Meet Rotimi Williams, The 35-year-old Lagos Boy Turned Millionaire Rice Farmer In Nasarawa State
By Kemi Mobuse - Monday, February 19, 2018
“The first thing you have to decide before you start is; to ask yourself, are you an entrepreneur or are you a 9 to 5 person?” – Rotimi Williams
Made in NIGERIA foods and products are on the rise daily
thanks to the ban placed on majority of Imported food and foodstuffs, and since
Nigerians are one of the largest consumers of rice, it makes it imperative that
we turn to homegrown foods and make more efforts to revitalize the agricultural
sector.
Like the Lagos boy, Rotimi Williams who is making waves in
Nasarawa State as a rice farmer. He shares his success story at a forum
organised by Agrihub and Agroentrepreneur, entrepreneurship capacities’
building groups, in Lagos.
According
to Forbes, Williams who was once a journalist has employed over 600 people in
Nasarawa to work on his farmland. This young man gathered all his farming
skills using Google
36-old Nasarawa -based agro entrepreneur, Rotimi Williams,
is the proud owner of Kerekusk Rice. He acknowledges not only his enjoyment of
growing rice, but also as a rice connoisseur. Young and well-educated, he has
about 45,000 hectares of rice farm. He sells the product to major milling firms.
Williams, who grew up in Lagos Island, is down-to-earth and
recognises that he first has to roll up his sleeves and get dirty with some
serious work, to make the kind of wealth he desires. This is is in the marshy,
mosquito-infested paddy fields that he has to break his back to satisfy his
innate entrepreneurial instinct.
He had to learn everything as he had no experience, nor
background in farming. But he read a lot on it and took all the risks because
he needed to do something others were not really interested in. He did his
calculations and promised the community some returns. That was the winning
strategy.
ON HOW HE STARTED:
As a journalist, I had the opportunity to travel around
a few African countries. These trips exposed me to countries like Kenya,
Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia and Ghana. A common thread among the
aforementioned nations is agriculture. Agriculture is at the very core of these
countries and this got me thinking. After a few more trips, I decided to move
back to Nigeria and sink my teeth into the agricultural space. Nigeria remains
the largest economy in Africa from both a GDP perspective and also the strength
of the size of our population.
Upon my arrival back in Nigeria, I got a job at a premier
Bank where I was promised to sit on the agriculture desk – my hope was that I
would gain enough knowledge of the Nigerian agricultural industry and develop
myself from there.
Unfortunately, the agricultural desk at the Bank never quite
achieved its set goals. I pushed hard for the Bank to adopt policies and gain
inroads into the agricultural industry but my attempts were somewhat
frustrated. I sincerely feel that the bank wasn’t quite ready to launch fully
into the agricultural space.
As my frustration grew, I decided to quit banking and
planned to go it alone into agriculture. Frankly, my decision led to a
challenging sojourn as attempts to raise funding with my partner proved
difficult. We started a Structured Trade and Commodity Finance company. After a
while I started consulting for small agriculture companies seeking to raise
capital both locally and internationally.
Two years had passed and we still had no funds, so I made an
offer to some farm owners in Nasarawa that with a 50-50 split, I would
develop their farm with both personal funds and external funding. He agreed and
that’s how I became part owner of 17,296 hectares of farmland. Knowing that
agriculture would become the integral area of focus in Nigeria, I was bullish
and ramped up the land to 55,000 hectares. I later parted with my partner as a
result of unaligned views and strategy. I maintained 45,000 hectares for myself
and today we have started producing, with our quality paddy being sold to major
milling companies in Nigeria.
However, I must add the following, I often have
people ask how I learned about farming, as everyone thinks you need a special
degree in agriculture to be a farmer, but I always tell them the truth, I
learnt it all on Google. I downloaded every article I could find on rice
production, consumed it and then practiced it in the fields.
ON CHALLENGES HE
ENCOUNTERED:
One of the greatest challenges of young agripreneurs,
according to him, is unequal access to key assets, such as land, finance and
information services.
He had challenges with machinery services for harvesting and
for threshing, procurement of agro-chemicals as well as, good planting
material. The absence of these contributed immensely to poor harvests at the
onset.
With these challenges, there is less possibility of bringing
more land into production. Right now, he is using few hectares because of the
cost of clearance and maintenance. He said the organization would have to
increase the productivity per hectare by knowledge- and science-based farming
with purchase of promising rice varieties.
Notwithstanding these, Williams has been able to make some
good returns on his investment. It became more interesting as the days went by
as he had bought a processing mill.
ON HOW HE MADE IT
THIS FAR:
He believes the success of his farm is based on a “we”
attitude, rather than “I” – calling the operation a successful team work. He
has been blessed to have wonderful people who agree to work with him.
Williams believes his farm’s success is tied to the
community and his dedicated employees. He believes agriculture has to feature
prominently in the nation’s development plans if the government hopes to
achieve a prosperous future for Nigerians.
Frankly, my experience working alongside indigenes of
Nasarawa state has been exceptional. I have learnt over the years that if you
approach people with respect even more so while one seeks to set up a business
venture. Having a healthy sense of community makes all the difference in
attaining one’s set objectives. I lean heavily on the wisdom and cultural
approach of the indigenes to carry out farming on such a scale here in
Nasarawa.
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