Adekunle Adebiyi: The Sales Guru Who Has Impacted Nigeria’s Telecommunications Industry
‘Sales is Sales’, Adekunle Adebiyi said confidently, with a tinge of assurance that only comes from decades of experience, in response to my question asking him how he transitioned from selling animal medication to being a sales and distribution executive in three telecommunications companies in Nigeria for over 20 years. “The products might be different but the skills remain the same. If you can sell, you can sell anything to anyone worldwide. I know this because I have done and still doing that.
Adebiyi was not wrong. I had checked his resume ahead of our conversation. I was highly impressed with the wealth of experience he has garnered and his immeasurable contribution to the Nigerian communication sector spanning over 20 years. From being a sales services officer at Pfizer, a pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation to leaving indelible marks at Econet, Visafone and finally, MTN Nigeria before eventually joining Itex. If there was anyone that could tell the story of Nigeria’s telecommunications evolution from a first-hand perspective, it was Adebiyi. But I was not only interested in what he has done over the years. I wanted to know how he had done it and what has shaped his life over the years.
What I thought would be a 25 minutes conversation extended to precisely one hour and 30 minutes, an exposé that shone the light on Adebiyi growing up, his family, education, work, philanthropy and outlook on life. It all began in a small town called Ilaro in Ogun state
Early Life and Education
Adekunle Adebiyi was born in Ilaro, a peaceful town which is about 50km from Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital. Famed for its arable land, many of the inhabitants are still farmers, a practice that dates back to the pre-colonial period. The timber industry is also huge due to the thick forest. It was through this terrain that Adebiyi had to navigate his way to Nawairudeen primary school where he had his elementary education. The 11th of 12 children, Adebiyi attended Baptist High school and Anglican Grammar School both in Ilaro. He completed his secondary school education in 1985 before proceeding to the Obafemi Awolowo University Ile Ife in 1986.
Adebiyi’s grandfather was the king of Isaga-Orile in Abeokuta North local government until his death in 1979. Born into a polygamous family of 15, he was the 11th child of 12 children but the death of his younger brother in 2007 made him the youngest child.
Two enduring legacies that Adebiyi experienced growing up were going to school and farming. All the children were expected to help their parents on the farm, especially during the holidays and so young Adebiyi would join his siblings in their family farmlands weeding the grass, harvesting cassava and tending to the palm trees which was the major cash crop.
“I did not like the tough manual work we did on the farm”, Adebiyi recalled. “It was not a mechanised kind of farming and so it was difficult but we had no choice. If we were not in school, we were on the farm”
Even in school, farming and agriculture were incorporated into the school curriculum and so every student was mandated to participate in the work on the school farm. Adebiyi remembered fondly that the then-head of state, General Olusegun Obasanjo once visited the school farm as a mark of commendation for how the school had embraced farming and embedded it into its curriculum. It was the period the Obasanjo regime initiated the Operation Feed the Nation in 1976. The project was a national agricultural extension and mobilisation programme targeted at reaching self-sufficiency in food crop production and inspiring a new generation to return to farming. President Muhammadu Buhari when he was elected in 2015 also echoed a similar sentiment in the face of rising food insecurity and inflation.
The school motto was “There is money in soil; go for it”, a mantra that resonated with its curriculum of encouraging students to make agriculture a part of their learning.
Adebiyi’s mother was a trader who owned a small kiosk and he would visit her in the place where she sold farm produce and household items. But it was in school that Adebiyi found joy walking 20 kilometres with other students from Leslie road to Baptist High School in Ilaro.
“I knew education was an escape out of manual labour and poverty for me”, Adebiyi said. His elder brother, Nafiu Adebiyi, was someone he and the younger ones looked up to and he influenced their dreams of going to the university. He was a brilliant student who would ultimately become a Permanent secretary at the Ministry of Urban and Physical Planning in Ogun State.
“I was looking forward to going to a college of education after secondary school and ultimately becoming a school principal because they were very prestigious. Another profession that interested me was being a customs official because we saw a lot of them around”, Adebiyi said.
Adebiyi was on the verge of attending the College of Education in Ijebu-Ode after getting his secondary school leaving certificate when his brother who was schooling at the University of Ife came home on holiday and found out his plans. He cancelled the plan and instead bought the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board form, which is the exam for those intending to go to the university and filled it, selecting animal science as the course Adebiyi should study, assuring him that he would have several job opportunities after graduating than going to a college of education.
“I passed the exam in my first sitting and entered the UNIFE as it was called then in 1986. By the time I graduated in 1991, the name had been changed to Obafemi Awolowo University.”
The institution’s name was changed by the military regime of Ibrahim Babangida in 1987 in honour of the first premier of the Western Region who championed free education in the southwest.
After his degree, Adebiyi was posted to Adamawa for his mandatory National Youth Service Corps in 1992. He taught agriculture at Army Day secondary school in Yola, the state capital for one year before returning in 1993.
From Animal science to Telecommunication
Adebiyi’s journey from animal science to becoming a significant contributor to the growth of telecommunication in Nigeria is a testament to his grit and preparedness.
Shortly after his NYSC in 1993, Adebiyi moved to Lagos to live with his immediate elder brother, Yinka Adebiyi who was then a school teacher and staying in a one-room apartment in the Ikorodu area of the state. He told Adebiyi that he heard about an employment opportunity at Pfizer, an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation in Lagos and urged him to try it out.
“The interview process was rigorous but transparent”, Adebiyi said, “But I ultimately got the job as a sales services officer at Pfizer product PLC.”
Adebiyi recalled that it was one of the trying times of his life. The tenement apartment he stayed with his brother meant that they had to share the kitchen and toilet with other tenants. As a new employee, he did not have enough money to facilitate transportation from Ikororodu to Henry Carr in Ikeja where the office was located so he devised a method. He would take public transport from Ikorodu to Ketu and from Ketu to Ikeja before walking from there to the office.
“I was excited about my first job so I did not mind. I would still get to work before other people because I knew what I went through before getting the job.”
Adebiyi worked in the animal health department of Pfizer because of his background in animal science but from then on, he set his eyes on becoming a sales representative. It took him four years to achieve this when in 1997, he was transferred to Delta state and made the area sales manager in charge of livestock feeds.
From his base in Ughelli, Adebiyi would drive around Delta visiting farmers in Asaba, Warri, Agbor and other places to get their feedback on the products. Despite the presence of distributors, he prioritised interacting with the farmers directly before making the trip to Benin, the capital of Edo state for the company’s regional monthly meeting.
By 2000, Adebiyi had impressed his bosses so much and the feedback was so good that he was made Chief Sales Officer managing Edo, Delta, Ondo, Ekiti and part of Kogi. His managerial role meant that sales representatives for each of those states reported to him. Despite that, he still found it important to drive to those locations himself to get first-hand information from the customers, an activity he believes allowed him to shape decisions to benefit them.
The managerial role also meant Adebiyi had to move to Benin which gave him the opportunity to apply for an executive MBA at the University of Benin, finishing the programme in 2001.
The same year, Econet Nigeria, a mobile telecommunications company was awarded Digital Mobile License (DML) for communication service in Nigeria. Nigeria had just returned to a democratic government two years before and the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was keen on developing the sector. Econet thus opened its doors to hiring professionals to manage the budding industry. Adebiyi heard about it and faxed his application to the company in Lagos.
“I had a friend then, a police officer, Olatoye Durosinmi who is now commissioner of police in Akwa Ibom”, Adebiyi said. “He used to go to the cyber cafe to check his email and I would go with him and so I opened one too. The first email I received was from Econet asking me to come for an interview”
Either by chance or design, it was the first step to Adebiyi’s foray into the uncharted telecommunications territory in Nigeria. After rounds of interviews and exercises, he was employed as a retail sales executive.
“Within six months, I was made a deputy manager because of my successful sale percentage. While other sales executives were struggling to convince banks to buy, I would set out by 9 am and be back by 12 pm with commitment from several banks that they would buy and distribute our airtimes.” Adebiyi said. His MBA qualification further gave him an edge coupled with his dedication to work. He was part of the team when the company briefly became Vodacom and later Vmobile. By then, Adebiyi had been made the manager of retail services. In a couple of years, he was made the head of commercial and his office moved to Abuja where he oversaw the operations in the north central where he was responsible for sales and marketing in the region. By then, the company’s name had been changed to Celtel.
In 2007, Businessman, Jim Ovia acquired Cellcom and renamed it Visafone and in the same year, Adebiyi was invited to join the new telecommunications company as a director of sales for the northern region of the country. The work involved a lot of travelling around the northern region and Abuja by road. Unlike GSM where only the sim cards were sold, Visafone operated a Code-Division Multiple Access where phones had to be sold directly to customers so it was a bit harder but Adebiyi was up to the challenge. He remembered with fondness when the company crossed a million customers which gave him a feeling of success and a testament to the work he and his team did.
Adebiyi worked there for five years until 2012 when he heard that MTN had put out an application for the position of general manager of sales and he applied. He described it as the most rigorous application he ever went through but he ultimately got the job which meant he had to move to Lagos.
“The general perception then was that salespeople were always at their desks. We strategised then to make it more customer-facing and emphasized the need for successful interactions.”
When MTN decided to regionalise “to take leadership closer to the people” Adebiyi was made the general manager regional for the north. He recalled with pride how he focused on revenue growth across all teams emphasizing to each department that they were all important to the revenue growth of the company in whatever capacity they served.
In 2018, he was made the Chief Commercial Officer of MTN and in the same year, he began a scholarship programme in Ogun state awarding 30 students from selected secondary school scholarships to the 30 beneficiaries. (At the recent Ilaro-Oronna Festival grand finale, he again presented. He spoke about it with joy expressing happiness that he is able to give back to society and pave the way for brilliant students as they forge their own path to the future.)
In March 2022, Adebiyi left MTN to join Itex, a fintech and innovation centre that provides payment solutions to customers as Chief Commercial Officer. It has been an interesting industry one he is not ashamed of confessing that he is still learning a lot from. But his confidence stems from the fact that every new job role has been a challenge that he has always successfully overcome which makes each new task exciting.
Fintech, Family and the Future
For Adebiyi, every single job he has done since he graduated from university has involved sales: From livestock drugs to telecommunications and fintech, each one has afforded him the opportunity to improve the art and business of giving people value in exchange for their patronage.
“Sales is about solving a problem. If I ask someone what problem they are having with their pen and they tell me it leaves a blot on their shirt, my work is to give them a pen that will not do that. One of the ways is to tell or show them a CEO they know or someone else they trust who uses that pen I am offering. Chances are, they will accept my pen.” Adebiyi said defining his more than 2 decades of experience. He believes that it is important to make sure the product is good so as to make its marketability easier for salespeople.
He is happy with the challenge that the fintech industry is bringing. “The fintech industry is large and always evolving. Unlike telecommunication which is to an extent fixed, the fintech space is always changing. From withdrawing cash from the bank to ATM machines to POS, now we are talking about QR codes as well as tap and pay. The industry is vast, dynamic and evolving.”
Adebiyi believes that apart from the God factor, hard work has taken him to where he is and an understanding family. He recalled that he met his wife in Akure while he was at Pfizer on one of his managerial drive-around and the travelling life has persisted till now. He credited his wife for being a strong support and for understanding the demands of his job. He also credits the staff he has worked with over the years some of whom have become sort of family. He also recognised that some people have also become influential leaders in his life whose work ethics and ideologies he has borrowed and inculcated.
Adebiyi is proud of his work over the years but reaching one million subscribers with Visafone in six months ranks high in his success story as it set the tone for other things he has done including leading the expansion of the service in the northern region.
“At MTN, I was the first general manager of sales to hit 1000,000 customer acquisitions in a day and that ranks high in the remarkable things that I have done. However, I would say my biggest achievement is the number of people I have impacted and whose lives have taken positive turns because of their association with me. A lot of people see me as their mentor and owe their success to God through me.”
Adebiyi is convinced that the Nigerian fintech space still has a lot of room to grow and be beneficial to young Nigerians. He however believes the government has a role to play in making the terrain safe for everyone to grow through infrastructure and security.
He believes that the line between banking and technology is blurring and expects the two industries to continue to collaborate for innovations.
Adebiyi has been married for 19 years although he met his wife four years before then. Since then, he believes they have been a formidable team as she has played a significant role in his success. He is optimistic about the future and says he loves to spend time with his family, especially TV time. His scholarship foundation is also another thing that gives him joy. While he has significantly contributed to the telecommunications sector in Nigeria and actively played a part in its spread and is also replicating the same in the fintech space by encouraging its penetration to remote areas, it is the impact he is providing to young brilliant students that rank high in his mind and he hopes to sustain it for as long as possible, watering the seeds of the giant trees of tomorrow.
