Jimmy Ofuoyan: Making a difference with 360Kuts, Khalilimage

Jimmy Ofuoyan is a 25-year-old CEO of 360Kuts, a haircut service, and Khalilimage, a lifestyle digital content company.

Without doubt, he is an example for young people of the virtue of being hardworking and that honesty pays without resorting to internet fraud, called Yahoo Yahoo, which is endemic these days.

Jimmy Ofuoyan has every reason to embrace internet fraud, like many of his peers. Born into a family where nine children had to compete for scarce and unavailable resources, sidelined from getting a secondary education because of the non-availability of funds, and having to start learning how to braid and fix women’s hair at age 12, he had every excuse to dabble into crime and any quick-money syndrome.

However, he chose to follow the proverbial straight and narrow road, which included learning how to barber male hair and travelling through Libya to Italy.

The decision to migrate to Italy through the perilous route of Libya was the greatest trial of his life, as he and his co-travellers fell into the hands of human traffickers, who imprisoned them for a year and a half.

Despite the tribulation at the hands of his tormentors, he did not hide his talent but rather became an unofficial barber to other inmates and even their captors. When he eventually escaped the gulag and found his way to Italy, it was his skill at haircutting that paved the way for him.

In Abruzzo and Sicily, he continued to scrape a living as a home-service barber while working as an occasional disc jockey at parties and festivals until he eventually hit the big time in Pescara, where he became a local celebrity barber to whom football players flock for their haircut.

Today, he is not only barbering hair for football stars, but he is also a star in his own right.