For forty years, Otunba Wanle Akinboboye has dominated the hospitality and tourism industry in Nigeria and Africa like colossus. He founded and nurtured the La Campagne brand as Africa’s foremost authentic Africantheme resort, and initiator of the Ipada Initiative aimed at reconnecting the mainland Africa with her descendants in the Diaspora.  

In this speech, he spoke about his vision, and how for 40 years he has been working to build a legacy that will outlive him.

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 “You know when our forefathers wanted to pass on a particular message, and they looked at this message as something that was extremely important, they apply a touristic medium.  We all must understand the importance of why we are here. Those of us all the way from kano, Osun, Abuja, et cetera. The medium is called storytelling.  In Yoruba land, they will…You know when I met for the first time in my life the tortoise. I was so disappointed. And I said ‘Is this the tortoise?’ this crafty person that I thought would be as tall as … ‘Is this the tortoise, tiny and crawling on the floor?’ But our forefathers weaved stories around it. And every single story teaches us a very vital lesson about what we should do and what we should not do. And a lot of these lessons I have utilized in all my life. I am proud of the lessons that I have learned, that have taught me, and that have taken me to where I am today, from the story of the tortoise. But as you all know, the tortoise does not make any progress without sticking out its head. I stuck out my head in 1984.  My mindset was how can 30.2 million square kilometers of the area called the continent of Africa, with 54 African countries, the wealthiest countries and continent of the world, happened to turn around to be the poorest?

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In the beginning

“I remember my first day, when I landed in the United States of America (USA), I was personally angry. A lot of my friends were jubilating. I was unhappy. They said Wanle has started again. Why are you so unhappy? And I said to them, have you looked around? They said we have. Have you seen how organized this community is? They said we have. So, I said why should I be happy when I remember where I am coming from? What I believe we should have done, that we have not done as a people. I, from that moment, decided that immediately after my first degree and my master’s, I would come back home to tweak the continent of Africa. I said I needed to come and transform this continent from being a continent of retrogression to a continent of prosperity.  I decided that I would use three instruments: security, entertainment, and tourism.  I call it SET. And I said that if we are set, we are ready to explode because these three industries that I have just mentioned are the only industries in the world where you don’t have to cross over to the West before you can start. I know how many billions of dollars my friend Aliko Dangote has spent. We are the only two Nigerians on this axis, but he is my junior. I came in 84, he came in 1999, but we are the only two keeping the flag flying.  These three industries are the only industries where I don’t have to go to the United States of America, to China, or Taiwan before I can jump-start them. Any other industry, you have to import. Those that are even manufacturing vehicles, we don’t have a steel industry. They have to go and import the iron. Ajaokuta is moribund. There is another one in Delta State in trouble. I decided on these three; luckily, my first degree was in marketing. My master’s was in hospitality management. I worked in hotels and performed different security operations when I was in the U.S. Of course I was also an actor, choreographer, a dancer, and a singer. So, I decided that I was going to take advantage of my advantage and begin with security.

Foray into security: Corporate Guards

“So we started with Corporate Guards that today has given employment and its trickledown effect to over one million youths throughout Nigeria. I created a system where they can go from being a guard to a point where they will own their own franchise.  They start as a guard, when they get to a point, they get a car loan, when they get to a point, they get a house loan, when they get to a point, and they’d get their franchise. And these young men and women have gone all over the world.

“I was in South Africa recently, and I heard a shout, a far distance away from me say, ‘Sir, I am number 1424, Corporate Guards’. He happened to be the chief security officer for an entire airport in South Africa. He said ‘this is where I am now sir, and I thank you for what you have done for me.  I learnt, and left when I became a lieutenant, and I hope to come back and collect my own franchise when I finish from South Africa. And I said t him, then you have to go on the line because a lot of people are still there.

“Whatever we do, it must be security first. A lot of people talked today that security is a problem for tourism, and I told them it is the least problem for tourism. I told them that security issues started from the age of Adam and Eve. Those of you that are Christians… because Eve went to steal apple. Since then, security has never been the same. I remember when I came back in 1984, the biggest problem we had was people removing your private part. I had never heard of kidnapping in the 80’s; we never heard anything referred to as bombing. Nigerians bomb themselves? It was impossible. So, it is always getting tougher and tougher. If you say you want to wait until security is better, then you don’t want to do tourism, and there shouldn’t be tourism industry.

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Entertainment and Tourism

“So, those three were what I used. I came into the forest and camped here to begin that journey. I came through the Atlantic Ocean. I am a diver; I used to do scuba diving, so I was not fazed by ocean water. We decided to do this. This is the first authentic African theme resort that we can replicate throughout the world. We have nothing selling our culture. We decided that the best way to sell our culture is through tourism, through hospitality, because when people come into a country, they first place the go to see your attractions, your restaurants, your hotels, your resorts.

“I will like to talk about that medium of storytelling. I learnt a crucial lesson from people we refer to as villagers or bush people. I think that is where the wealth of Africa is today. The reason why 30.2 million square kilometer area, the continent of Africa, is not making progress is because our progress and prosperity is buried in the mortuary. 

“When I came back and I interacted with villagers, I realize that they are a lot more intelligent than us. They are brighter than us, and it disturbs me when I realize that in these villages that we have Einsteins there. A lot of them die with their ideas and creativity only because they cannot speak a language that does not belong to them. They sit with me and tell me, you see that ocean, watch it, count how many times it moves, and they will give me specific time and date, and specific time the rain will fall, and they never miss, just by looking at the waves. But when we see them, we refer to them as bush people. I decided to start this talk using my experience from the village to tell you a story of the 26 year old boy that went and camped in the forest. And when I was able to muster enough strength, I went to the Baale and said, ‘Sir, I want to build a resort. You have a beautiful Atlantic Ocean, you have the lagoon, you have the palm trees, and this will be magnificent.’

“He sat on the beach with palm wine and fried fish, with four of his wives, with children somersaulting on the sand, and he sat there and watch me talk. He said eat fish, I ate some fish with him.

“I said to him, you know, I will build this for you and I will make you a billion Naira.  He asked what that is. I said one billion; it is more than one million. He asked what one million Naira is. I said …I didn’t know the Yoruba word for that. I said that one hundred thousand, one hundred thousand in several places. He said ok, that is big money, I said yes. He asked so what happens after I make the billion?  I said we will then reinvest it, and then you make another two. He said what happens after? I said then you reinvest it again. He said then what happens? I said you make that kind of money maybe in ten places. He exclaimed and then said, so what happens? I said you will sit on the beach and you have enough to eat for the rest of your life. Your wives will surround you; you will drink your palm wine. He said in their language, what am I doing now? I was a bit taken aback. I wasn’t prepared for that question. Do I tell him that you are lying on the beach with your wives, drinking your palm wine and enjoying your life? I began to stammer. I didn’t know what to say. I said can I have some of the palm wine? I tasted the palm wine and thanked him. Then I started playing with the kids because I needed time to think. And the thoughts were not coming to me because I didn’t know what to say really.  Then I said Baba I have taken too much of your time. I want to go and explore the lagoon and fish. He said that was the best place to fish. I told him I will see him tomorrow. I needed a day to think.

“Then I went back to him. I said Baba…he asked, what is that you want to build? I said resort. He asked what that means. I said hotel. He said you have come again, what is it this time? You want to make me millions? I said no, baba, I have not come for that. I said you know, what I am about to build here, if I build it, all these children running around will not have to go to Lagos, to look for work. He looked up at me. You mean they will stay with me? I said yes. They will build their houses. I heard that there was a theft. Stealing will stop, because everybody will be engaged. I know that on a regular basis all your wives are fighting. They will stop fighting, because I will engage them to comb the sand in the beach to make the whole place clean, and by the time they get home, they will be too tired to fight. They will just go to sleep. He said, so that means they will go and sleep? I can then go in and pick the one I want without fight? I said yes. And I said that generations yet unborn will remember you. Generations yet unborn will remember what you have done for your people. Generations yet unborn will benefit. You will become like a tree that was planted, usually people that plant trees, never benefit from the shade that tree. You will provide for tomorrow’s people.  He said all of these will happen if you build a resort?  I said yes.  That was how the story began.

Building a Platform for Tomorrow’s people

“We call them illiterate but they can understand the importance of leaving a legacy. They can understand the importance of building platform. They can understand that the platform we are standing on was built by yesterday’s men, that we the today’s people must build the platform for tomorrow’s people. 60 percent plus of our growth and development is based on platforms built by yesterday’s people. Ikoyi Club was built in 1938; Ikeja Country Club in the 40s; Apapa Club in the 40s. The best club in Nigeria today was built in the 30’s by people that are non-Nigerians. These are folks that knew that someday, they will leave these shores. We must understand that that platform is critical so that they are not jumping out of quicksand.

“I went to school in the United States and I sat with people from Japan, India, China, America and so on. All the  Nigerians in my class were at the forefront. We taught them; they come to us for direction. But when we come here, we are jumping off quicksand. The more we struggle, the more we fail. That 26 years old boy thought 40 years ago that he can begin to tweak his continent by starting first from where he was born and then replicating whatever he created throughout the continent of Africa.

“Along the line on this journey, I woke up one day, because I had a very peculiar story. My wife at that time, I married very young. I married my high school sweet heart. I was barely 16, 17 years old and I started driving lorries at 15, I will drive and we will go to parties. I was a rebel.  So, my wife left because she saw that I have gone mad. We had two houses in the United States. I was doing quite well. And then she came, when she saw me in the forest, and I was describing my vision, and she was thinking about her passport, to make sure that she had her American passport intact.  That was the most difficult aspect of the journey.

“My two boys had to go. She couldn’t see. In retrospect, now I can understand. How do you describe Obi Eze, how do you describe a vision? When people ask me how I did all these, I say I don’t know.  You cannot ask a painter, a DaVinci, Raphael, how did you draw all these? I am sure when Fela was alive; if you ask Fela ‘How did you write this song?’ he can’t figure it out. I was very bitter. It took three to five years to overcome that. But, we have to understand that if we are not together as man and wife, so that we can dominate each other. We are together so that we can respect each other’s position and compromise. So, I had to understand at some point that she is a different person. That doesn’t mean that she is a bad person. So, she panicked. Most women might not want to lose their comfort zone, go to parties with their best friends, with the best of music, and dance.

“ So, you can’t condemn them for not wanting to sit in the forest to want to build a platform for tomorrow. So, one of these days and I sat looking at the Atlantic Ocean, and I knew, because I read a lot, that a lot of our people travelled through this water, across the Atlantic Ocean, first to the Caribbean, then to the United State of America,  to the Americas. Today, we have 44 million of our people living in the Caribbean on 36 islands that take in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica, and so on. We have over 110 million in Brazil, where they still maintain their culture. We have over 55 million in the United States of America; we have 380 million in the Americas. Then Mexico, I can’t remember the numbers for Mexico. Then you have in the Far East. Then I said who is going to be beckoning to these people? How do we bring them back? How can Dubai, which has a total population of 660,000 indigenes, naturalize about three million? How did they manage to get 25 million to their country every year? France had 46 million, and Turkey had 49.6 million last year.  Agenda 2030 of Saudi Arabia is to bring 100 million to Saudi Arabia.

We have 1.5 billion people in the continent, approximately 1.5 billion in the diaspora. When you put those two together, it is 3 billion. It doubles the size of China. China is just 1.4 billion people and has 9.2 million square kilometers of area. Only 400 million of them are above poverty line. A billion of Chinese people are below poverty line. So, they see the continent of Africa as a land that they must invest in, because we have 30.2 million square kilometers times the size of the United States of America. The United States of America is 10.1 million. The whole of Europe is 8.9 million square kilometres. The whole of China is 9.2 million square kilometres. So, you put all those three together, the Super Powers, all of Europe, all of China, Africa will swallow them without belching.

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Japan is on 327,000 square kilometres .  They are about 158 million people. These folks have zero natural resources in the area of Hiroshima; they have to import their water. Their GDP in 2019 is 5.1 trillion Dollars. Their size of 337,000 square kilometers, they can only occupy 15 per cent which is about 65,000 square kilometres.  That is about the size of Togo.  Togo is one of the smallest countries in Africa. They have zero natural resources. We are not going to use Nigeria, 923, 677 square kilometres.

30.2 million square kilometer of Africa, called a the continent of Africa, i.5 billion of our brothers, pack all our brothers from the lemon we refer to as slavery, add a bit of water and sugar, and transform it to lemonade. So that we can all drink it and be refreshed. We must take the advantage of a humongous disadvantage. That id advantage was taking a man’s today, taking his yesterday, and taking his tomorrow away from him. It is a major disadvantage. But while he was in Jamaica, he was learning the ways of Jamaica. While he was in the United States of America, he is learning the way of the Americans, going to the moon. When in Europe, he is taking ownership of government. They are coming first in universities. This brain drain must be transformed to brain gain. So, I created what we call Motherland Beckons. We went Atlanta Georgia…

“We need to understand that as a people, we must be asking ourselves why we are not where we should be. How do you know where you should be? By watching other people’s data. What is Japan doing? What is Switzerland doing? Switzerland has zero natural resources.  They come pack our cocoa, and transform it to chocolate. 1.8 trillion GDP, zero natural resources.

“So, we went to Atlanta Georgia when we created what we refer to as Motherland Beckons. I will cut the story short now because of a bit of time. We came back in 2008 with over 25 mayors from the United States. We brought in Marlon Jackson, Shaggy,…We started the carnival in 2008. Then we introduced AIM Festival; it is music from all the 54 African countries that has now metamorphosed into the Ipada.

The Ipada Initiative

“So, the Ipada Movement is for you to come back on a daily basis. We now went to the Caribbean to acquire 100acres of land to build an African Resort there, in Antigua. My request for Lord Spencer is that anybody that invests there, must get a citizenship of Antigua, that will give you access to 160 countries in the world without visa. They call it CIP, Citizenship Investment Programme. When Antigua made the news that African theme resort was coming, I got a call from Tobago, I got 150 acres to do the same for them.   

“Then we started a movement on a weekly basis with ambassadors and top pan-Africanists that want to connect to the continent. From there I met some folks from Guyana. They said they are giving 200 acres of land to Africans. That tells you that when you create a platform, things will happen. Then recently I got a letter from an African in the Diaspora, they want to build six cruise ships that they want to use to follow our mantra from slave ship to cruise ship. I said great, but I don’t have money. He said we don’t need your money, we have our money. I asked how much would it cost per ship? He said 1.5 billion dollars. Great! I asked how many do you want to build, he said six. That is nine billion dollars. Do you have nine billion dollars? He answered: ‘we said we want to build.’ The put about 900 million dollars into an escrow account and sent it to me, go and confirm, it is there for us to start. Let’s bear in mind; I don’t know this folks from anywhere. We are researching them now, that is the Central Bank. They are excited. Let’s bear in mind that there are so many of them like that, if we collectively make a call. Africa has 54 children, but not one is claiming Africa. I have never gone to a seminar and I hear a Togolese president talk about Africa, Ghanaian president talk about Africa, or hear a Nigerian president talk about Africa. Now our president is beginning to talk about Africa, because he is now beginning to take ownership of Africa. Nobody is talking about Africa, but when they see us there, all they see Africans.

“When we put together all the resources in the 36 states of Nigeria, Lagos must be selling Kano, Kano must be selling Osun; Osun must be showcasing the best of Kano.

“If I bring durbar today to come and greet, like we are going to do in December, and we match to the Oba’s palace, 99.9 percent of those  that would watch that durbar going to greet the Oba of Lagos, would not have seen durbar before in their lives.

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 “The average concept of Nigeria is in our local government, in our state, where we are from, that is why we are not prospering. If I can bring polo to the beach here, that would be all the Africans that would come have  access to see and feel the essence of our North. When they get home, they will go online to search for durbar in Kano and so on. They will fly there to see the original.

“If you bring Eyo to Kano, you can’t move the original Eyo masquerades. But an average northerner when they see and hear there is Eyo in Lagos, they will fly down.

“When we showcase Kenya, the beauty of east Africa, also north, east, West Africa, no continent can compete with Africa. But we must put it together as one unit. Without it being one unit, we won’t get the desired effect.”