From employee to co-owner of Ebeano Supermarket, the story of David Ojei

Dreams are common to children, and most may have a dream of working in a bank.

This was the case of David Ojei but when he was unable to secure a job in any bank after years of searching, he had to seek other paths to his success.

Today, Ojei is co-owner of Prince Ebeano Supermarkets, a business he partnered with his mentor – Sunday Egede – to build.

Early life and education

David Chukwuma Ojei was born in his hometown in Agbor, Delta state on 28 February 1971. He grew to see entrepreneurship playing out at different levels in his family.

His grandmother was a businesswoman, and a lot of her children had toed her footsteps. One of the children – David’s uncle – moved to Lagos to learn a trade, and soon after he started a garri supply business.

He would buy garri from the farmers and women in the eastern part of the country and take to Lagos where he sold them to retailers.

David’s mother was also into business and would usually take her son with her to the market to help her sell Tomato and Rice. Given his early interactions with business, he had to become very good and fast with calculations.

When he started school, it rubbed off on his performance in Mathematics, and he excelled in the subject even when he struggled with others.

• “My educational background was very poor: I failed in Primary three. The only subject that I was good at was mathematics, and it was because I was good at calculations. My English was awful. I failed in class four. Then, secondary school used to end in class five.” he recalled in an interview.

However, this was only for a while. With his determination to study, he picked up in other subjects.

His family also encouraged him, and when it was time to study for the University Matriculation Examinations, they sent him to live with his older brother at Ota so that he could have fewer distractions.

This decision paid off greatly, and when the National University Entrance Tests results came out, he scored 236 out of 300.

For that year, the English Language scores of all candidates were cancelled, and with his score of 236, Ojei made the top 20 students in the country.

Based on his natural love for mathematics, he chose to study Accountancy at the University of Nigeria.

He graduated in 1995 with a Second-Class Grade Upper Division and was posted to Jigawa state for the mandatory National Youth Service Corps almost immediately.

The hard choice between a job and a business

David expected to secure a good job with his degree and build a good life from there. But a chance occurrence had the young man rethinking such a choice.

“We used to hold teachers in high esteem because they lived in flats and their salary was fantastic. My family lived in a room and a parlour, but we did not lack food.

There was a day one of the teachers came to buy an item from our shop. He couldn’t pay but instead said, “See you on payday”. David recounted.

With this, David began to reconsider that perhaps earning a monthly salary would not be the route for him. He could not imagine having to wait till payday every month to meet his family’s needs and also began to reason that if his salary finished before the next payday, he could become a debtor like a teacher.

At this point, he started paying a little more attention to his sibling’s businesses. He would sometimes follow one of his uncles to the Oke-Arin market in Lagos Island to purchase goods for retail.

With this little experience, he thought he would go into business straight after the NYSC year, but his parents discouraged him.

If he wanted to go into business, they reasoned, he need not have wasted the years bagging an accounting degree.

But since he had the degree, they thought it was only logical that he secure a banking job with it, as that had always been his dream.

Aspiring banker turned security man.

Having decided on a banking job, David Ojei sent out applications to several banks. However, fate seemed to have determined to play him a fast one.

Despite writing Aptitude tests with Zenith Bank, GTB and FBN Merchant Bankers, he failed all the tests.

It did not make any sense to him. How hard could it be to ace a bank’s aptitude test, when he had an accounting degree?

When it became clear that the banks were keeping their doors shut on him, David settled for a job with a security company. As a security man, he earned N7,000 monthly.

He decided to save up N4,000 every month so that he could pool enough money to start a barber’s shop. This decision came with its sacrifice.

For months, he went without getting any new clothes. He also made sure to eat breakfast and dinner in his brother’s house so that he only had to spend money on transport fare.

“After six months, I had saved enough money to open a barbing salon at Powerline in Ejigbo, Lagos.

I rented a shop for N12,000 at the rate of N500 a month, for two years. I started the barbing salon without a generator. After three months, I started having a problem because of an epileptic power supply. At the time, an original Japan-made generator was N35,000.

I went to my brother and asked him to lend me some money to buy a generator. He did. I bought the generator and later paid it back.

The salon was fetching me N7,000 monthly, added to my salary; it brought my monthly earnings to N14,000.”

David worked a total of 18 months at the security outfit before he resigned. At that point, the barbing business had stabilised enough to give him sufficient income, and he thought he could now try out his hands in other businesses.

His first heartbreak in business

Recalling how his uncle used to buy garri from the east and supply in Lagos, David decided that he could also do something similar.

He opted for Ogbono seeds. In June 1998, he started making regular trips to Fuga, a town in Edo state to buy the seeds in bulk, and then return to Lagos, where he would sell them to retailers.

The business kicked off well and was going fine until he made the mistake of trusting his supplier with advance payments.

“Each time I travelled there, I spent three or four days and would wait for them to crack the shells and bring out the seeds and dry them.

“My supplier then suggested, “Instead of wasting time and money on hotel bills, why not give me the money so that I would process ahead and when next you come around you would spend only one night and take your goods back to Lagos?

“It was a good idea. I deposited half of my money. When I returned, there was no supplier or ogbono seed for me. The woman had vanished. I lost over N40,000” he recounted.

It was a major loss for David Ojei, but thankfully, he still had a barber shop on the side providing him some income. He decided then that he would not be in a rush to enter another business. He went instead to spend a three-month apprenticeship with his uncle Sunday Egede, who owned De Prince Supermarkets. It was a very brief apprenticeship, and after learning as much as he could within the three months, he started Ebeano Supermarket in 1999, with the first outlet at Shomolu, Lagos State.

This was not his first time in business, but perhaps, the brief apprenticeship and mentorship made all the difference. The retail business grew really fast for him, and he soon opened another outlet at Gbagada, and another at Ikota. He decided then to close the barber’s shop and focus on retail.

The partnership that birthed Prince Ebeano supermarkets

After almost a decade in the retail business, Ojei went into a 50-50 partnership with his uncle and mentor, Sunday Egede.

This partnership brought Egede’s De Prince Supermarkets and Ojei’s Ebeano Supermarkets under one umbrella. And so, in 2009, Prince Ebeano Supermarket came into the scenes.

As one might expect from a partnership of two strong businessmen, Prince Ebeano Supermarkets became a success overnight. With the slogan “The Preferred One Stop Retail Store”, the retail stores have a wide inventory that provides practically anything you want to buy.

Since 2009, the Prince Ebeano brand has grown to have several outlets across Nigeria, providing direct employment for many, and for others, a platform to get their goods out to the consumers.

The brand has earned its reputation for only sourcing quality products, so any product that makes it to the store shelves has already gained market visibility.