‘I Ditched School For 12 Years, Did Bus Conductor To Survive Teenage Poverty’ – MD Amolab Healthcare Ltd

Personality Interview:

‘I Ditched School For 12 Years, Did Bus Conductor To Survive Teenage Poverty’ – MD Amolab Healthcare Ltd

*Alhaji (Dr.) Asiru Basiru Amoo, MD, AMOLAB Healthcare Limited*

The Managing Director, AMOLAB Healthcare Limited, Alhaji Asiru Basiru Amoo has revealed how he survived from the pangs of poverty as a teenager.

A native of Iseyin, in Iseyin local government, who hailed from Ayedun compound, Koso, where many popular individuals like the late Professor Abiola Peller, the Makossa King, Prof. Y.K Ajao and many others hailed.

Basiru attended primary and secondary schools in Iseyin but had several delays in accomplishing his dream of having education at his young age.

He told The Chronicler Newspaper over the week how he left his mother at the age of two and a half years to live with his grandmother and some years after, she died, which led to his being taken up by an uncle.

The uncle, according to Alhaji Basiru promised to enroll him as a trainee chemist at Igbojaye, but he took him to farm there. This did not sit well with the young Basiru and he left Igbojaye after eight months and he became a conductor of a commercial bus.

”From my childhood period, I was not always with my parents, it was always about survival, so they left me with my grandmother, they would visit at their convenient time and I visited them also.

”Grandma died in 1986 and I had to follow an uncle who was a local chemist, he later promised my parents that he would take me to another community to continue to learn chemist work but on getting to the place at Igbojaye, I realized that he only needed me for farm work, I endured farming for eight month and left.

”That was how I became a bus conductor to at Oyo town, just because I wanted to return to school, I spent three years as a bus conductor and later went back to Secondary school, you will not believe that when I got back to JSS 1 in 1990, my former mates were already writing their WAEC.

”I did not allow that to demoralize me, I later finished my secondary school education and went to search for survival again.”

The journey of survival took the young secondary school leaver to join other young boys from Iseyin to Warri, where he worked with a trade-medicine firm, owned by an Iseyin-born but native of Abeokuta, (Dr.) Sola David Ogundare, popularly called ‘Youngest Doctor’.

*The new AMOLAB Healthcare Limited factory at Ibadan *

Upon getting a place to work and feed himself, the hunger for more education overwhelmed him and he took time out of work to enroll at the Federal Institute of Agricultural Research, Jericho, Ibadan, popularly called MOOR Plantation.

Upon completion, Basiru went back to Warri at his former work place for his Industrial Training (IT), after which he started his own cottage herbal medicine company.

”It is easy to tell the story but very difficult to experience it, I so much appreciate my oga, Sola David Ogundare for leading the way for me, it was the foundation of where I am today.”

AMOLAB Healthcare Limited:

Amoo went back to Warri in 2005 and later set up his own outfit in 2007 with the intention to modernize trado-medicine.

*MD, Amolab Healthcare Limited, Alhaji Basiru Amoo, explaining some points to the Lagos State Commissioner for Health and other delegation at the last Lagos Herbal Fair*

He registered AmoFlux Capsule in 2008 as his first product an in December 2010, he registered the iconic Amo Bitters.

”I got an office in Port Harcourt and another one in Bayelsa, from there, we started to spread to the rest of the South-south and Sout-East Nigeria with many youths getting employed under the company.”

How Have The Products Faired?:

”The Success I have recorded from all the products under the Amolab Healthcare Limited is as a result of close monitoring of all units of the company, starting from production to promotion, marketing and sales.

”As much as I value delegation of duties, I still give credence to proper monitoring, nobody will do your business the way you want it done, Yoruba’s will say ‘Oloko ni oko nbeere’.

”Most of our customers never know that I own the company, this is because they see me join my employees to do the work.”

Future Projections:

“In the next one year, we are projecting the products that are presently under our banner and those still coming to be known not just all over Nigeria, but abroad.

”We fully participated in the last Second African Mini-Football Competition which held at Ilaji Resorts at Akanran in Ibadan, where we met with delegations from Morocco, Tunisia and other parts of the world.

”In 2020, we were at Dubai to meet with some business partners towards the promotion of Amo Bitters and Peri-g Liquor products.

By November this year, representatives from our company (Amolab Healthcare Limited) will be in South Africa to present our products for some major events and have discussions on partnership with foreign investors and in December, the same will happen in the United Kingdom.”

Advice To Youths:

”Youths of these days do not want to learn anything,they do not want to put their feet in the mud, they only want money for money’s sake, not for the good values that money is meant for, that is why you see most of them in illicit activities, drugs and crime.

”They should exercise patience like I did when I started, I experienced bad times and moments, endurance and tolerance are the keywords with determination,” he enjoined the youths.