Godwin Oyedokun, is the President, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), Lagos Chapter doubles as the Chief Executive Officer, OGE Professional Services Limited. With a vision to be the leading diversified and multi-discipline, educational and professional services provider of value in Nigeria and other countries across the world, Oyedokun in an interview with Ifeoma Okeke discussed germane issues in the financial sector in Nigeria as well as plans by OGE Professional Services Limited to help businesses grow in Nigeria.
What is your organizational profile?
We operate as a group with subsidiaries. OGE Professional Services Limited is a wholly owned indigenous company incorporated in 2011. Our main objective is to provide diversified and multidisciplinary professional and educational Services in Nigerian and other countries across the world. We offer a full range of professional services, based on our proven implementation methodology and expertise in helping our clients maximize the potential value of their business. It is in pursuance of our corporate vision and mission that we have continued to develop relevant training/workshops to fill the gap and continue to attract wider attention especially as they focus on significant opportunities for public and private investment and offer new business challenges for players with strong project finance focus.
OGE Business School is an educational but Limited Liability Company incorporated on May 18, 2017 under Nigeria Laws with registration Number RC 1414282 as a subsidiary of OGE Professional Services Ltd. The core responsibility is to organise both educational and professional training programmes of OGE Group of Companies. OGE Business School serves as the liaising centre for all affiliated educational and professional institutions of OGE Professional Services Ltd.
Our basic services include; Business & Financial Advisory Services; Forensic Accounting Services; Assurance & Accountancy Services; Internal Control Services; Management Adivsory Services; Human Resources Management.; Tax Services; Business Turn-around & Insolvency and Company Secretarial ship
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What specifically differentiates your company from competing companies?
We are not looking for government sponsorship we ready to use our resources. We want to show to government that they need not go abroad to hire people to do the jobs Nigerians can do effectively. The money the country is losing to expatriate can help organisations thrive in Nigeria and that will be more beneficial to our economy. There will be so many multiplier effects. You can’t understand the terrain of my house like I do. I can navigate my house without light. By hiring experts from abroad to investigate our way of life here, we are inviting wastage of resource. It is not their way of life so they won’t have the perfect understanding of how we operate. You must think like monkey, behave like monkey to catch monkey. Government needs to patronize businesses in Nigeria, not only our company. We are not saying they should give us free money, they should engage us. We have names to protect. And we will continue to protect our integrity. We can be better equipped if government is engaging us.
Cybercrime remained a recurring challenge for most businesses in Nigeria and other countries of the world, why is this so and how can Nigeria mitigate this problem?
This may remain on the high side as long as organisations use latest computerized equipment. Organisations only need to spend more in protecting their data to reduce their level of exposure to risks. Cybercrime is complex and not many people have the knowledge to deal with it. Organisations must have strong in house units that can provide shields for their operations, otherwise they will continue to face the risks. Hackers design programmes daily that can penetrate securities of organisations. In OGE, what we do is to educate Nigerians on the techniques of hackers. Cybercrime could be as simple as calling someone on phone but if you are not educated about how the criminals operate, one will fall victim. Though we are not a charity organisation, but we try as much as possible to drop at the doorstep of professionals, information that they need to work with and not fall pry. Let me stress that we need good laws that clearly spell out the punishment for people who defraud through cybercrime. We need to track perpetrators of cybercrimes. Companies should invest heavily on the security of their data, particularly those who have payment porters. Our financial institutions must not underrate the importance of secure platforms.
Crypto currency is being positioned as the future of money by some experts but others including the stakeholders in Nigeria are warning against the emerging frontier, saying it could increase cybercrime, what is your take?
I am the very wrong person to ask this question because of my view against the concept. Though as academician, yes, my part of life is to discuss such issue and provide argument but personally I will not want to venture into or encourage others to go into investing virtual currencies. This is not like telephone, it has to do with investment and because it has to do with investment, one needs to be very careful. The concept is good and I have heard so many people saying it’s the next place to go. I have heard people say that it’s the future of the world.
There is an expectation that virtual currency would do to commercial bank or banking system, what email did to normal postal service. But must Nigerians be the first to always venture into things like this?
The answer is no. In developed countries where it was developed, people are still skeptical. Let us watch and see and I believe even if this kind of currency would take over the world, it can’t be in the next 10 years. So within the next 10 years let’s continue to study it. The provider of this opportunity target Africa, especially Nigerian because they know some of us have this money, it may be another MMM. They could get your money and run away. I am not saying this is not okay, yes its increasing in value, of course every investor certainly would promise higher return.
There are other better ways to invest with limited risks. For instance treasury, the risk is for you to leave your house to the bank. Let’s say you invest N10 million and you know your rate and interest daily. At times you collect your interest upfront, if you are not working that’s enough for you to even survive doing nothing, somebody, who have N20 million, N30 million in this kind of investment, would know how much he is collecting every 30 or 90 days. Greediness is pushing a lot of Nigerians to what they should not do. We said we don’t even have money in Nigeria where are we getting money the money we are investing into schemes we are not sure of. Let’s invest in something that can develop our economy.
You have been consulting for organisations in the country coupled with your experience as an entrepreneur, what do you think are the major challenges confronting businesses in Nigeria?
Businesses in Nigeria will not continue to grow if there is no enabling environment. From our experience, there was a time we wanted to move to a particular place in Lagos and the floor we got was in millions of naira per annum and we still have to spend about N5 million to put the office in order excluding N500, 000 per month on utility. We need to pay staff and taxes among other expenses. Power is a major problem. The rate of call drop in Nigeria is discouraging. Why are we buying two lines in Nigeria? It is because of the inefficiency of either of the two. You don’t want to miss a business. You don’t want to miss your chances, so you need to have several of those lines so that if one doesn’t work, the other may work. We also don’t have statistic to work with. Some service provider will give NCC figure of their subscribers not knowing those same people subscribe on another. The cost of doing business is very high and no bank is ready to loan money to start-ups.
Where do you see your organisation in the next 5 years?
Our vision is to be the leading diversified and multi discipline educational and professional service of value. We are not restricting ourselves to Lagos, Nigeria or Africa. We want to be known globally. This is already happening. We have been consulting for companies outside of Nigeria and we have never been lagging behind. We have our directors across reputable universities across the country. We want to be a one-stop provider of services that people will reckon with. We want to have a footprint in every country of the world. We are determined and we would double our efforts.
