Yomi Badejo-Okusanya stands out as a PR guru with many years of sterling performance under his belt. He has style too, writes OLUMIDE IYANDA
When he turned 50 in December 24, 2012, Yomi Badejo-Okusanya could not think of a better way to celebrate than with a thanksgiving service. So, to Grace Assembly, Oregun Ikeja, he gathered eminent personalities from Lagos and beyond. For the Managing Director of CMC Connect, a Lagos-based public relations (PR) company, there was a lot to look back and be grateful for.
Present to celebrate with the stylish perception manager, popularly known as YBO, and his family were wife of the Lagos State Governor, Abimbola Fashola; Professor Konyi Ajayi, Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Lolu Akinwunmi and the wives of Oba Adedapo Tejuosho, one of whom is Badejo-Okusanya’s sister, Bisi.
Well represented too were professional bodies like the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN) and the African Public Relations Association (APRA).
Speaker after speaker eulogised the man who has contributed more than his fair share to shaping the PR business in Nigeria. They recount their experience with the man who stands out from the crowd as a consummate professional and power dresser. Senior Pastor of Grace Assembly, Pastor Femi Paul, reminded the celebrant that God did not only spare his life to see the golden age; he also placed him in an enviable position in life.
It was in recognition of that position that the husband of Oyinkan Badejo-Okusanya and father of Kitan organised colloquium on January 8, 2013 at the Agip Recital Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan Lagos, with the topic ‘Managing Nigeria’s Image: Whose Responsibility?’.
Almost two years after that thanksgiving, YBO is still as innovative and dandy as he was when he founded CMC 22 years ago. The History graduate of the University of Benin (UNIBEN) still drives his business and the people around him with the same passion he did when he left CT&A in 1992 to launch out on his own.
YBO has travelled the high and low road to success. Born into a very comfortable family, things took an unexpected turn when his father died while he was barely nine years old. The senior Badejo-Okusanya, whose Badejo Sounds Studio produced legends like Victor Olaiya, Dele Ojo, Yusuf Olatunji and Bobby Benson, left behind a full-time housewife and, like YBO said in an interview published in 2013, “Things were no longer the way they used to be; we could not manage the business.”
The family started having challenges and had to move out of its home in GRA, Ikeja for a humble apartment in Ilupeju. In all of that, he was able to finish from the prestigious Igbobi College, Lagos, proceeded to UNIBEN and began a career that today sees him sit atop easily one of the most recognised and respected PR firms in Nigeria.
CMC Connect was born with a clear vision of delivering excellent values. That is what they have delivered to clients like Samsung, International Monetary Fund (IMF), ASO Savings & Loans Plc, MasterCard, Nigerian Breweries Plc, Virgin Group, British American Tobacco (BAT), Hewlett Packard (HP), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Guinness Nigeria Plc among others.
At 52 and with investment in a number of other businesses, YBO says: “I am still very much an integral part of here (CMC). I still drive a lot of things, although a lot of responsibilities have been devolved.”
The organisation, he says, “is going through a restructuring process, and driving that restructuring takes a bit of my time. We are dropping the average age of the people we engage significantly and the essence is to make room for succession.”
Talking about the inevitability of handing the day-to-day running of the business over to someone else, he is quick to say: “I don’t have a fear of succession. People say it is about finding the competent person, but I say it is the structure. Where there is structure and process, it is easier to put the succession in place. That is what we have done at CMC.”
Unlike some firms who do not do business with the public sector because of the largely unstructured nature of government activities, the CMC boss is proud that “we have been at this for a while and have evolved our strategy. That helps to deal with some players in the public sector who are not as structured as you will find in the private environment. We recognise the challenges and try to work around them. That’s what makes our business of our standing what it is.”
That strategy sure is working. It is that strategy of excellence that has seen him serve as chairman of NIPR, Lagos chapter, and secretary-general of APRA among others. His election as chief scribe of APRA, which is the umbrella organisation for all national PR bodies and practitioners on the African continent took place at the 24th Annual General Conference of the association held in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2012.
His father might not have left him a treasure chest, but Badejo-Okusanya is proud that “one of the good things my parents left for me is the name. The pedigree was quite strong. Wherever I walk into, in most cases I got instant recognition.” That also came with its challenges “because people thought that you had. They often thought you didn’t have the kind of problems you know you had.”
The place where CMC operates from in GRA, Ikeja, is called Bridge House. That is so because they are in a business that takes people across an expanse. “We take people from ignorance to knowledge, misconception to right conception. The bridge therefore became to us a metaphor. A representation of what we do.”
He is, however, quick to admit that “PR practice in Nigeria has not gotten the recognition it deserves. We ourselves don’t take ourselves seriously. We are not as consistent, focused and result-driven as we should be. If we desire respectability, we must let people know what we stand for and what we do not stand for. We are opinion-moulders as PR practitioners and the minute we fail to mould opinion, we have failed at everything. We are influencers. We should influence. We have failed to mould critical opinions about ourselves and what we stand for.”
One of his wishes is to use his position, in collaboration with others, to do more for the profession as they have done for other businesses they promote. That way, he will have more to be thankful for the next time he gathers people together to celebrate a milestone.
