Govt can use transport fund to create jobs –Ajaere, MD, God is Good Motors

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Sun News Publishing

•Ajaere

By: 

Ajaere

Date: 

Tue, 07/03/2012 - 23:16

Four years ago the unexpected happened in Benin, Edo State, when the founder of God is Good Group of Companies, including God is Good Motors, Deacon Edwin Ajaere was kidnapped from church on a Sunday and was eventually killed by his abductors.


The sad incident cast a doubt on the survival of his Business empire which include oil and gas. But today, skeptics have been proved wrong as the business has not only expanded tremendously but is now run with modem uncommon ideas under the watch of his 25 year old well-educated son, Chidi Ajaere.

 In this interview, the junior Ajaere talks about what gives God is Good Motors the competitive edge over other transport companies, especially in the area of customer service. He suggests how Government can assist the transport sector to grow and employ more people to reduce unemployment by working with the CBN to reduce lending interest rates for transporters. “Government, through the CBN should create a fund for the transport sector. We should also be assessable to facilities from the Bank of Industry (BOI), they shouldn’t be too stringent especially for companies that have been striving, they should present modules for assisting us to make our business thrive so that we can employ more people” he said.


 As part of God is Good Motors Corporate Social responsibility Mr. Ajaere announced that “we have just set up a scholarship fund after my father’s foundation to actually help people that can’t help themselves for their education”. 


What challenges do you face in managing your business? In the kind of business that we are in, we are into a couple of businesses, like transportation, oil and gas, marketing, real estate and micro-financing. Initially when I took over active management of the company, it was difficult because I decided to come up with a long term plan like a ten year basic vision for the parent company. It was pretty difficult bringing the management together and trying to effect these changes but I led by example, I was able to take the bull by the horn and so it was easy for them to see and when they saw that there were results, it became pretty easy for them to listen and now, getting in tune with the vison and what we are trying to take the business to.

 The other challenges we find is also the normal everyday challenges that people find; insecurity, bad roads, poor electricity. The challenges include human resources, getting the right people to actually get the job done and then government provision of infrastructure like roads, electricity and things like that.

How do you hope to overcome these challenges? Some of these challenges are internal and others are external. The internal challenges, I can solve those ones and we have been doing that for the last four years since I have been managing our businesses. When I came in, I found out that it was hard to be able to pull human capital, human resources together. 

To bring people ad make them understand your vision, where you want to go to and what I decided to do was draw up a road map in the sense that we had to craft a way to get people who are going to be interested in the vision, people that had the experiences and then we decided to start training the ones that were on ground to align them with the new vision and what we are trying to go into.  But the external challenges like bad road network, electricity, insecurity are beyond our reach which we expected the government to provide and as much as possible, we try to partner with the government in anyway that we can to be able to sort out those little challenges. Tell us about your vision for the company.


The basic of the vision is in our group of companies. For the transport, I decided to set a pace, to be the leader in transportation through derived customer service, through absolute customer satisfaction and that is where I decided to create a niche for ourselves. I wanted to bring in a transport model that is obtainable in other parts of the world, I wanted the model be brought to Nigeria because I came into the system and I saw what was obtainable around here. 

People want to board vehicles and they contend with agberos (hoodlums), insecure public environment to board vehicles so I decided to come and change these things. People always complain that our leaders go out of this country and see what is happening outside but they have not been able to replicate what they see there but in my own sector, I decided to look and see what I can do to make a difference, I found out how it was being done there and I decided to create a model after what is obtainable out there and then we started building.


We started by placing emphasis on customer service. Customer service is basically the engine growth. When someone is paying you their money, you need to treat them with utmost respect, I for one I hate when I go into a pub for instance where I am paying my money then the employee is not courteours enough when I am the one paying for the service they are rendering because afterall my money serves as part of the salary so I called my employees and I told them about this; when someone is paying you money for your services you have to give them utmost service until they get to their destinations; they have to treat them like kings.