This is Timeless Facts Magazine, please can you tell us about yourself sir?
My name is Fortune Omuya Salawu. I am the founder of Abuja College of Fashion and CEO, Dazoza Fashion Concept Ltd.
I’m from Kogi State, Nigeria. I reside and do my business in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria.
I’m married to a beautiful woman and God has blessed us with four awesome children.
I studied Accountancy at The Polytechnic Ibadan, a course I picked up while I was still struggling to get admitted to one of the leading universities here in Nigeria to study Political Science.
Eventually, my dream would come through when I gained admission into Unilag for my dream course, Political Science in 2011. This was 12 solid years after I completed my O’ Levels examinations in 1999. For the want of time, I won’t go into the details of how this delay came to be (smiles).
What influenced your decision to go into fashion designing?
Well, there are several factors that influenced my choice of vocation.
Firstly, the economic situation of our dear country Nigeria: By 2008, I was literally pressed on every side by responsibilities. At the time, I had younger ones in school that I was responsible for – education and upkeep. I also had to play an active role in catering for my mum; you know how it is here in Africa. So I really needed a side hustle that would guarantee my financial flow while in school. Also, after doing a deep study about fashion, I knew it would be a viable main hustle for me to fall back to after leaving school.
Also, I was also influenced by Pastor Tunde Bakare’s teaching on the topic “Occupational Identity.” He really challenged everyone to get a side hustle going by way of a major skill acquisition. While is it important to get proper formal college education, it has become imperative that we all have a set of contemporary hard skill sets; especially in line with our core passions. This is what eventually distinguishes us and sets us apart from the crowd. Even Jesus Christ besides his main earthly ministry, was known as the son of a carpenter; likewise, each of his disciples were known for one skill or another.
Thirdly, there was this popular designer back then, JD7, I read about her on a national News Paper. When I read through her background I was humbled. All this while I wanted to learn fashion design but my perception about people who enlist into local vocation training to become artisans back then in the village was a serious barrier. In those days, there was this erroneous understanding that people only took that path when they couldn’t cope with the challenges and demands of academic work in school or that their parents and/or guardians weren’t financially buoyant enough to see them through school – nothing could be more erroneous. I am sure many Nigerians are still trapped in this primitive thought.
So, the JD7 Interview with this tabloid set me free. Thus, I got me a fashion school to enroll in – that was how it all started.
You started out as a fashion designer, how did you arrive at having a world class fashion school?
In the beginning I never thought of owning a fashion school let alone teaching. One of my fears growing up was teaching. I always believed that I don’t speak well; that I am not fluent and that I am shy.
When I enrolled in a fashion school somewhere in Ikeja, Lagos state, Nigeria, unfortunately there were no adequate trainers. The only trainer we had was the proprietress of the school and she was not frequently absent. So back then, after we had acquired foundational knowledge and we were able to understand concepts on our own, we resolved to tutor ourselves. We would browse our textbooks, read and digest topics and come to class to share our understandings with our classmates. We did more of self-teaching.
At graduation, I knew I was still a green horn and needed more in-depth knowledge so I volunteered to teach there for a year, and she granted my request because she really needed someone to partner with her especially one who would always be available. This experience enhanced my lecturing skills and made me fall in love with teaching.
When I saw my progress, I introduced a program called “Fashion School in Your House”. This school was aimed 100% at the working class prospective students. I would go to them in the convenience of their homes to teach them. It was a “first of its kind” solution. My first student back then, Cynthia, is now in Singapore, doing very well in the same line.
The money I made from this was what I used to rent my first space at Ogba Road, Agege, Lagos, Nigeria and that was how Fortino Fashion Academy. Abuja College Of Fashion followed shortly after. One of our alumni, Abimbola is now in the US and yet another, Christy is now in Cyprus. A sizeable number of our alumni have gone on to become international fashion brands.
What is your favourite part of being a fashion designer?
My favourite part of being a fashion designer is the ability to train and mentor more youths into world-class fashion professionals who are even doing better than me today in the industry. Some of these great guys are doing exploits within and outside the country today.
What will you consider your worst moment or greatest challenges so far in your journey?
As a typical Nigerian, it will be counter intuitive of me to mention inadequate power supply as a challenge; same goes for high rental costs. These are perennial challenges all business face here in these climes and they still manage to break even and yet, still manage to make some reasonable profit. All these were pre-existing challenges before the business was conceived. We therefore had to work around them.
But my greatest challenge as vocational Studies academia is the inability of government to inject Vocational Studies into our school curriculum.
I have sponsored a petition online, I have written to our representative concerning sponsoring a bill to restructure our National Youth Service Corps into National Youth Skill Commission. I proposed a system where the NYSC program will be restructured to partly solve the challenge of rising unemployment in the country.
Imagine, a system where the compulsory service year for our youths is used to train them on the skill acquisition of their choice for a period of 6months. Thereafter, they are mandated to practice with their trainers for another 6months. At the end of the one year exercise, the federal government settles them with #500,000.00 as start-up grants. The resultant effect will be awesome. Many of these youths roaming the streets in search of paid employment, would become employers of labour and not otherwise. Government turning a blind eye to this idea is because the challenges are enormous. However, my vision is to take as many youths as possible off the streets through skills and entrepreneurial development.
I once read in one of our local tabloids that the Federal Government is planning to spend about #1m on each Corp member. Therefore, I made the following suggestions to the Federal Ministry of Youths and Sports development:
1. That all NYSC orientation camps to be turned to skill hubs.
2. That #100, 000 be used for the training of each individual Corps member
3. That #500, 000 be giving to each Corps member as start-up capital after the training.
4. A mentoring and monitoring commission be set up to guide and mentor them to success.
What are your greatest achievements?
My Greatest achievement is in the number of fashion entrepreneurs I have trained and mentored to success in the industry.
So far, we have trained over 300 designers and most of them are doing great.
Another achievement worth mentioning is the speed at which we rose from our humble beginnings to become one of the most famous quality-driven fashion schools in Abuja.
Abuja College of Fashion started in August 2018 and within four years, we have become one of the most sought after fashion schools in Abuja. We are not taking this for granted; we return the glory to God Almighty.
What is the secret behind your success in life?
Besides the GOD-factor, the secret behind our success is our attitude of commitment to diligence, sincerity and continuous innovation. Also, it is true that we run a business but we have not allowed our humanity to be sacrificed on the altar of profiteering. We often run free training programs for students who can not afford the tuition. Sometimes these people recommend us to people that have brought us great deals.
What is your advice to the youths struggling to find a career path in life?
My advice to the youths is that no career is small as long as you find fulfillment and joy in it. All that is required is adequate training. Offer something in place of money to get trained even if money is the problem.
Education is important but skills is more important; get trained and get started.
Thank you for your time, sir.
The pleasure is mine.
Facebook: Fortune Omuya Salawu
