By Sola Odumosu
History was made Monday, January 27th night in Lagos at the colourful Thisday Awards ceremony when serial digital entrepreneur, Leo Stan Ekeh, shared the same podium with his son, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh, as winners of the much-coveted awards.
The awards commemorated the 30th and 12th anniversaries of Thisday Newspapers and Arise News respectively.
While the father who is the Chairman of Zinox Group was honoured as CEO of the Year, his Oxford-trained son, Prince, the CEO of Konga Group, was decorated with the Young Global Leader Award for his transformative role in navigating Konga as a foremost composite e-commerce giant in Nigeria and Africa. It was historical, being the first time ever that a father and his son would be so honoured on the same night in the nation’s Infotech ecosystem.
Who is this Prince?
Prince Ekeh was 19 and a student at University of Lancaster, United Kingdom, when he birthed the idea of Yudala, a brutally ambitious e-commerce outpost. Majoring in Economics/Politics with a minor in Entrepreneurship, young Ekeh was not going to leave the idea merely as a paper concept. He was in a hurry to birth it to life. And while back home to serve his fatherland under the auspices of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Yudala was born, becoming a place of activity employing over 250 staff at that time. And ever since, he has navigated the company to the crest of e-commerce players in Africa. He would later top up his academic kit with an MBA from Oxford in addition to numerous entrepreneurial certifications from Lagos Business School; Leysin American School, Switzerland; Harvard; among others.
Yudala was the first composite e-commerce outpost in Nigeria (a hybrid of online-offline one-stop shop), an idea that has caught global attention and is now being replicated across the continent. Smart and endowed with bullish strength and uncommon intuition to sniff the next opportunity, Prince in 2018 achieved what many thought impossible. His start-up, Yudala, acquired Konga, a top player in Nigeria’s e-commerce space in a landmark merger which became effective May 1, 2018. The young whiz has since expanded Konga to a leading e-commerce house in Africa, retaining the composite character of Yudala. He has creatively expanded the market share value and networth of Konga by building its business verticals to include logistics, fintech, travel and leisure.
Young Prince Ekeh is not new to awards. He had been nominated for the prestigious Future Awards for Business Excellence, and featured as Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD), in response to the proclamation by United Nation’s General Assembly Resolution 68/237; and had been awarded Icon of Human Transformation by the National Association of Nigerian Students. The Thisday award is therefore another feather to the decorated cap of the smart entrepreneur in a hurry to make his own mark.
Despite his outstanding accomplishments at such a young age, Prince remains humble and unassuming, a strong virtue he inherited in double measure from his parents, one of Nigeria’s most self-effacing power couples.
Leo Stan, a peculiar breed
His father, popularly called Leo Stan, was honoured with the CEO of the Year Award in the private sector, the only CEO in the highly competitive and sometimes treacherous private sector to be so honoured. The historical and symbolic moment was not lost on him. He recognised the honour of sharing the same platform with his son, both being rewarded for their peerless contribution to Nigeria, nay Africa, digital economy. It was a rarity, more so, as they shared the same podium with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who was voted as Thisday Man of the Year for his bold reforms and leadership exemplum on the African continent.
Leo Stan deserves the honour. And he has seen many in his 38 years of entrepreneurship and unrelenting promotion of digital democracy in Nigeria. One of Nigeria’s best Presidents and an African statesman, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a huge fan of Ekeh, honoured him as Icon of Hope for being a pathfinder and role model to the younger generation of Nigerians in 2001. This is in addition to numerous doctoral degrees (Honoris Causa) conferred on him by networth universities and polytechnics across the country.
It was no coincidence that when Thisday turned 30 years, it could not find any Nigerian worthier than Leo Stan for the award of CEO of the Year. It’s both instructive and divine especially when you consider that Leo Stan was the man who computerized newspaper houses and advertising agencies and printing presses in Nigeria in the late 80s and early 90s when many Nigerians were still in awe of the computer and all its magical, even mythical, wand.
Since returning from the United Kingdom to start his entrepreneurship odyssey in IT 38 years ago, Leo Stan has stood out as a bustling serial digital pioneer and disruptor with an elephantine ambition to computerize Nigeria. A mission he has achieved on many fronts.
His zeal and passion have placed him at the cusp of the competition with many firsts to his badge. The first internationally certified indigenous computer brand in West Africa and the first computer brand in the world to incorporate the Naira sign (N) on its keyboard. First Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) in sub-Saharan Africa to receive Microsoft Windows Hardware Quality Lab Certification (WHQL); first Microsoft Prime Production Online Automation Partner in Sub-Saharan Africa with the OA Version 3.0; first Intel Premium Partner; first OEM in West Africa to attain the ISO 9001-2015 Certification; first to acquire the Google Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA) in West Africa; first OEM in Nigeria to introduce renewable energy and lifestyle products and attaining the status of Intel Platinum Partner in sub-Saharan Africa.
When he launched the Zinox brand in 2001, it was not just an addition to the crowd of indigenous-branded computers, it was a fitting counterfoil to the dominance of foreign computer brands in Nigeria. Zinox had since become an African brand.
Zinox has proven both competence and capacity at home and other parts of Africa. It was the preferred technology that powered several mega projects including the 8th All Africa Games codenamed COJA 2003; the 18th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Nigeria in 2003; the All-Africa University Games held in Bauchi in 2004; the 7th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Africa Union (AU) held in The Gambia in 2006. It has also undertaken critical interventions by transforming the Nigeria and Guinea Bissau electoral systems from analogue to digital. The conduct of Nigeria general elections in 2007 and 2011 using digitally produced voter register for the first time in Nigeria was because of Zinox. It has also fully provided the technology for the postponed first ever national digital census in Nigeria.
Leo Stan is an intentional family man who has built a digital family. His wife, Lady Chioma Ekeh, a mathematician and chartered accountant oversees the biggest tech distribution company in sub – Saharan Africa, TD Africa. His first son and co-awardee, Prince Nnamdi Ekeh leads Konga. His first daughter, Mrs. Gozy Ajogun (nee Ekeh), an alumnus of London School of Economics (LSE) oversees Task Systems, an ICT solutions firm under the Zinox Group, the second daughter Miss Chidalu Ekeh with Masters in Digital Marketing from Imperial College, London, is a Fintech whiz, while his other two younger sons also play in the tech space. He has added digital value to Nigeria and Africa. He deserves his award and the historical honour of being garlanded with his son. It’s double congratulations to Africa’s dominant digital family. It was truly their night.
· Odumosu, an ICT media connoisseur, writes from Lagos
