In the wake of a conflict in 1990, Chibueze Okoye, fled from Kano along with his parents back to the East. In 1993, he came to Lagos to serve someone under whose tutelage he learnt trading in electronics for five years.
His master set up business for him in 2003.
After trading in electronics for a few years, he veered into micro and small scale manufacturing in 2009. Today, Okoye, the Managing Director of Bueze Access, has four different product lines.
He started with activated carbon in 2009, and added carbon black few years later before he started producing Archer, an insecticide that is the company’s major income earner.
Going into manufacturing
I plan to narrow down to manufacturing only brisket by early next year. Importation cannot help Nigeria. That is why I veered into manufacturing. I left trading in 2003 and started producing since 2009. I started with activated carbon, later I added the carbon black and then insecticide.
I want to be an employer of labour and that’s where the future lies. Countries and entities that manufacture to meet people’s needs rule the world. We cannot get anywhere by being mere consumers. We have to manufacture or we remain at the mercy of others.
That has been the problem of this country, and the earlier our government and leaders realise this all important fact and shift focus to how to attract and encourage manufacturers the better.
We keep sending our children to school and they come out carrying files looking for jobs. If we don’t create jobs for them, where are they going to work? Who will employ all our children in and out of school? We may wake up one day and see all of them doing unimaginable things if we do not give boost to the manufacturing sector and assist the government to reduce the level of unemployment.
There are so many of our countrymen who have ideas for manufacturing looking for sponsorship or take off grant. But the government has no plans for such people. It is only in Nigeria that you have ideas and you can’t get sponsorship or take off grant to develop your ideas.
In other parts of the world, ideas rule. Once you have viable ideas, government helps you to establish and begin to manufacture if only to help and provide jobs to the jobless lot. But here the story is different.
Products on offer
We started with activated carbon, got from palm kernel. Water sachet and beverage manufacturers use it for purification. We also manufacture carbon black. It is processed out of condemned tyres that litter the streets of Lagos.
Companies that produce paints, slippers et cetera, use it as one of their materials to make it solid or black. We manufacture in small quantities because we do not have the machine that can manufacture in larger capacity yet.
We manufacture insecticide called Archer Insecticide. It is very active and the price is customer friendly. You apply it in the house and leave the house for about 20 to 30 minutes. It will remain active within seven days from the day of applying it.
It is not like other products you find in the market. It is a unique product.
Before the end of the first quarter of next year, we will commence the manufacturing of brisket. That is the fifth product we will be manufacturing. We use one factory to manufacture all these.
Flagship products
The insecticide and the activated carbon are our main stay for now. We supply these to companies.
Inspiration for manufacturing
I did not learn it in school. The inspiration came from God. I was into importation of electronics and other household wares but I realised that it will not help the country any bit.
Besides, during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, some of these imported products were outlawed and they became contraband. So, I decided to chart a new business direction that can add to the economic growth of the nation.
We began to look at the raw materials Nigeria has in abundance and which we do not have to import. All the products we manufacture are such that the raw materials are available in quantum, whether it is brisket, activated carbon, or carbon black.
All we need for these is get a good machine that can convert those raw materials to finished products.
Experience with Dunlop Nigeria
I took my product sample to Dunlop Nigeria some years ago. They asked if it was made in Nigeria or imported. They preferred one made in South Africa. So when they asked the question again, I told them that it was made in South Africa.
They asked me to give them the contact details of the company in South Africa and said they were going to be giving commission. That was after they had tested the product and were impressed with the quality.
I also went to another company that used to manufacture battery and they told me that they don’t buy Nigerian products because they were importing their own.
You see that the big industries we have here don’t like to patronise local industries, no matter the quality. That is why most of the products made in Nigeria put on foreign labels.
We produce activated carbon and take it to the market in Ojota, Lagos for sale. The companies that need it also come there to buy.
As I said, brisket is the product we are going to introduce into the Nigerian market. It is good for bakeries that waste money buying fire wood, and any other companies that make use of fire to power production lines.
It’s not only cheap in terms of cost but also environmentally friendly and healthier, as it does not generate carbon emissions that are harmful to human health.
You cannot get carbon emissions from brisket, it is smokeless yet burns harder than fire wood. We use saw dust, rice husk, and other waste materials like carton to manufacture it.
These raw materials are available in large quantities in Lagos and other parts of the country. Converting these raw materials to brisket follows a simple process of removing the moisture to about 12 or 8 per cent and transferring it to the machine that heats it into firewood. It is a simple technology.
The cost of the machine depends on capacity. There is a machine that can produce 250 pieces per hour and there is one that can produce 350 per hour. We are going for the one that can give us 350 pieces per hour.
We know that the demand is going to be high when we eventually introduce it into the market. Even in the European world, they use it during winter. That’s what they use to warm up the house because they consider it cheaper than the electric stove.
Bid for BoI credit
Early this year, we approached the Bank of Industry (BoI) for credit but the conditions they gave us were frightening so we decided to explore alternative sources of raising funds.
Both the drying and the pressing machines will cost us about N3 million. We have been able to save up the money and paid for the import. We are hoping to take delivery as soon as possible.
Once we take delivery and couple the machines, we commence production of brisket. That could be early next year. We can do the packaging ourselves for the start and later may go for the automatic packaging machine.
Experience in the past five years
There are bound to be challenges in a business environment where the government is irresponsible, does not provide anything, and is instead interested in taking away the little you have struggled to get.
You supply your own electricity, get your own water, and build your own factory. Sometimes, you also construct your access road to evacuate your products otherwise you get stuck. This has been our experience in the past five years.
There is nothing like electricity in my business location. We run on power generating sets daily. This has taken away the little profit we make after paying workers’ salaries. We must pay workers, we must not tell them stories.
There are lots of challenges. We only hope the government can sort out these challenges soon. If only the government can provide manufacturers a location with 24 hours of uninterrupted power supply, we can plough the money wasted on energy generation into other useful ventures for expansion and growth and subsequent employment generation.
We have got a ready market. All we need is stable electricity, good roads, and some tax free incentives. We will expand and employ more workers. We have workers and some others on temporary arrangement.
