Being the Corporate Affairs/Media Manager of Ilaji Hotels and Sports Resort has brought me in contact with the high and the mighty, business executives, students, groups, etcetera, who have had occasion to visit the resort and be filled with wonder. Their astonishment stemmed from the enormity of the up-to-the-minute Ilaji Resort facilities that are sitting on a 200-acre space. Their curiosity is almost always rolled into one question: who is the brains behind this fifth wonder of the world? And as soon as they realize that Chief (Engr.) Dotun Sanusi, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, a petroleum engineer, is the architect of all this, the looks in their eyes betrayed their wonderment. On several occasions, you would hear them use the words ‘no wonder’ (that must have been it). To the majority of them, it only takes a person who deals in the black gold business to deploy the kind of capital required to establish Ilaji Hotels and Sports Resort which, by all standards, is one of the fastest growing companies in Nigeria today.
Sometimes I wonder why people would attribute the successful establishment of a unique product like Ilaji Resort to being in oil and gas business alone, forgetting the fact that Nigeria can boast several thousands of oil and gas businessmen who could not impact their immediate environments, let alone leave theirfootprints in the sands of time. Majority of them may have fat bank accounts but what to do with such wealth, they have no idea, and even when they do have an idea, it is either they have several mega petrol stations (to them an easy means of quick returns on their investment) or stashing the cash in foreign bank accounts where it is used to run the economies of such countries to the detriment of Nigeria and Nigerians.
There are several countries who have earned hundreds of billions of dollars through the exploration of oil and gas. Some of them like Nigeria have gone from good to worse. The evil that free money does to its beneficiaries is that the moment they have access to it, the first thing it does is to kill their initiatives. The rush of the money automatically stifles their creative thinking such that they only see the gains of the moment, get lost in the fantasy of the present by wiping of the pains of yesterday and end up being consumed by the challenges of tomorrow. How many of the oil producing countries have been able to use the proceeds from the black gold business to transform drastically their country? I only know of Dubai.
To some of us who have had the opportunity of being close to Chief Dotun Sanusi, we have come to realise that he is a genius. If Chief Dotun Sanusi had pursued a career in academics, he would have become a professor within a short period because he would have come up with groundbreaking works which would have left the academic community no choice but to quicken his ascendancy to the zenith. Chief Sanusi is the one that will discuss hundreds of points without putting them any of them down and he would not forget any of the points he intends to discuss. The establishment of Ilaji Resort at the most backward local government in Oyo State before 2016 boils down to his ingenuity than availability of lands. A business man of his calibre who is hell bent to establish such a business enterprise would have opted a location along Lagos-Ibadan Express way. The nearness to Lagos- richest and most populated city in West-Africa- would have been seen as a strategic and plausible business decision. But to Mogaji Olugbade Family, that would have been too an easy decision for his rich mind to opt for.
He once said to me one day, “when I see people saying that they are successful simply because they follow a particular modeldeveloped by someone else, I laugh. How do you want to prove to me that you have something upstairs if you work in a multi-national organisation where everything has been spelt out. In such companies, the structures, the strategy, the system all have been documented. Such employees only need to follow the laid down procedures’. He continued, ‘to me, I only respect the brain that builds from the scratch, he concluded by saying that, ‘building something out of nothing is what makes an ingenious mind’. It was on this day, that I stopped wondering how his mind works. Chief Dotun Sanusi’s brain is quite different from an average brilliant mind. His is the type that constantly looks for a daunting task to solve. He has such an ingenious mind that easily breaks down what is seen as a challenge by an average mind. Today, most of the concept that fetches us money at Ilaji Resort was conceived by him, He sees far beyond what every of his employees could see such that when he asked something to be put in place, in which we initially ponder about the workability of such move but having made instant success out of them, we have come to realise that the person we are dealing with operates (business wise) in another realm and as such we have come to respect his decisions.
During the opening stage of Ilaji Resort, some of his multi-billionaire friends wondered why ‘Dotun’ as they fondly call him would locate such a beautiful idea in a place like Akanran. A community which as at then did not have electricity supply for about 12 years. The roads were deserted to the point that it would take a blaring of the commercial drivers’ horn to disperse the goats who had found a safe haven on the tarred part of the road. This showed the volume of vehicles that plied the Odeyale-Akanran road such that the goats has made the road their convenient points for rest. The fairly busy part- Amuloko-Odeyale road- was a death trap judging from the incessant accident recorded at the dreaded Oke-Eleshin part. All that has changed now. The axis has become a mecca of sorts for tourists, fun seekers, religious bodies, sports men and women, corporate bodies, undergraduates, schools have made Ilaji Resort their number one recreation facility.
The accuracy of his thoughts is such that if our chairman observes you for couple of minutes, he can predict with 90 percent accuracy what you are capable of. At Ilaji Resort, the total number of persons who work (directly or indirectly) at a given period can’t be less than 300 yet he knows everyone, including the quantity and quality of their contributions. He has such an amazing mind that has compartmentalised everyone. A colleague of mine who always regards Ilaji as a big brand wasonce surprised to learn that at Ilaji Resort, we always have full occupancy every weekend (our peak period is Friday to Sunday), considering the fact that we have no less than 180 rooms. According to him, his rating of Ilaji Resort as a big brand is solely based on its big structures and not on its income generation capability. Ilaji Resort today is on the march tobecoming transformed into Ilaji Group. With his ingenuity, our Chairman has, within a few years of operation, positioned Ilaji Resort to initially become one of the fastest growing hospitality outfit and while we are still basking in the euphoria of this new status he has re-engineered Ilaji Resort to become Ilaji Group. This unrivalled ascendancy has made Ilaji Resort to give birth to Ilaji Travels and Tours Agency and Ilaji FM Radio Station both of which are just a tip of the iceberg as other ‘babies’ will join them any moment, after all Richard Branson has once said “business opportunities are like buses, there is always another one coming”.
I will conclude this article with words of James Allen with which he aptly described mind and its functionality: “Mind is the master power that moulds and makes, and man is mind, and evermore he takes the tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills, brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills. He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass. Environment is but his looking-glass.”
It is on this note I will join other well-meaning people across the globe to wish our Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Chief Dotun Sanusi, the Otun-Apesin Ola of Ibadanland, Mogaji of Olugbade Family and South-West Pillar of Sports, a happy birthday.
