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Chukwuemeka Ndu, managing director/CEO, C&I Leasing plc, in this interview with KELECHI EWUZIE sees revamped education system and organisation strategies as pivotal to effective competition. Excerpt:
Career path
I qualified as an accountant with PriceWaterhouse now PriceWaterhouseCoopers. In the course of my career progression, I worked for the Ibru Group, as group finance manager of the Fishing Group and Ventures & Trusts Ltd, a venture capital company, as an investment executive.
Prior to establishing C&I with a group of investors in 1991, I served as the chairman of the shipping and marine services sub-committee of the National Content Consultative Forum set up by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (National Content Division) to promote indigenous content in the Nigerian oil & gas industry.
Motivation
My motivation in life is really to leave the world a better place than I met it. I also like to impact the lives of the people I meet so that in future, they would remember me with some good memories rather than bad ones.
However, this has not always been possible because sometimes as part of doing or running a business, you have to make some decisions which people would not always agree with.
In all of this, I have learnt to bring fairness in decisions taking knowing that nobody is perfect, the whole idea behind this would be to ensure that more people would be pleased and be positively impacted than those that would be negatively impacted by such decisions.
Leadership style
I think it is a bit more participatory than dictatorial because I believe that if people don’t make mistakes, they don’t learn. I believe that a lot of time, you need to allow your employees express themselves and allow them get meaningfully engaged, make their mistakes and learn from them.
In some cases, I have come to experience that as part of that learning process for workers, they re-educate you on a new perspective needed to do things.
Company
C & I Leasing plc was incorporated in 1990 as a limited liability company. Licensed by the Central bank of Nigeria to offer operating and finance leases and other ancillary services, the Company commenced full operations in 1991.
We operate in diverse business segment and in some of them, we are leaders while in others, we are among the top leaders. Over the next 12 months, what we are trying to do is to refocus the business to meet up with market leaders and explore areas where we see significant potentials for growth.
Essentially, we are market leaders in the fleet management business where we probably run one of the largest outsourced fleet. Operating in 36 states of the federation with almost 2,000 vehicles that operates on a day by day basis in Nigeria and Ghana.
In C & I Leasing, a lot of our growth has come from listening to our customers. Our service offerings are customer driven and it solely depends on what the customers are saying and the things we can do to meet those customers’ needs.
In the course of our interaction with customers, we don’t sell a one-size-fits-all solution to all customers; rather we try to work with each client to meet the identified needs.
Dealing with competition
I think competition is good for business generally because without competition, businesses start to die. Fair competition is very good for any business in Nigeria and globally.
Secondly, I believe it is a critical thing for business to be in a competitive world because that way, they get the ability to innovate and adapt to those challenges.
Staff motivation
I motivate my staff by setting goals and endeavour to be a good model, hoping that through this a lot of employees would be inspired to be better. The objective for any employer really should be that his or her employees be better placed to perform optimally at what they do.
Take on shortfall in quality talents
Shortfall in qualify talents in organisation is one of the constraints that we face as employers and this is largely because our education system has taken a battering over the decades not just at university level but at every other level.
This is not a problem that is peculiar to large businesses alone; we equally find the same level of poor skilled work among artisans in Nigeria. This is indeed a serious issue. The only way out this situation for Nigeria is to go back to the basis and revamp the education system.
It is sad to observe that Nigerian governments have a penchant for abdicating their responsibility and expecting the private sector to do it. It is very important to state for the purpose of clarity that private organisations don’t run schools neither do they dictate school policy. So it is not the job of the private or corporate organisations to provide education.
Private organisations can only play a supportive role in situation like the one we are in right now, but the primary responsibility for educational policy and implementation is that of the Nigerian government and the ministry of education.
So they can’t transfer that responsibility to private sector. It can’t work because the private sector’s interest is actually in getting specialised skills that are tailored to their businesses.
Today, the inability to get the right talents is critical in the sense that even the basic skills are not there. We have a sad case where you find a student in secondary school who cannot read. So how does that become the responsibility of the private organisations? The government has to undertake their responsibility.
For us at C & I leasing, training is a continuous process because we believe that the moment you stop to learn, you start to die. Over the years, we have invested considerable funds in both internal and external on the job training and mentoring for employees.
Challenges
The first challenge is power. There are a lot of things you would take for granted if you have power. The second challenge is security. We operate a business where we rent cars but a lot of the time, we can’t do self car rental.
We equally operate a business where the company provides financial leases for companies and since the judicial system is a problem, if somebody defaults; to get money back is a major challenge. In all, there are lots of challenges that militate against the kind of businesses we operate in the country, but we will keep dialoguing with government because we know it is their primary responsibility to create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive in Nigeria.
Work and family balance
The idea of work life balance is a bit of a challenge because the two issues are competing needs, but it is important to get your priorities right. There is a saying that what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his family? So you have to get the balance right.
There are different scenarios when it comes to work and family balance; I believe that whatever works for each individual one should do. I also believe that at every point in time, one need to recognise his or her responsibility to the family. There is no point giving birth to children if you won’t have the time to teach and mentor them.
You need to constantly recognise that your family has needs. You should not abdicate your responsibility as a husband or as a father because you are working in an office.
Prospect
In the next five years, I would like to see C & I Leasing as a distinct market leader in the segment of the industry that we choose to focus on.
