Remi Olumuyiwa

People were very amazed that when Ebola broke in Sierra Leone, your company stayed behind! Many companies pulled out. Can you tell us what are the compelling reasons?

Yes. Ebola. Thank you very much, that’s a very insightful question. I will say we believe in the country. We want to believe we share in the burdens of the country at that time, they may be business people, we also are business people wearing the same shoes with the Sierra Leoneans. If you will recall, Nigeria was a major player in Sierra Leone when the war was waging. Nigeria, I would say, decided the cause of the war, I would say Nigeria with other countries from the West, brought that war to an end so the little we can do is to identify with the country at that time. We had a meeting and we agreed amongst ourselves that we were not going to pull out, the Chinese pulled out, very many companies pulled out, all of them left the country but we stayed behind, we made sure we continued with the work and we have gone beyond that. What we did at that time was to provide services especially for Medicine San Frontier MSF, where we deployed our equipments. You know, if we are going to charge them for the work we have done, it is worth over 300,000 dollars. So we did this gratis.

We cleared the site for them, you would see we deployed our graders, our dump trucks and all of that, we did not charge a dime for all of that. That was our own Corporate Social Responsibility for that country and apart from that they called companies to give money and we gave a handsome money towards Ebola. We supported that project, we supported the government in that project and any time they call on us to do anything we are quick to do it because we see ourselves as one in that country and we share the burdens and pains of that country.

Maybe when you wanted to start your company, you looked at the whole Africa, and you said I am going to Sierra Leone, why Sierra Leone and not Nigeria or South Africa?

Let me say again that, can I use the word divine direction? I believe we were directed to go there. And that’s why maybe we are experiencing what we are experiencing today and we are still going up. We are going to get better and we will grow big, bigger, biggest in Africa.