Iyasere, the quintessential baker, philanthropist at 70

Dr. John Richard Iyasere, the Eche of Agbarha Kingdom in Ughelli North in Delta State, is a businessman, philanthropist and an educationist. For over 40 years, he has been involved in service to humanity. He recently turned 70 and he spoke to ALEMMA-OZIORUVA ALIU in his residence in Benin City.

John Richard Iyasere was born some 70 years ago at the Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR). Then, it was Oil Palm Research Station (OPRS), precisely, on May 16, 1946, to the late Pa Emmanuel Iyasere and Mrs. Atajimavwo Iyasere family of Agbarha-Otor, Ughelli North of Delta State.

He says, “I was born a twin. We were two boys. The first one died in infancy and I had an aunty, my father’s immediate elder sister, who was married before we were born, to a man who was based in Lagos. My mother gave me away to my aunty thinking that since the first one was dead the second one may not survive. So, I started life in Ondo.”

Iyasere adds, “in 1956, we moved from Ondo to Agbarha-Otor, where I completed my elementary school. I later went to a modern school owned by the Catholic Church. I spent three years there, before proceeding to St. Thomas Teacher Training College, Ibusa. I was able to pass my advanced Levels while still there and got admission to study Geography at the University of Ibadan. I was the best graduating student in that department. I started working with Mandilas Group. I was the head of Mandilas Motors. From there I was seconded to Mandilas Group back here in Benin, in January 1975. I worked there as head of administration and after 15 years, I left paid employment to set up Rhema Enterprise Limited. My wife and I set up this enterprise. We had other companies, which we later set up.”

Iyasere’s other name is Charity. There is a special feeling he gets when he is deep in charity, even as he presents a triangular life. He says, “I have three offices in this life; Rhema is my main office, where we produce the income, the revenue with which we run our family, pay school fees for other people and do other things and the charity we are doing. The second office is the Church. And the third is the Project Charilove. It is an NGO, a very unique one that cares, trains and empowers vulnerable people in the society, mainly youths and children.”

The NGO picks destitute in the streets, because there is an orphanage in Benin where they are taken care of. “At the centre, we have four schools; the school for the deaf, the school for the blind, the school for the innocent, slow learners, autism children and the skill acquisition centre, we also run a soup kitchen where we provide one good free meal a day to young ones, people whose parents are either leprosy patients or discharged leprosy patients at Usiomo. The soup kitchen provides food six days a week, because we also provide food for some indigent patients in central Hospital Benin especially HIV patients. People that have been abandoned by their family, we give them one meal a day too. As we are talking now, we provide for a minimum of 318 persons a day.”

How did he come about Rhema Enterprise?He chuckles, after a moment and then adds, “it comes from my name and that of my wife’. I’m Richard from the first letter and my wife is Mary. We combined it to form Rhema. So, Rhema does two major things: the first is food processing among which you have, the bakery and the production of confectionaries. And we have a restaurant, Rhema Catering Services, which is the food aspect of it.  The other aspect is the engineering construction. We are into building and thermal installations. We had worked mainly for OMPADEC, NDDC and Delta State government.”

The idea of the business was solely his wife’s. “Rhema Enterprise Limited was and is still her brainchild, because she continues to tell me that if one wanted to be rich and remain so, you have to be in business, you have to be an employer of labour and employ hardworking persons and you will be comfortable,” he says.

Iyasere, who is very proud of what the bakery business has turned out to be, gives the secret behind Rhema. “First, the quality, and then the educational qualification of the proprietors. Before my wife went into bakery, she had a first degree. She also has a second degree and other than those degrees, she went to the Institute of Catering to study catering and baking,” he says.

He adds, “Rhema Bakery is the first in Benin, if not in Edo-Delta, that took bread from the bakery to the customers in vehicles, before other people joined. Instead of waiting for the distributors to come, we were taking the bread to them, to supermarkets, to petrol stations, travellers points to meet the would be customers and consumers and that marketing strategy with original and training we had in bakery has been the secret of our survival and growth today.”  

His assessment of the business environment? “The bakery industry in Nigeria is not different from other managerial businesses in the country, especially, those of us who relied on imported input. For example, about 15 months ago, a bag of floor was less than N6000, but now it is about N10,000, and so, we wanted to increase prices, but there is this price resistance by the masses. Because of the fall in the value of naira to other currencies, the cost of raw materials has been doubled,” Iyasere says.

He explains, “the new foreign exchange regime is affecting the process. I say that, because what they have done has not enhanced the value of the naira and other foreign currency. As we are talking today, the naira is hovering between N280 to N300 naira to a dollar, even in the official market. The black market rate is a lot more volatile. It is so, because we are not earning enough dollars as a nation. Our foreign earning has fallen so drastically. It is a matter of demand and supply, essentially, when you factor into the system, a situation where the consumer come first; and we are not even consuming what we produce. Over 80 per cent of what we consume we import. And as long as we rely on this importation, without producing, it will be difficult.

He says there is need to diversify the economy as government is promoting it. Iyasere argues, “before going to oil, it was agriculture. I don’t know whether oil is doom or boom. They are giving foreign exchange a new name, but the major problem why it has not done much in saving the naira is that CBN does not even have enough dollars to back what they want to do in order to stabilise the value of the naira. Our foreign exchange earning(s) has dropped drastically and this was confirmed by government recently when it said it would not be possible to implement all the projects in the current budget, because we don’t earn as much as we used to.”

At 70, Iyasere is still active, even in church activities. He confesses, “I have long realised that by working for God, you are working for yourself. You work for God, He also works for you.”  And he is got some real testimony a God’s work even in Oghara, Agbarha Otor his village, where he is building the St John’s Catholic Church in “appreciation of God’s favour upon my life.”

His age does not exactly reflect his overall gait. First his quest for knowledge is undiminishing, pushing him to earn a doctorate degree in business studies from the University of Benin in 2002 long after he had retired from Mandilas in 1988. His near permanent youthfulness is yet another trade mark. He explains: “It is the gift from God: a gift of young look, and this has been enhanced by my marriage to a good wife, who has been taking good care of me, very supportive and has helped me to grow in every sense. I have peace at home, and when you have peace at home, it reflects outside. I have long discovered that worries don’t solve any problem, rather, it creates more for you, so, and I never worry over anything. If I have any problem in the evening I put my knees down to pray to God. I believe that it is only God that solves problems for mankind, and after so much blessings from Him, I told myself… let me express it in our parlance, ‘I go select suffer when I go suffer, I no go suffer anyhow again’.”