By  Sunny Ikhioya

IT is said that if you are to embark on a journey to the unknown, you must follow the person that knows the way. There is nothing that is new in life, everything has a precedence or foundation that it is built upon. Success does not depend on raw strength or basic intelligence, neither is it given on a platter of gold. It is earned through hard work, resilience, perseverance, connectivity, humility, amongst other factors. 

Today has become an annual ritual for Dr Leemon Ikpea, his family and friends to celebrate his coming to mother earth and reflect on his scorecards. Instead of engaging in jejune things, I will want to use the opportunity to engage us with simple nuggets that have made Dr Ikpea what he is today and why he is so admired by people, hoping that not a few will be inspired to follow in his footsteps.

What will make a man abandon his lucrative multinational job, with all the perks of office, resign to start his own business from ground zero, with all the attendant risks and obstacles, in the way of doing business in Nigeria? 

The answer is in the management of goals. For those familiar with the goal-setting process, achieving a goal is not the end of it all, you set continuous standards of attainment, each with its own demands, and that is why some people define success as a continuous achievement of goals and objectives. So, Dr Ikpea has got to that point as a career man, where he must set another goal for himself.

He has learnt his job very well from international experts; he has mastered his craft and felt comfortable to take the plunge as an entrepreneur. What does this tell us? You do not rush to be on your own when you have not learnt the basics of the business. So many people are impatient; they think their “smartness“ alone is all that is required to succeed in life and by the time they go out there, they are surprised at the enormity of the challenges that they face. 

When you take your time to master your craft, with purity of heart and good intentions, you will succeed. What will make an expatriate boss to leave everything in your care – cash, property, everything? The answer is integrity. At a very early age, in his late teens, he was assisting an expatriate boss in an office located offshore; the boss would let him have access to the safe where huge cash were kept, leaving everything in his care, thinking that the young Leemon would help himself with some of the cash in his possession.

But to the surprise of the boss, Leemon did not seem to have interest in such things. The American billionaire, Warren Buffett, is noted for the following quotes: “In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities- integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you”.

He went further: “Everyone here has the intelligence and energy  – you wouldn’t be here otherwise. But the integrity is up to you”. At that young age, Leemon had already imbued in him the virtues of integrity and the reward for this will follow him all through his working career. Suddenly, his unblemished reputation began to circulate round the industry and other oil companies began to take interest in him. Throughout his working career, Leemon did not go out of his way to apply or look for a job; he was always head-hunted, with referrals from one expatriate boss to another and coincidentally, they became his first client when he branched out to begin his own business. 

Related to integrity is the position of trust and reliability: anyone that has done real business in this country will tell you that our situation is peculiar; you cannot guarantee anything as governments come and go, policies change, the business entrepreneur and the ordinary citizens bear the brunt of this. That was the situation with Leemon and Lee Engineering, when he got what he thought was a big contract from oil giant, Shell. He was very happy and started executing the contract in exuberant mood. As the job progressed, he came to realise that the amount quoted to do the job would not carry it to its completion and there was no room to review the award price. He was in a dilemma, knowing that the losses he would incur ran into millions of naira.

It was a test case for him as a businessman and also for the company he had founded. He opted for a difficult option: he sourced for the money and delivered the job to his client at a very huge deficit. But, that was the path destined for him by fate, that singular sacrifice of his opened up the way for bigger jobs from the same client and other multinationals. They saw him as a man that you can rely on in business, a person that you can trust to deliver when he has given his word. Today, the company he founded has delivered on so many important projects to big clients, both government and private sectors. 

Their works traverse the length and breadth of the country in construction. What are we saying here? Integrity, trust, honesty and reliability pays. In addition to these is good human relationship. Leemon is someone who takes family, friendship and business relationships seriously; he tries so much not to hurt people. We once travelled together and were treated to a very sumptuous oriental breakfast meal by our host.

Unfortunately, he is not the type that eats everything; he is very choosy with his meals. But here we have in front of us, a 25-course breakfast meal staring at us. He couldn’t eat, but occupied himself with drinking tea and picking at the food in bits, giving the host the impression that the food was delicious. In fact, he instructed us to keep praising the meal and the host for a beautiful breakfast. As soon as we left the host, we had to hurry straight to the hotel to take our regular meal; that’s him, never likes to see people unhappy. 

He has made brothers, friends and staff partners in his business and has not spared any effort to see that his children get the best of education, both within and outside the country. The awards keep coming for him, the latest being the Officer of the Order of the Niger, OON, bestowed on him by the Federal Government. Once you have been blessed to impact lives, please do it.

Leemon has a foundation that has trained over 120 doctors and engineers combined, set up a factory that will add to the local content capacity of our oil and gas industry. The lessons are legion and we keep praying to have more of his type in the country to help move the nation to another level. A believer in local content engineering is a lover of this nation. We will continue to ask for the grace of the Almighty God to be with him, as he marks another birthday anniversary. 

*Ikhioya, wrote via  http://www.southsouthecho.com