Photograph — Techpoint.ng

In the afternoon on Monday, December 29, 2014, Yemi Osinbajo visited a local restaurant in Yaba, a few kilometres away from the University of Lagos (Unilag) where he taught as a Law professor some years before. While he was a lecturer at Unilag, Osinbajo would often visit the restaurant to have lunch. However, that Monday afternoon, he wasn’t there to break bread – he was there for serious business. It was the heat of the campaign season for 2015 Nigerian general elections and his campaign needed grassroots votes, and this was the place to rake them in. Surrounded by boisterous youth and old acquaintances, he called for the people to support him and his running mate, Muhammadu Buhari, in what would become the most iconic election in Nigeria’s democratic history. Months later, Osinbajo was sworn in as the vice president of Nigeria, serving under President Buhari. His presence at the restaurant meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but for Abdullahi, the manager of the restaurant, it opened his eyes to something he hadn’t realised before: his restaurant – White House – was more popular and iconic than he could have ever imagined.

Yemi Osinbajo visits White House, Yaba during election campaign season in December 2015
Photo Credit: White House, Yaba

“At first, I underrated this place,” Abdullahi tells me, “but two things happened that made me change my mind.” Osinbajo’s visit was one of them. “The other was when one radio journalist came to ask me if he could feature the restaurant on his show, ‘Unusual Business’. ‘Ah ah, unusual business?’ I asked. ‘What is so unusual about our business?” Abdullahi says, as he shifts in his chair. “The man now explained to me that they usually take interest in small businesses that have been around for more than 10 years, considering that the average lifespan of a small business in Nigeria is short (5 years). So, I asked him how he got to know about White House, and he told me that he’d been hearing a lot about the place and decided to come and visit.”

Before it became the popular buka (local restaurant) that it is today, White House was a one-woman business operating as a food stand and doubling as a catering service, one of the many entrepreneurial ventures of the late Alhaja Aminat Aliyu. Alhaja had tried her hands at so many things before she started this food business, Abdullah tells me, with the look of a son proud of his mother’s achievements spread all over his face. “In fact, we came to this current location through a benefactor, Samuel Olabanji Iluyemi. He was a Christian and she was a Muslim, but it didn’t matter,” he says.

Samuel owned several properties, some of them under construction at the time, so he’d call the Alhaja to set up food to cater to the site workers. She moved to three different places before she arrived at the current space White House sits now – on Chapel Street, Sabo Yaba.

Photo Credit: Techpoint.ng

“How did White House get its name?” I ask, and he smiles, as if he’d been waiting for the question. Then he gets up from his seat and leads me through a door at the back of the restaurant. When we get outside, he points to a semi-demolished white building, which had now faded. “There was a couple living in that building many years ago. The husband was a Nigerian but the wife was Ghanaian. When the husband died, the wife wanted to sell the building, so she offered it to Samuel,” he says. “Samuel then offered the property to my mother free of charge.” She set up her food business in the space in front of the white building. “So, anytime people want to identify this place, they would say ‘Go to that white house.’ Then people started knowing this place as White House, and eventually, we adopted the name.” The business was registered in 1999.

Abdullahi shares that White House has benefited from their family structure – polygamy. His family is a large one and his mother was one of four wives. But theirs is a harmonious family and it shows in the way the business is run. While Abdullahi manages the Lagos branch, his brother, who worked with Alhaja from the beginning, manages the branch in Garki, Abuja. According to  Abdullahi, it is a completely informal structure, built on familial trust. The workers are either family members or friends of the family. He also tells me that the business has been so successful that their mother was able to send all her children and stepchildren to school with earnings from the restaurant.

A large family doesn’t just help solve any workforce challenges, it also helps fill certain supply channels. Abdullahi tells me that one of his sisters who sells seasoning products is in charge of supplying all the seasoning White House uses. She supplies two weeks worth of seasoning upfront for 300,000 naira. Another sibling supplies the fish they cook, another supplies elubo (yam flour).

Four years after their mother’s death, the business she started is still booming and growing. Abdullahi says that White House’s success is built on the very same values that gave life to their mother’s dream. “Someone was compassionate to us, we also must be compassionate to other people,” he says. He points to a blue show glass behind us which belongs to a young man who makes shoes, using the space free of charge. To my left, there is also a rent-free fruit stand. “Every night, we gather all the plastic bottles around so that in the morning, we can give them to the old women that go around collecting, for free.”

Abdullahi also attributes the success of White House to its value of humanity. “We treat our people like human beings and not like machines. We don’t look down on anybody.” He believes that people are the key to the success of any business.

When I ask him what lessons he has learned managing White House and seeing it grow, he tells me patience. “Any lasting business requires patience. What we have nowadays is people that want to make it quickly and don’t want to take time to see their business grow.” Another thing he mentions is the importance of listening to customers. “Our customers brought us here. It was some of our customers that pointed our mother to this place in Yaba. They were the ones that asked us to not only sell African dishes, but also continental dishes. Before it was just amala,” he says.

As we come out of the gate leading to the dusty road, walking back to the restaurant, he adds one last lesson. “Look at Aliko Dangote and my mother, they didn’t have degrees when they were starting out. They were not looking for all the books to read. They started and were learning as time went on. You can’t know everything at the beginning. You just have to start from somewhere.”

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