CITATION OF RT. HON. SABIT ADEYEMI IKUFORIJI, HON. SPEAKER, LAGOS STATE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

CITATION OF RT. HON. SABIT ADEYEMI IKUFORIJI, HON. SPEAKER, LAGOS STATE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY

Great men are products and makers of history. Beyond their human restraints and ingenuity, the lines they traverse on earth are given to them by the challenges and passions of their immediate environment.

The unfolding personality of Rt. Hon. Sabit Adeyemi Ikuforiji epitomizes the dramatic rise from grass to grace of a child of destiny whose extremely humble background and promising academic genius only combined to throw him up as an accomplished technocrat, consummate politician and seasoned administrator.

Sharing a similar circumstance of birth with the late business mogul and politician, Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the quintessential Lagos House of Assembly Speaker was the first surviving child of his poor parents, who having lost eight boys consecutively to infant illness, only had to thank the Almighty God for saving the young Adeyemi from the clutches of death.

Adeyemi Ikuforiji was born on Sunday, 24^thof August, 1958 in the then rustic but highly sociable community of Epe in the old Epe Division of Lagos State. Though his parents belonged to the lower ebb of the social ladder in the society, their informed appreciation of the import of western education as a means of socio-economic liberation, made them to enlist the young Adeyemi at the Local Authority Central School, Epe, where he had his primary education.

For his post-primary education, Adeyemi proceeded to Epe Grammar School in 1971 where his glowing record of brilliant performance in academic activities brought him to the limelight as a shining star.

It is refreshing that by the time Adeyemi got admitted to Epe Grammar School, only two or three candidates were reported to have previously passed their School Certificate Examinations in Grade one. Nobody else could attain this feat for a period of four years until June 1975 when Adeyemi Ikuforiji the young star broke the jinx when he emerged as the only student who passed with Grade one out of 105 candidates that sat for the examination. In the entire Epe Division, comprising of about six secondary schools, Ikuforiji was probably the only candidate who attained this feat.  This uncommon academic achievement, more than earning him a Government’s overseas scholarship to study in Romania, was to further strengthen the informed confidence of his indigent parents in education as a means of empowerment.

It is noteworthy that Adeyemi Ikuforiji was firstly awarded a Lagos State Relief scholarship in 1973 when he was in Form Three among the 104 students whose diligence and excellent performance in their studies saw them becoming proud beneficiaries of the scholarship scheme across the state.  On this joyful day, the 65-year-old Pa Ikuforiji, Adeyemi’s father, was said to have jumped on his armchair in excitement when Adeyemi came home to break the joyful news of scholarship award.

A promising star and Child of Destiny from birth, Adeyemi quickly seized the opportunity provided by the overseas scholarship and proceeded to Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj where he graduated in flying colours. Full of brilliant ideas and burning with great vision to be outstanding among his contemporaries, Adeyemi Ikuforiji immediately enrolled at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest where he obtained a Masters of Science degree in Economic Planning and Cybernetics in September, 1981. Back home in Nigeria, Ikuforiji saw the extreme gap between the vast human and material resource base in the country and the low managerial capacity of the industrial sector. His entrepreneurial instinct and desire to help in augmenting the level of productivity of the available manpower made him to enrol at the University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos to pursue a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree which was then seen in the country as an exclusive preserve of top management cadres in the public and private sector. He finally got his MBA degree in 1986.

On his return from his academic sojourn abroad, Ikuforiji had his compulsory National Youth Service (NYSC) at the Federal Housing Authority after which he joined IBWA (now Afribank) in 1983.

Given his advanced training and expertise in Information Technology as well as his inclination for innovative development, Ikuforiji was made the Project Coordinator for the Computerization Project designed for all the branches of Afribank across the country. Not long after, the Afribank’s management, noting the huge success and impact of the computerization project across their branches, made this Child of Destiny, Adeyemi Ikuforiji a member of the Bank’s 6-man Strategic Planning Team that worked with the Consulting firm of Arthur Anderson & Co to draw up strategic plans for the Bank. It is worthy of note that this development was the first of its kind in the Nigerian Banking Industry.

As a man that is full of brilliant ideas and one who is gifted with enterpreneural prowess, Ikuforiji saw the need to brace up his courage and launch himself out as an employer of labour when he left Afribank in 1992 and established his own business outfit, the Springfield Ventures Limited. Few years later, his adventurist spirit and knack for providing solution to nagging problems in the corporate sector saw him establishing the Next Century System Limited, a Software Consulting firm that developed the first indigenous and comprehensive banking software package that was eventually adopted and used in a couple of banks in Nigeria during that period.