By Dayo Adesulu

Mekwuye Eric is the Ag Chief Executive Officer, HoReCaBB Mentors (HM). With his wealth of experience in hospitality business that span near two decades, he spoke on sundry issues bothering on hospitality education. In this exclusive interview with Vanguard, he disclosed how investment in hospitality education could boost our foreign reserves. Excerpts:

How may we know you

My name is Mekuye Eric, I have been around the industry for almost 20 years, I am a graduate of hospitality management, hotel and catering management. I am a fellow at the Association of Professional Chefs of Nigeria, certified  HSE professional, master certified food and beverage director, certified bartender and a restaurateur, a mentor at Tony Elumelu Foundation, I also do lecturing and training at other organizations.

Mekwuye Eric

There is this popular belief that when it comes to hospitality, Nigeria as a country is still lagging behind. Do you buy into that?

The hospitality industry has been battered for so long that people now see the employees of hospitality industry sector as common employers and the profession as common trade that has to be changed. We have our own ways of developing the work force, we have been doing this for a while and we see this achievements as what keeps us going.

Let us talk about one of the visions for setting up the HBS

Well, we want to be part of the world top five hospitality education school in the world and the way to go about that is simply to develop hospitality professionals through top notch effective training and release trained students to hospitality organizations so that the industry can boast of professional hands. As part of efforts to be a top notch hospitality organization, we have a structured model of supporting individuals aspiring for careers in the hospitality industry for skills needed for local and international practice.

In terms of hospitality services, most hotels still prefer consulting abroad, as a firm what’s your take on that?

For me, I don’t see that as something to worry about, the ratio is not significant. Contacting or contracting international or non-Nigerian hospitality firms, I don’t see that as something to worry about. What we have as significant is the use of individual expatriate like executive chef, GM, F and B manager etc. For a consulting firm we are doing well, and it would interest you that most of these new companies are international companies that patronize Nigerian consulting firms like us and the patronage we get is to support the efforts of their parent company.

HM has come a long way to contribute to the success of hospitality in Nigeria, What are the major achievements of HM over the years?

We consider ourselves as a movement. Years ago we saw a wide gap in West Africans, Not just Nigerians downplay the importance of hospitality, those of us who have developed love for the industry or what we do also gasp for approval.

Mind you, it is very difficult to see a hospitality practitioner certified professionally like it is obtainable in other fields like accounting, law, engineering and others. So, in order to bridge the gap we partnered with the Global Food Service institute (SUNY-GFI) at the state university of New York and we started representing them here in Nigeria.

Those affiliations authorized us to issue certifications for over 200 hospitality workforce from the Managing Director to the lowest level of hospitality hierarchy. We need to understand that this is not really about certification, but about exposure to best global standard of hospitality practice.

These certification programmes would help people to develop professional view of their job and help them productive in their service discharge to their respective employers as the bottom line is improved, more productivity and profit for organization.

We are very proud to have pioneered that area of hospitality and have consulted for companies from scratch. We take up additional responsibility to bring revolution to the hospitality business.

We are proud that we have been able to raise products of best global standard and practice in Hospitality Business School (HBS).

What are the other products or services of HM?

We stand on five pillars, starting from the consulting services which is very wide, it involves setting up food and beverage production plan, fast food, hotel and restaurants. We also do workforce training, customize training as per client need,  seminars and conferences, we present professional certificate of Global Food Service, New York State University and last is starting the hotel school, the first of its kind in Nigeria

What’s so unique about the HBS school?

Thank you for that question. I’m always glad to answer that question because we took our time to ask some series of questions, as we discovered that an average West African would take the next available flight to acquire world class hospitality skills in America or other developed nations. But we started and became the first world class hospitality school in West Africa as we expose our people with world class facilities and techniques, such that we can compete with any other hospitality practitioner around the world. They get trained by experts that have done tremendously well around the globe.

Hospitality Entrepreneurship Program is one of the gourmet/crux of our programmes which is specialised for those who want to become consultant and hospitality business owners. One of the mistakes people make is that they run business based on the fact that they just want to own business and most times don’t stand the test of time.

We carefully designed the program for students to be exposed to all aspects of entrepreneurship business and focus on the core management of hospitality business and sustainability of the business. We give our students opportunity to run this hotel that we are in as projects on different roles. This is to give them first time experience and to identify all factors that can make the business stand a test of time.

What are the structures put in place to ensure HBS stand a test of time?

We believe in simplicity and anything worth doing is worth doing well. So our faculty is made up of experts in the country and beyond.

How well can HBS certification compete with schools like London School of Hospitality Management? 

First, we don’t believe in competition because we believe we don’t have two HBS. We believe that you don’t need to seek it abroad. We have seen and analysed the hospitality schools abroad and we have gone the extra mile to ensure that we provide world class hospitality education and also the street wisdom. We speak the language of the street, industry and success.

How prepared is HBS to be part of the leading drivers of the hospitality industry?

We have done all that are needed to be done for now, but we know by tomorrow there are more to be done and we are ready to take on whatever needs to be done to ensure objective of building best hospitality professionals who would be exported to the world to earn Foreign Exchange for the country. We ha have a system of operation that includes professionals, facilitators, faculty, strategic partnerships.

I use this opportunity to commend Lagos State government for understanding the unique role of the private sector in education. I observed that the Ministry of Education understands that government alone cannot educate the populace, so the Ministry of Education Lagos State accredited us to ensure that our programmes meet world class standard. Also we have been endorsed by the oldest food service executive association in the world, which had been in existence since 1901, we have also been endorsed by the Association of Professional Chefs of Nigeria. We have direct membership to African Chef United, Food Services Institute in Florida, and we are getting endorsement and accreditation by the day. Our students learn from not just one man but from various professionals in and outside Nigeria and give them opportunities to be a member of some of these international organizations. We believe learning has a lot to do with psychology and what we do is to provide students with attires, basic professional tools which they can learn with and go with it after their programme.

We believe we have done a lot and we know there are still a lot to be done. The difference between a made in West Africa or professional and a foreign country is just foundation and finishing. We always instil in their psychic that they are the best.  We have also look at the plans of extensive programme to expose students to the source of the materials they use,  like going to farm to know how long a vegetable would sprout after planting. They also go for internship programme.

What are the challenges affecting your business?

As we are talking, we have been changing the power at intervals, that’s to tell you how epileptic it is. There is nothing you can do without power, you can’t thrive without light, power is everything.  Even God before he started his creation, he created light first. It’s funny that we don’t have light and they will still bring a lot of estimated bills.

Could you please tell us your CSR activities?

We believe the best employees are already employed and also we believe also that the ingenuity on the street should be taken care of to better the industry. As a company, we believe in taking responsibility rather than complain. We have a scholarship programme that has branches. We believe there are lot of persons that need help, but It’s painful that some people take undue advantage of charity initiatives. We have contacts of people who are angel sponsors who can take responsibility on sponsoring people. Meanwhile, we also have mechanisms of fishing out those that are deserving of that branch of scholarship programme.

We can even go further to communities to train youths on different skills needed and make them employable in the hospitality industry. What we believe is that after the entrepreneurship programme and we have people that have passed out from our training, we would get them employed. Because we have that needs in different services of hospitality practitioners that are already waiting for the first batch of trainees. We call on individuals also that would like to sponsor people for the scholarship programmes to do so, because this initiative will not only reduce unemployment but take of street menace.

What if you have opportunity to turn back the hands of time, what would that be?

I wouldn’t have wasted time at all trying other things, I would have gone straight into developing myself in hospitality. And this is why am always passionate talking about people of 20 years younger or people in secondary school.

Companies always complain about multiple taxation, what is your experience?

Taxation is never a problem because as long as you are involved in commerce, taxation is inevitable. However, the problem we have is that we have a situation where the federal government would come for tax, state would come, LGA would come and even the street touts popularly known as ‘area boys’  would also come for money tips. Government is supposed to be supporting businesses and not killing it with multiple taxation or unreasonable taxation. Imagine that a company would preserve about 45% of its revenue for paying tax,  how do that type of company grow?Where is the money to employ people? Commercial world should not bear the brunt of the unavailable social amenities, because we should not be taxed for drilling boreholes or creating power. We plead to government all over to help businesses and not tax companies going into extinction.