report. We have Consumer Protection Association; we have NAFDAC and once they can take this up, they can get into the system, weed out the fake drugs and we will all be the  better for it.

Talking about politics, are you satisfied with the level of women involvement in politics?

I am not satisfied with the level of women participation in politics but I will like to say that there has been an improvement in what we used to have. The government of President Goodluck Jonathan should be commended for encouraging women and Dame Patience Jonathan should also be encouraged for some grassroots activities, which enabled her to actually encourage and put forward some women. Now I believe a lot more need to be done. The professional women need to come out because with their initiative, their knowledge and skills we can achieve development faster. I would like to sound out to everybody in Nigeria that we should see gender mainstreaming as something that is essential. For too long, there has been a lot of tokenism. Just as a token, let’s have 35 per cent. Why can’t it be 80 percent? The genders have equal opportunity to contribute to national development. In a country, I believe, it is in Senegal, we have been informed that members of parliament are asked to go home for siesta, confer with their wives and come back to parliament. It is as serious as that. Women need to be given special consideration. Women are natural, they are caregivers, they are motivators, they are encouragers, and you have to work something out that will encourage them. We need the understanding of men to say don’t just give us 35 percent, wherever a woman is qualified, let see a woman assume the leadership role and you will not regret it because women have intuition, they have this gift of discerning, even in a business deal, the one that will go well and the one that will go bad. You ask men and they will tell you their wives give them advice nine times out of ten.

Nigerian government seems to be divesting itself from business hitherto considered as essential services. What does this portend for Nigeria and Nigerians?

I am involved in a public sector partnership. And I dare say it is running quite well. A state like Lagos has taken a lead and I believe it is a good way to go. What I will be against is a kind of selling national monuments for pittance. If we have national monuments, they should be properly evaluated. Leasing scheme can be put in place so that people can operate, they don’t have to take over some of national monuments such that they remain our commonwealth while the operator is given the mandate to run it professionally and profitably.

————————————————————————————————————————-
Posted in Nigerian Newspapers. A DisNaija.Com network.

Source: The Sun Newspaper

DisNaija.Com publishes regular posts on Nigeria News, Nigerian Newspapers, Online Nigeria Gist.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Nigerian Newspapers

Follow @Dis_Naija

Your Opinion Counts. Be sure To Leave A Comment, If You Have Any.

Please Like, Share or Tweet. Your Support Is Appreciated.