Yinka Fasuyi: Hard Thinkers See Opportunities Every Day

IN an environment where many are disenchanted because of the seemingly few opportunities to excel, hard thinkers such as Yinka Fasuyi believe opportunities abound at every corner of the country. An embodiment of knowledge who sees beyond the ordinary, Fasuyi, who turns 60 next week, has a mien that betrays his age.

For Fasuyi who is the Chief Consultant of the biggest capacity building outfit in West Africa, Supreme Management Consultants and President, Ibadan Business School (IBS), the only gulf between people and success is the inability to identify what they have passion for and pursue it with integrity. And he demonstrated this by quitting the comfort zone of an oil company to pursue his passion.

He said: “I am a hard thinker. Every day, I see new opportunities in the environment because the beauty of our changing environment every day is that it provides new opportunities. If you pick a newspaper and you see a government being accused of this or that, take off your mind from the news and check the hidden opportunities underneath the news. If for instance you read ‘Robbers cart away antiquities, crowns from a palace’, many will read the news and make jest of the palace but a hard thinker would look beyond that. He would  be thinking of making a proposal to the state government on how to provide security for the antiquities in all palaces, or an insurance person will start working on a proposal on how to insure these valuables.
“For every policy comes with avalanche of opportunities but you have to think and decipher very well to see business opportunities in that policy. Each challenge is a business opportunity because each challenge needs a solution and it becomes a business opportunity. Without challenges there cannot be business ideas. The challenges create business opportunities”.

Fasuyi did not just find himself in the business of Management Consultancy and capacity building. His thirst to acquire knowledge started after a turning point in his life that forced him to put off the garb of rascality and e made Grade One at Methodist Boys’ High School, Lagos. From there, he proceeded to the University of Ibadan where he bagged his first degree in Economics. He holds three other master’s degrees in Business Administration (MBA), Industrial and Labour Relations (MILR) and Information Science (MIS).

He has Executive Education Certificate in Creativity and Innovation from the University of California (UCLA) USA, Certificate in Global Partnership for Leadership Development from Manchester Business School, Manchester, U.K. He has also attended development trainings at Queen’s School of Business, Toronto, Canada; and George Town University, USA, amongst others. He is also a fellow of over 30 professional bodies within and outside Nigeria.

To him, the essence of education is to achieve what you have passion for as he sees education as a window to many opportunities. Hear him: “It was during my MBA class that I knew the meaning of education which I always like to share with people. Education is just a window to see opportunities in life. But unfortunately, our education policy makers, I am not sure whether majority of them appreciate this true meaning of education. Education is not an end, that is what I am saying. It is a means to an end.

If you go to our universities and assemble 100 undergraduates and ask them what they would like to do after graduation, majority will tell you they want to work at an oil company, bank or a communication company. That is not the essence of education. The root of that misconception has to do with our colonial history. British education bestowed on us education that looks for job, but today, if you look at what is obtainable in the society, especially the United States, you will see the difference in their education direction and ours.

They make education as a window to see opportunities. What can you do? What is your passion? But here, the emphasis is on the certificate. When you apply for a job in the US, they are not interested in your certificates, whether B.Sc, M.Sc or whatever. What they will ask is: ‘Mr, what handsome skill do you have. What new value can you create, what additional value can you create, what are the creativity in you’. And that is why that economy is the biggest economy in the world today. But here in Nigeria and many developing nations, we still see education as an end and that is why 23.8 per cent amounting to 48 million Nigerians are unemployed. That crisis will persists because our orientation needs to be changed”.

For every policy comes with avalanche of opportunities but you have to think and decipher very well to see business opportunities in that policy. Each challenge is a business opportunity because each challenge needs a solution and it becomes a business opportunity. Without challenges there cannot be business ideas. The challenges create business opportunities.”

Speaking on why he started Ibadan Business School which has become a training centre for the many international institutions such as the World Bank, UNDP and many too numerous to mention, Fasuyi said: “Four years ago, I looked at Nigeria’s situation, I was worried. We expect change to happen and we do not make improvement in our national life. I have been to 59 countries in this world. I see changes in the environment and ours cannot be different. I asked what are the problems. The identification of these problems gave birth to Ibadan Business School (IBS). We didn’t establish it for the purpose of establishing one, it is not for money-making.

Part of the roles people in our category should play is not only to identify the problems but to work towards providing solutions. In the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, he would identify problems and proffer solutions. I discovered that as a nation, it is our dream to transform Nigeria to a developed country where quality of life will be better. I was in a place in Germany called Rhine Valley. The average life span is 115 years. If somebody dies at 90, people mourn that they’ve lost a young guy, but the average life span here is 47. Very bad.

If we are serious to transit to a developed economy, we must come up with a programme that will change the orientation of people at driver’s seat, that is, people in the public sector. The private sector people are at the driver’s seat of the developed economies but here our public sector is frustrating our private sector. The public sector is the one to provide enabling environment under which the private sector will thrive on, but if they do not have the capacity to provide that enabling environment, it will become a day dream that will not translate to reality.

To help Nigeria to move from developing state to a developed state, we now said in IBS, what are the salient gaps people in public sector must be exposed to, to strengthen their capacity. They can do the business of governance in a business-like manner. That is why we introduced courses like Governance and Leadership, Monitoring and Evaluation Concept whereby when money is disbursed for a project, it is delivered.

The second sector which is over ignored is our Micro, Medium and Small Enterprises (MMSEs). If you go to the US today, if you have any organization that employs more than 20 like my own, that generates pay roll for one year, you become a citizen. That is to show you how serious they take the issue of employment generating people. But here, all the policies over the years are not sincerely formulated. The media was awash a few years ago that over N200 billion is available for MMSEs.How many entrepreneurs have been able to access this fund?”

Fasuyi’s early life was full of ups and down, but he always remembers the affluence he was exposed to in secondary school with nostalgia. Born to the family of the late Chief Jacob Olowokere Fasuyi and Madam Felicia Fasuyi of Ilesha, Oshun State, his father was a renowned businessman. “While growing up, at the secondary school level, I had a privileged access to my father’s funds. I was able to support my early social life to the extent that in Ijeshaland and its environs, I was nicknamed ‘the young millionaire’. As far back as 1971, when I was in Form Three in Ilesha Grammar School, I would not only organise parties for friends to enjoy ourselves, we also brought notable artistes that were reigning then. I single-handedly brought the likes of Segun Bucknor to Ilesha to entertain us. He rivaled Fela Anikulapo-Kuti at that time,” he reminisced.