For Lawal, It’s Travel Made Easy With ‘FlyBoku’
Abiola Lawal is a pathfinder. With passion and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, he has dotted the Nigerian travel and tourism landscape with two trademark products; FlyBoku for low cost travel and Ashton and Dave Travels Holidays for corporate travel
How was your growing up? I come from a relatively large family. I am the fourth of eight children made up of two girls and six boys. There used to be a running joke growing up that my mum doesn’t have to pay for professional services because she has a kid for every profession. I am very proud of my mother. She is my role model in so many ways and she has a fantastic dedication to education as a primary way to empower her children despite the fact that she supported all of us under very challenging and incredible circumstances. As a result, I have always drawn motivation from my mother’s strength. She is somebody who is not traditionally educated but educated every one of her kids. I also have two girls and a boy of my own. I was born and bred in Lagos and I attended University of Ilorin (Unilorin) where I studied Economics and Finance. After graduating from the Unilorin, I relocated to Canada first and then to the United States.
How did you end up in hospitality with such a rich resume?
The most fascinating job I had on arriving in the U.S. was working for Skywest Airlines, which is a subsidiary of Delta Airlines. I had a chance to discover places, people and learnt a ton about aviation logistics and travels. I got enamoured by this amazing experience and consequently, my interest in travel became more affirmed. I was working for Skywest Airlines and Walt Disney before I left and went for graduate business school and progressively worked for a consulting firm before making an entry into the oil and gas industry but ultimately, you have to go for your passion, something that you really adore and my passion is hospitality.
I didn’t get into the travel industry in a glamorous way. I actually started by loading bags on the aircraft at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in the early 1990s and I was very proud of my job as a young man trying to discover his path in the United States. I was working two jobs as well as going to school because I had a plan to get an MBA. After working for five years, I got admission into the University of California, Irvine, for my MBA and from then on I mostly worked in the corporate world. I had a chance to work with Disney which I found very fascinating I witnessed customer satisfaction first hand once they arrived in Disneyland. After Disney, I worked with Ernst and Young which is a major consulting firm globally. At Ernst and Young, I learnt a lot in terms of helping companies get better at what they do. I received fantastic training and received a lot of exposure to multiple industries that equipped me to do a ton of other things in my life. I ended up spending five years at Ernst and Young and then joined SAP, a global ERP company, a few years later. While still working with SAP, I took a trip to Nigeria and was introduced to the founders of Oando. The founders really liked my profile and were trying to take the company to the next level. Oando brought me back home and hired me as the Group Chief Strategy Officer and later as Director of Gas and Power Business Unit in 2005. After Oando, I got another opportunity to oversee a transformational strategy at a company called CAMAC Energy Inc. CAMAC Energy is a company based in the U.S. but a lot of their footprint asset is in Nigeria. My employment with CAMAC gave me a chance to move back to the U.S. and eventually we took the company public, making it the first Nigerian company on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Afterwards, the board asked me to step in as the CFO of the company.
After my experience at CAMAC Energy, I felt that it was time for me to refocus on my love for aviation, tourism and travel. I moved back to Nigeria and decided to refocus on my initial passion for travel. Ashton and Dave Travels was launched in 2007 but I wasn’t fully involved initially because we had other partners involved. However, I came back full circle to run the business and inject innovative ideas into the company to move us forward. In addition, Flyboku was launched in 2015 and we also have a small charter helicopter operation that we also work with. While Ashton and Dave is more for corporate travel, Flyboku is more for personal lifestyle. Mr. Boku, the brand personality, is your digital agent online that allows you to discover more places. So, that explains the full cycle of my career. I am a simple Nigerian who is committed to a PanAfrican development.