I come from the famous city of Lagos the former capital of Nigeria. I have been studying and working in Saudi Arabia before I came to Canada. I initially visited Canada in April 2005, left and came back again in April 2007. I currently enrolled in Masters in Business, Entrepreneurship & Technology at the University of Waterloo.

Mr Biggs is a famous restraurant chain in Lagos, similar to McDonalds in the US and Canada. See Lagos online.

Coming to Canada was a long, long, journey, I applied for immigration in 1999 and everything was ready by 2001, but I delayed the application to include my wife, which further delayed the application until 2005. I have a masters degree in Structures, specialized in concrete materials from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I always had the ambition to start my own business one day. Unfortunately the environment in Saudi Arabia isn't very conducive for entrepreneurs in general and foreigners in particular. The economic system promoted by the government concentrates almost exclusively on creating employment for its citizens.

Agip House can be seen from Broad Street Lagos, the financial capital of Nigeria, where the Nigerian Stock Exchange is located, similar to Wall Street in the US or Bay Street in Canada.. See Lagos-online

Back in Nigeria, my mother was and still in an entrepreneur, she ran a number of businesses, especially a poultry farm from 1980 to 1987. I guess this was my first exposure to the entrepreneurship world. My mother didn't have the opportunity to study for an MBA, she was interested in started her own business even though she was employed full-time as a civil servant at the time; she frequently bought self-help books on accounting, running a business, etc, but never read much of them. Despite all this her business was still successful until she ran into a major problem in 1987: she bought the ingredients for the feedstock for her chickens, at that time there was only one supplier that imported the corn and other ingredients into the country; this supplier more or less supplied the entire market. The problem was that this supplied imported a particular batch of feed into the market, all of which was contaminated. The early receivers of the consignment like my mother suffered the most. In a matter of days her entire bird population including, layers, broilers and hatchlings (over 10,000 birds) were wiped out. I was determined to become an entrepreneur but at the same time, learn from my mother's mistakes: never rely on a single supplier, develop backup contingency plans, when you are in the position to make your own feed (my mother had her own mill) test the ingredients before proceeding, establish some form of quality control, have management, human resources procedures in place, the list goes on and on.

The former National Stadium in Lagos, a new stadium has been built at the new capital city, Abuja. See Nigeria on the web.