Ayo Kuyebi is the Chief Executive Officer of GMH Luxury and member of a 7-man technical committee inaugurated by the Lagos State government to probe the collapse of a building under construction in Banana Island. In this interview, Kuyebi shares insight on his transition from an employee to establishing a thriving real estate firm with prominent projects located in Ikoyi, Victoria Island, Lekki, and Gbagada among others. He also speaks on why there is a high rate of building collapse in Nigeria, saying Nigerians should stop building on water channels.
How were you able to carve a niche for yourself in this highly competitive sector?
It’s by actually placing a premium on experience. As you know, there is a popular saying that the level of your training will determine the level of your reign. In 2006, I was given the opportunity to work in the bank as a teller but I rejected the offer. Instead, I joined an engineering firm for training purposes. I was not placed on any salary, but I walked away from a job where they would have been paying me over N200,000 at that time. For me, it’s all about experience, because I know exactly what I wanted to achieve.
As a young engineer , all I set out to achieve was to be one of the best to be reckoned with in the industry. To be very candid, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon so I have to survive. I have been learning this since I was nine years.What I did differently was that, in the company, I was working then, they were training me on how to design, and there was a tutorial close to the office. So in the evening when I closed by 5 pm, I will go to the tutorial to do two hours that they would paid me N150 per hour and that was what I used to sustain myself couple with the little allowance I was getting from home.
All that you have said on career growth, are they still relevant for today’s youth?
The problem is that some people have talent with good attitudes while some have good attitudes without talent. It’s a big problem for employers. Even the graduates that are being turned out yearly, are they employable? You still have to teleguide them to perform their duties. I think it is now our culture, mental laziness and sense of entitlement. When I was growing up due to the nature of my background I did not expect anything from anyone. Anything that I cannot get on my own, I faced the music.
I know what it takes to climb that pedestal. Anything I must get, I must earn it and go into self development, I have worked on several projects pro-bono because the first thing is to deliver value then, I can now tell you what I am going to take. Majority of the time you will be cheated, but one thing stands out, the experience you have garnered during the process, cannot be taken away from you. To me delayed gratification is access to experience, because the quality of materials that you will be exposed to when you work in Lekki is not the same as when you work in Alimosho or when you work somewhere in Ogun State.
With the spate of building collapse in Lagos and Nigeria, infiltration of developers and the cost of building materials, you have been able to distinguish yourself, what is your secret?
I will tell you this, have I failed before? I will say yes, because failure inspires winners and deceives losers. In my career progression, I suffered fatal failure where I lost a lot of money. I had to demolish 11 units of terrace houses in Magodo due to construction on the major canal. The canal lane was blocked, if you know Magodo and Magodo brooks, what is separating the two, is a canal. Some people said it’s land and they blocked the canal and our project is at the receiving end. Because I know the force of nature, how water behaves, we had an option whether to pull down the building or to ensure the canal stays. And since we don’t have control over the canal, we pulled down the buildings. In the process, we lost about N370million. We lost the money but none of our investors lost because we relocated some and refunded others. Truth hurts, but we are not going to deliver a project that cannot stand a test of time. We will not pass on a project that would not last, we would rather cancel it.
In the cause of our eight years of running, we have had to cancel two projects as a result of environmental and foundation failures. These are the reasons we have incessant collapse of buildings because they are trying to patch it up and mend it. Nobody is going to give you what they don’t have. As far as building collapses are concerned, if you look at the collapse in recent times, it follows the same pattern. Gone are those days that there was housing collapse only in the rainy season, now we have multiple structure housing collapse. It’s the high level of quacks allowed into the building profession that is bringing about the collapse. An accountant wants to be an engineer.
Some people would have sold the structure instead of pulling it down.
Trust has taken us this far, it has paid off. How can you grow from N570,000 in 2010 to having a portfolio of over N30 billion in 13 years? That can only happen with trust and impeccable reputation. It has to be on the foundation of empathy. For instance, in 2020 I started a project; COVID-19 came in, naira devaluation and then Inflation. When I finished, I went back to the subscribers, I told them there is no way what you previously paid could finish this project. I added a certain percentage based on the economic realities and they paid, because we didn’t cut corners.
On the issue of money laundering being associated with real estate and Nigeria’s housing deficit, what is the way forward?
Combating corruption and money laundering through real estate is a complex system.
What we do is to ensure that we receive money through appropriate channels. If you want to buy into our project you have to pay through the legal and transparent manner. With us there are legal ways of making payment, anything after that we will not involve. Going into housing deficit, the gap is huge, we have seen what India was able to do in 2017 to 2022 they were able to deliver over 17 million housing units and how did they do it, by giving a subsidized loans to their citizens, the same thing was done in Brazil in 2009, even the same was done in South Africa.
Source | Vanguard
