Mr. Collins Onuegbu, is Group Managing Director, Signal Alliance Limited, one of the leading ICT companies in the country. He is passionate about taking Nigeria into the digital age. In this interview, CHIMA AKWAJA looks into his humble beginnings.
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Let’s start with your school, what was it like growing up
I had a couple of lucky breaks; I went to a Unity School, Federal Government College, Okigwe in, Imo State, in those days when unity schools were good. It was a good foundation and it allowed me to improve my worldview. I met a lot of people from all over the country and it allowed me to see the world a little bigger than from where I came and during that period I also had the opportunity to get a federal government scholarship.
In those days if you are among the top three in your class you get a scholarship for good performance so this allowed me to finish my studies as a federal scholar and after that I went to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to study Electronics Engineering.
When you started out, did you have the intention of becoming an ICT professional?
It was while in the university that I got in contact with rudimentary Information Technology (IT) that existed then. When I graduated from university I wanted to work in an IT firm and immediately I finished my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) I got an opportunity and I have been working in IT sector since then.
As a boy where you fiddling with electrical or electronic appliances, before you come about choosing your course of study thereafter
I think I wanted to do engineering, I am not sure I was too finicky with my hands, I wasn’t using my hands much then but I felt electronics engineering offered me the profile I wanted. I looked at the world then and there were a couple of people I admired and I felt they were people who were achieving things in science.
The original plan I had then was to be in a profession where I could do research. I thought I would end up as a researcher or somebody who invents something and I though electronics was the best place to achieve that. This was the ‘80s, the IT industry had taken off but not as pervasive as it is now, so I thought that was an area where somebody could achieve something and be recognised for either discovering or patenting something.
How many places did you work and what kind of experience did you gain from those places
Incidentally, after my university I wanted to go back and do a higher degree unfortunately for me the university I attended said they were not offering a masters degree for that particular year for the programme I wanted so, I was forced to go and look for job otherwise I would have ended up doing my masters and probably PhD because I was the best graduate in my class and then the culture was if you are one of the best graduands, you stay back in the school, do a PhD and probably become a lecturer-researcher.
But I didn’t get that opportunity that particular year so I was forced to go and look for job and I said I would go back later but I never went back. I came to Lagos and got a job with an IT company called MicroProducts. They were one of the young companies made up of young people who had come back from the United States.
It was quite a vibrant company and there were lots of stuff they were doing and it was quite exciting but I ended up spending three months with them when I got a job from a company called Inlaks Computers where I spent six years. It was at Inlaks that I worked to become an engineer; I trained to be a very good service engineer. I later became a manager in charge of other engineers and I left Inlaks as a manager in 1996.
When did you become an entrepreneur and what led to this?
While I was in the university I was actually a student entrepreneur because around my fourth year, we set up a company called Wideband Electric, there were four of us, we decided to be fixing electric and electronics products for students. We ran this for more than a year until we graduated and we were quite successful in fixing quite a lot of stuffs. We fixed radios and TVs for fellow students and we got paid.
That was when I first attempted running a company and the company was domiciled in my room even though there were four of us and we were equal owners for that one year. That was my first experience on entrepreneurship. I always felt that if I didn’t go back to the university, I will have to run a business one day. At some point in Inlaks I just felt that I’ve had enough, I resigned and decided to set up Signal Alliance.
What was it like setting up your company
If I look back now I think I was just not prepared then. I thought I was but I wasn’t prepared, there was no funding. As a technical person I thought being technical was enough for me to survive. I didn’t have any business training. When I look back I think it was a very terrible risk to take. Having risen to the position of a manager at Inlaks at least I could manage some stuff but I wasn’t properly funded, there was no funding.
I saved some money before I left that company. I needed to rent an office and I started.
There were a lot of us that did that then and most of us moved about with screw drivers and fixed all kinds of stuff and did basic things. Some of us stayed at that level but some people with additional training moved a bit more into the entrepreneurship and management and focused on running a company instead of being the engineer with a screw driver.
What was it like when the IT sector at its infancy, expand the way it has, did some people try to discourage you when you wanted to go it alone to set up your company
I spoke to a lot of people before I left and there were those who said I should go ahead that it was the best thing to do and there were those who said well it was too early for me. Incidentally, those who advised me against it were probably the more reasonable guys because they knew what they were talking about. They saw that I wasn’t ready for it but I knew entrepreneurs are actually ever ready; you have to make up your mind what you want to do.
When I see the same people now and I talk to them I am not sure they still think I wasn’t ready. I think it was a good decision I took then. It was tough going the first few years because you suddenly find out there were a lot of challenges around.
For instance there were opportunities of doing business with small companies; we focused on doing business with large companies. If we had focused on the small companies to do business with they would have forced us to think small and look small. By focusing on larger companies it forced us to build structure that those large companies could look at and accept us as business partners.
Which company gave you the lift you needed to stand on your own?
The first two businesses that I did when I left were fairly large businesses. I got a business with a bank then called Credit Lyonnais; I got that as I was about leaving Inlaks. It was quite good business with enough money to set up and pay for office space and then we got a decent business from Equatorial Trust Bank even though the business later turned into a problem for us because we didn’t executive it the way it was expected and we ran into some challenges.
But it helped us establish ourselves as people who could do business with large companies. I remember before giving out the business they had to inspect our office and as at that day we didn’t have a signboard. We did a mock signboard and placed it in front of our office to allow the senior people from the bank to come and inspect our office.
It was a very good experience for us because they allowed us to know the kind of things that large companies require when they are doing business with a small company.
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