“All I wanted to do was get involved in business” – Femi Otedola on why he didn’t go to university
Nigerian billionaire and chairman of First Bank Holding, Femi Otedola, has revealed why he never pursued a university education.
In his newly released 286-page memoir, Otedola explained that his lack of interest in academics led him to stop schooling after his Lower Sixth examination, choosing not to proceed to Upper Sixth.
According to him, his passion at the time was to work in his father’s printing press, which shaped the path that eventually led him into business.
“My parents enrolled me at the University of Lagos Staff School in 1968, at the age of six.
“But there was something about academia and me; we were not compatible. I finished primary school in 1974 because I repeated a class. Even when I was allowed to pass, I consistently anchored the bottom rungs of our end-of-term examination results. My interests were definitely not in academia.
“I started Form 1 at age 12 and was there for three years.”
“I started in Form 3 at Olivet, and as I rounded off the first year of my A Levels, my father was establishing his printing company, Impact Press, in Surulere, a residential and commercial district in Lagos State. I grew fascinated with the machines and told myself that my future would be inextricably tied to them. I managed to remain in school until the Lower Sixth examination was over. And then, I was finished; I never returned for my Upper Sixth. “All I wanted to do was get involved in business. “My father kept watch over me and drew me close,” he said in the book.
