Femi Otedola has told the story of his life revealing that he struggled with academics to the point that he dropped out of high school.
“Academia and I 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,” those are some of the lines in his newly released memoir titled ‘Making It Big’, a 286-page book.
The newly launched memoir has climbed to No. 4 on Amazon’s Best Sellers in Business Biographies and Memoirs category.
It sits just behind Gary Stevenson’s “The Trading Game”, Simon Squibb’s “What’s Your Dream?” and Phil Knight’s classic “Shoe Dog”.
The billionaire businessman revealed that his challenge with academics made his parents to change his schools thinking he would turn the corner but the pendulum never swung.
The 62-year-old energy mogul said he was drawn to the world of business as opposed to classrooms saying, “My parents’ thinking was that all my siblings were boarders, and they seemed to be doing well.
“They thought this change would help turn around my attitude towards academia, but nothing changed.
“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. My sister taught me shorthand. I knew how to type and began typing letters for my dad. I prepared all his business correspondence. I was fascinated by the way printing machines treat paper. The white paper is placed on one end, the ink and plates are fixed, and the printed material comes out of the other end. It was captivating.”
