Why I went to study Law after practising advertising —Ajufo

Chief Emma Ajufo is the immediate past President, Out-of-Home Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN) and Founder, TENAX Legal Services. In this interview with AKIN ADEWAKUN, he speaks about his life experiences, career trajectory and reasons for a career switch after 35 years as an advertising practitioner.

WHO is Emma Ajufo?

Emma Ajufo is somebody that can describe himself as fulfilled. I started out as a Business Administration graduate, joined the TROYKA Group in 1990 as a Trainee Manager and rose in the group to become the Senior Manager at Optimum Exposure. Before I left, I was number four in the company. When I left the company, I joined a company where I was supposed to be a Director, but, it didn’t work.

So I left there and went to InventMedia, where I helped the company to bring new types of billboards into the industry as their General Manager. From there, I left and joined Marketing & Media as their Managing Director before ending up in Opportunity To See (OTS) as the founder. Presently, I have handed over to the next set of management and I’m just the Chairman of OTS.

Why did you hand over?

In founding OTS, I had it in mind that I didn’t want it to die with the founder, as most one-man businesses do. So, from Day One, we set up corporate structure. We had our board in place, and I told them that at a certain stage in my life, I would hand over. And, I have done just that. Today, I’m no longer talking about out-of-home advertising. I now relate with them at the board level.

So, I’m just the founder and now Chairman. The business is run by the management now and they seem to be doing well. They will make mistakes and they will learn from the mistakes, and they will grow and create their own path.

I then expect that as they journey along, they will also be owners of Opportunity To See because the more, the merrier. If you look at the likes of Unilever and Guinness, today, they started small and grew over the years. And beyond the fact that they know the founders, the people that grew the businesses are not necessarily family members. So that is where we are.

What informed the choice of marketing communication as a career?

As a young graduate, I thought that every businessman was a business graduate. That was why I studied Business Administration to start with. But I got interested in this line of business because my elderly cousin and the wife founded a modelling agency, and I also saw him do some adverts. So I got interested.

My first point of call was Promoserve. I attended their interview and failed woefully because of carelessness. That’s a story for another time. But two days later, I had the interview for Optimum Exposure, it was called Klinsite then, a member of the TROYKA Group, and because of the experience I had two days earlier, I had to work extra hard, and during the interview, the Strategic Planning Director found me worthy because before the result of the interview came, there was also an opportunity in United Bank for Africa then.

But the bank didn’t have marketing unit, it was just operations. You stayed all your hours in the bank, then, talking about tally numbers and so on, so the director then asked me what type of person I thought I was. I told him I didn’t know. He said he felt I was an extrovert. I told him I didn’t think so. He then advised me to take the job. The salary then was N700.

The UBA job?

No. Klinsite. The Strategic Planning Director, Dr. Emokpae, advised I take the job, that he saw me as an extrovert and I would not regret it. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t regret, because my friends that went into the banking sector then, upon my confirmation, six months after, I started earning more than them, even though they were earning more than me before.

What were some of those moments you wouldn’t forget in a hurry as an employee?

One of such was my movement to Invent Media as a General Manager. I crossed over from Optimum Exposure to a new agency founded by Dr. Emokpae. He left the TROYKA Group as the Strategic Planning Director, and called me on phone. I was in Kaduna then. He told me he had left the TROYKA Group, and that he wanted me to join him as a Director, and I said to him on phone: “Anywhere you go, I follow you”. Without thinking, I resigned. I was then the Senior Manager in charge of the Northern Operations for Optimum Exposure. Even when they were advising me to take it easy, I didn’t listen. I resigned and I came down. When I came down, it eventually became the roughest part of my adult age because my life went down. it wasn’t a good move.

Why?

Because the structures were not in place. Most of us in that group had thought the growth of the group was based on this man, but it was then that I knew that though he was doing well, but there was somebody behind him who was propelling me, and that person was Dr. Biodun Sobanjo. So when we moved, we thought it was a good move, and the man cleverly took one person from each of the unit and replicated it in his place. He even moved with WAMCO and NASCO accounts. So the media independent arm was doing well, but the outdoor arm was not doing well, and that was the one he wanted me to come and run.

Till I left there, I didn’t sign the agreement of being a director. My salary was cut by half, so I couldn’t meet up. But interestingly, a company called InventMedia was having management problem and somebody had been told to look for me, or one other person, who was in Optimum Exposure, his name is Yinka Okesiji. Of course, Yinka wouldn’t go because our salary at Optimum Exposure used to be the best in those days. So the man gave me three employment letters. The first one he gave me, I went to Dr. Emokpae and I told him, “Oga, things are not moving well here” and that I wanted to move. He told me, “How can you leave a place that you are a director to go and become an employee again?”

Though I had not signed any document, I stayed. They gave me a second employment letter. I went to the wife, and the wife told me, “Your oga likes you, why do you want to go?” I stayed. The third employment letter, I didn’t tell anybody again. I left. And when I got to InventMedia, a few weeks after, the man gave me a brand new Toyota Corolla, and my life came back, and in return for his turning me around, I gave him my all, and he can attest to that. By the time I left InventMedia when they went to Ministry of Environment, they told him he was not the owner of the place and that I was the owner because of the way I worked for him.

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So that experience can not go off my mind because my standard of living dropped. In fact, this is the first time I’m saying it publicly, because those days whenever I was asked I would say very fine, but I wasn’t fine at all, because it was a bad move. But every disappointment is a blessing. Maybe if I didn’t come to Lagos, I wouldn’t have risen to the height of my profession.

Does it mean you didn’t start your career in Lagos?

I was recruited in Lagos, but transferred to Kaduna. From there to Jos, and from Jos to Akure. But when they made Kaduna the regional office of the company, I was moved back to Kaduna. I spent 11 years with Optimum Exposure, initially called Klinsite Outdoor Services.

How did you come across the name OTS?

I didn’t start my ownership early, I was working for people, and was well-known in the industry. And I said to myself that what we were selling in those days was opportunity to see. When you put up billboards, what you were selling was opportunity to see, but now it has improved. It’s no longer opportunity to see. We want you to look beyond seeing. We want you such that when you see, you take a decision. But that time, what we were selling was an opportunity for you to see the billboard outside. So I said to myself that I needed to have a name that when you mention it to the people, it would stick, and this name OTS just came up, and I didn’t think twice the moment it came up. And everybody that I told those days that I worked for OTS tend to remember the name of the company faster than my own name. it also helped us in growing the business at that early stage.

Can you tell us the journey to becoming the President of OAAN, then?

Joining the association was because we were making complaints. In 2006, when LASAA came up, we needed a focused leadership. So the present president, one other guy and myself started meeting in my office with the aim of advising the president at that time, Otunba Kole Ademulegun, to see our views. The man felt that what to do was to now appoint me in his council, as a committee member, not as an elected officer. He tended to like us, that’s why when I talk about my journey in OAAN, I first of all give credit to him because he found me and gave me wings as it were to fly, and all the contributions I made in the council, he took. He made me committee chairman here and there. At that time, I was even told I was the future president of the association, and that time I was not even holding any office at all. I was contributing in council and saying it as it was.

So after that I now contested to be General Secretary. The powers that be wanted me to be Assistant General Secretary, and they wanted the present president to be General Secretary, but because the present president had helped me when I was putting some boards up in Abuja, by the way he worked with me at Optimum Exposure, so we have known each other, so I used his company to secure some sites in Abuja.

So when this issue of General Secretary came up, I stepped down for him. I had no issue doing that. But somehow, he wasn’t able to contest. So I contested for Assistant General Secretary. But there was a vacuum in Gen Sec position. So, after the first year, I moved to that office. After that, I became the VP to Mr. Tunde Adedoyin, and thereafter became the president.

What informed your decision to study Law?

When I was in Akure, I used to have a friend, Mr Ignatius, he’s late now. He was older than me…

A professional colleague…?

No. We met in Akure. You know when you are in a region and you are doing well, you have a way of making new friends. He was the one that told me that FUTA ( Federal University of Technology Akure) was doing MBA. So when he finished his MBA, I did mine. So, as I was finishing my MBA, I was transferred out of Akure to Kaduna. So he did part-time Law. I didn’t know until one day he called me and told me, “I’m a lawyer”. So he started ‘harassing’ me, positive, peer-group harassment. When we talked he would say, “I’m a lawyer.” Before then, I didn’t like Law.

I felt Law was a technical course, quoting cases and other things. But his argument was changing a bit because of his knowledge of Law. As he was saying this, the government cancelled part-time Law, so I couldn’t study Law again. So he had an edge because I couldn’t leave my job to do full-time Law. Shortly after that, he went and registered with ARCON and said to me, “I’m also in your profession now. So what is the big thing? All this thing that you say you are an advertising practitioner’. And I was very disappointed with the fact that anybody can just walk in and become an advertising practitioner.

I came to Lagos, the opportunity of Open University now came. I enrolled there, but I didn’t tell him. But later when we were talking, he said “This my friend, it’s like you are studying Law”, I said, “No”. He said, “But the way you talk suggests that you are studying law”, and I would tell him, “No”. So we finished at Open University, but the university was not recognised by the Council of Legal Education.

I finished at Open University in 2015, but couldn’t go to Law School. Of course, it’s either you are a lawyer, or you are not one, until one of my friends told me that I needed to go back to school if I truly wanted to be a lawyer. I now went to Lead City University and started afresh from Direct Entry. That’s why I have two Law degrees.

I have Open University Law Degree and that of Lead City University, which now took me to Law School. As I graduated from Open University, I was still not a lawyer. I was ashamed of myself, but when you have knowledge, you have knowledge. I was still talking as if I knew law, but the man died before I graduated from Lead City University. The second person that motivated me was one of my friends who abused his wife. When I went to him to talk about that, he was telling me: “Do you know I’m a lawyer?” And I said, “This law that you are talking about, it’s something I can do.” So when I graduated from Law School, I went back to him and told him, ‘This is the Law thing you are talking about, what else? But what I told you before still remains, it is not good to abuse women.” So those are the two reasons I did Law. And I have no regrets.

But you became a lawyer, the year you were marking your 60th birthday. Was it planned, or just a mere coincidence?

It wasn’t planned. You know I would have been a lawyer since, but the fact that Law in Open University was not approved. So it was just a coincidence, and an icing on the cake. I got the Law result a day to my 60th birthday. So it was a good birthday present, because I was truly scared of the result. But I did very well.

Now that you’ve been called to the Bar. Are we looking at a career switch here?

After 35 years of practising out of home advertising business, I’m comfortable starting a law firm. I see it as an opportunity to give back to the society. Most of the things I do now are pro bono, for association and friends in advertising because two areas I’m looking at critically is the issue of advertising law, because there is a lot of things our members do not know about that are in the law. For instance, the Federal Highway Act says that anybody that wants to practise out-of-home on their corridor must be a member of OAAN. But a lot of people get on the corridor without being members of the association. So if we are conscious of the law that we have that protects us, the way we go about our business will be different. I also want to help our friends in the area of trust. A lot of us do not think about trust. I will only do litigation if it is absolutely necessary. I’m already a member of Alternative Dispute Resolution Society. Of course, the way litigation goes, today you can spend all the years in the court, but there are faster ways of resolving issues. So that is where I am and I’m happy with where I am today in terms of the Law practice.

You have a chieftaincy title, you are a lawyer and ad practitioner. How do you marry all these together to ensure one does not affect the other?

For the chieftaincy titles, all the ones I have are ordinary ones, but because of my standing in the society I have to also be getting closer home to assist, because no place is as good as home. So that is not a problem. With the advertising business, yes, even in ARCON, I’m still the chairman of fellowship committee. I think it’s about planning. If you plan your life, things will go on well. Law practice is only just growing. It is gathering momentum. The core business, advertising, like I said, I’m a non-executive chairman. There are people who are much busier than I do, but who are still doing extremely well.

Your advice to the younger ones?

They should believe in their dreams. They should have integrity. There must be tenacity. For instance, talking about my journey, it took tenacity to be where I am today. Some stopped. That is why I would say that people should believe in their dream, stay with their dream, and at the end of the day they will make it.