At 60, I’m Joyfully Alive Pursuing God’s Vision
Well, I am a multi-dimensional person. I am an architect by training. I am a fellow of my institute, Nigeria Institute of Architects, the apex of my profession. I am a consultant architect of my company known as Cosmo Base Consortium. I am a Reverend by calling. I am an entrepreneur per excellence. That is what I am. I try to fit in these things together. I have been in business now for over 32 years. I started the business when I was quite young. Cosmo Base Consortium is a company that was founded while I was 22 years and as a student of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Since then, I have kept straight with the company. It is a company which I have tried to nurture all these years. The company has given birth now to Jades Hotel and some industrial outfits. It’s been a vision. Visions do not die. Rather, it is to be able to build a brand in anything we do out of this country like the likes of Dangote and others. God has helped us thus far. I happen to be the Resident Pastor of Lively Hope Church in Port Harcourt. We just started the Abuja branch.
Why the call to the pulpit?
You see, the idea of Lively Hope is, using what God has given you, both mental knowledge and financial ability to serve God. It’s like being a pastor to pastors where you will be able to express yourself without fear of losing any member. And God has helped us thus far. He has given us children in the ministry. They are able to carry on the work in different areas. They have done creditably. So it is a thing of joy that at 60 years, one is still alive to pursue the vision God has given to us vigourously. One good thing about the vision is I saw a company that will be able to build and train successors, whether from my own family or other families. I want to tell you that today, I have successors from my own family and from the company itself. That is what it is to impact on future generations. In anywhere you find yourself, be it in politics, you want to be able to say: ‘ When I was there, I influenced lives’. ‘When I was there I affected lives’. ‘When I was there I changed things’ because men were created as change agents to be transformers. Life is worthless if you can’t point to somebody today and say ‘this is the life I have built’, ‘this is the life I have touched’. That is actually the bedrock of our company - the ministry itself.
I see ourselves in this group as a family and as family, if you truly love the people you are working with, you will want the people to be happy and to achieve what you have achieved. You will want the people to be like you. In our organisation, we work for the same purpose.
Do you have a privileged background that helped in supporting you, like someone born with a silver spoon?
No my father was a senior civil servant like he will call himself. That is not a silver spoon. In fact, he worked and retired and in fact, that was what fired me. He retired with nothing, after enjoying all
Benson Ezem is a man of several parts all rolled into one. He is a chartered architect, businessman and the pastor/founder of Lively Hope Church – Port Harcourt and Abuja. The President of Cosmo Base Consortium and owner of Jades Hotel, Abuja recently attained 60 years. In a chat with Olawale Ajimotokan, Ezem reflects on his life and businesses while reminiscing on his humble beginnings and his philosophy of life
the affluence of a senior civil servant leaving in good GRAs and all the rest. He resided in Kano and retired as a District Accountant of NEPA. Then, they take good care of you, providing you a
house in a GRA and all that. But when he retired, we just found out that we owned nothing- the fridges, the air conditioned- everything; we owned nothing.
And that was where I now decided not to have that kind of an experience again.
I resolved I would work and everything I own will be my own and will not belong to anyone. Because there was disconnect from a GRA background to the town, where you now have to live, because that is where he could afford. So, I thank God that I had to take the bull by the horn to change the narrative. I am one man that when I meet a situation, I try to make it better. Things must change. I am one person that when I meet somebody I look at the potential inside of that person and I can say “you are living below your expected level in life.” Like people who work with me, some of them have come with O’ level. And I look at them and say “you are intelligent, you write well, you can be better than this.”
I have helped them to go to school and they have realised that they can be better than how they came here. One of my staff came in and read Economics and I looked at her and saw that she was very intelligent. I said ‘’what are you doing here’’? I don’t mind, go and do ICAN. She went and did her ICAN and got an award in ICAN. She got a job that the offer was higher than what I offered but she is today happy that somebody encouraged her.
What exactly do we have to do to turn the country around?
What we need in this country are leaders that can see tomorrow. We need leaders that can feel what the followers feel, not egocentric leaders, not selfish leaders. That is why we are having all these problems today, with all kinds of insecurity, because if you are a leader, there are people around you that you can develop to develop others. If you are a leader that really cares for his people, everything will not be about money, amassing wealth, getting all the security. You see, I fear for this country, where we are heading, especially our youths. The unemployment rate is very high. The government cannot provide all the employment. The government cannot take out all the people from the streets. It is the businesses, the entrepreneurs that can do that. But you see, what we have now is that the government is sitting on the neck of entrepreneurs with a lot of taxes, high rate of bank interests. You can’t borrow.
You won’t believe that for me I am averse to borrowing because of the high interest rates. The rate we wish to develop is not possible because we are working within the confines of the available resources. In this group, what we do when we want to develop a project, we call in funds from different companies to fund that project because if you go to the bank, it takes so long and all that. Forget about what you see on the TV, it does not work that way. You see the frustration that entrepreneurs face- high tax rate, FIRS is coming after you, everything is coming against you, you won’t have the latitude to pursue your dream. Until we realise that government needs to give us that enabling environment in terms of resources and tax rebates like in this COVID-19 thing now. In some other countries, some companies were given palliatives - low interest rates. I had to go the extra mile to keep all my staff during the pandemic.
How did COVID-19 affect you as a member of the Hotel Owners Association of Nigeria? What has been the impact of COVID-19 on the industry?
Some of the hotels are still not open. We are bringing resources from outside to ensure we do not lose our trained staff because it is not easy to train a staff. We had to bring our resources from outside to make sure we are paying them during the COVID period because it is not only when you make profit that you pay. When there are losses, you still have to consider your staff. We said we were not going to sack any of our staff, we did not sack any of them, we did not put them in the market. What we did, we took our time, reduced the staff, kept some in the house and now we are bringing them back gradually. We have trained them and we don’t want to start shopping for new ones. We have a loan scheme because any of them that asks for loan to sort out very important issue like housing, we oblige. We think beyond now to ensure that everybody is carried along.