One on One with Sir Demola Aladekomo

Sir Demola Aladekomo is the Managing Director of Computer Hardware and maintenance systems popularly known as CHAMS Plc. His company was notarized in the Guinness book of world records as the largest cyber mall in the world in 2008 with centres in Lagos and Abuja.  He was responsible for the establishment of the first wide area networking on PC in Nigeria.

NACOSS EDITORIAL: Good day sir, can we meet you?

Sir Demola Aladekomo: My name is Demola Aladekomo, President of Nigeria Computer Society

NACOSS EDITORIAL: As a father, respected technocrats in Nigeria, if we may use that word, how have you been able to influence the life of your children?

 

Sir Demola Aladekomo: I believe the first thing is prayers, because we can’t do anything on our own, we depend on the Lord Almighty to help set them aright, showing the part to the Lord through our Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, is to give the very best of education. Thirdly, is being a good role model for them. If you are a drunk and come home every night drunk, you get into trouble regularly; what do you expect the children to come up with? So, I try to be a good father, keep good friends, the nature of one’s work, places one visits. Children are smart these days, they look at what you do and they learn it quickly. Another critical thing is the environment, as much as it is possible, we try to put them in a good environment. 

NACOSS EDITORIAL: what IT skills do you have? How proficient you are in computing?

 

Sir Demola Aladekomo: IT skill; I studied Computer engineering at the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University, and then went on to do my masters in Business Administration. I believe my skills have improved; they have changed for better as I grow older. I started doing computer engineering and maintenance of systems. It was a skill I got from my three months IT (industrial training) at Debris, which gave me a good foundation. I latter discovered back then in 1987 that maintenance will still go out of business, as a result of carefully watching the environment; when I started maintenance, I was possibly the only maintenance outfit in Lagos. Though, other companies did maintenance, but they had other businesses running concurrently too. Just like Debris, they were into maintenance too, but were more into training; but for Chams then, the core was maintenance. So within two years of running, people started coming into the business because they saw that we were doing well. So, by 1987 we latter started to acquire networking skills, which we did very well and had a lot of clients. We did local area networking, we moved to metropolitan area network and the wide area networking.

In 1990, we discovered that even networking was going to go out of fashion just in a matter of time. So then we went into payments; electronic payment. Chams started e-payments in 1994 and in 1995 we’ve already acquired a lot of skills in e-payments. Fortunately for us, we also got our hands on identity technology as a complementary skill to our e-payment skills. So for now, we try to specialize in certain areas and acquire a lot of skills.

Generally, people say they are into Hardware, software, networking, services and all that.  The services which is part of it is the one that is not well defined; because, those services can be a combination of more than one area and one doesn’t just look at it like that, because, you want to deliver a solution. Let’s say e-payment, you need some amount of software and yet you need some amount of hardware. So what we did with e-payments such as POS, cards, ATM terminals and the rest, was to merge the needed software and hardware skill together.

So right now,

I will say my skills are largely based on e-payment and card technologies not likely say software or hardware.

NACOSS EDITORIAL: if you had the opportunity to change something about the IT industry in Nigeria, what would it be?

Sir Demola Aladekomo: Probably not change, I come from the school of thought that nothing is bad or say nothing is completely bad; even Satan the devil is not completely bad (laughs). God has been trying to change him. Let’s say improve and probably not change. If there is one thing I’ll like to improve, if there is one certain thing that requires massive improvement, its education. Earlier when talking about my children, I mentioned education after faith in God, because education is the best way to mould a child. We need to improve our educational facilities. We need to look at our educational institutions and make sure that we get things to do about them. So that’s one area I’ll like to concentrate on. 

NACOSS EDITORIAL: Chams is leading IT Solution Company in smart card technology. How Chams has been socially responsible to the society? We mean the corporate social responsibility of Chams?

Sir Demola Aladekomo: We do a couple of CSR projects, the first we do regularly is called “soup kitchen” whereby our staffs during the weekend cook and give it to people that do not have food to eat.

At corporate level we sponsor an organization called “volunteer corp”. We teach public school students English, mathematics and what life is all about on Saturdays for three hours. We’ve been at it for almost twenty one years now and it has made a lot of difference, a lot of people have been produced as lawyers, doctors, architects; people that ordinarily would not have been produced from those schools.

Also, at another level we sponsor the arts. We have something called the “chams theatre series” where we do plays. We bought the entire rights to all D.O Fagunwa’s five books. We are also currently negotiating with Wole Soyinka’s books. We are looking at pepper Clark’s books; we are going to acquire the rights to about ten books which we will turn to theatre. Theater is something that a lot of people are not aware of. People only understand the Nollywoods and films. But there is something about the theatre that is like interactive relationship between you and the audience. It’s richer and more intellectually challenging. The other thing we also do which is in the arts is getting people to write books generally and that we are also doing very well. So those are the corporate socio responsibility that we do. 

NACOSS EDITORIAL: are there any political or social issues you feel passionate about?

Sir Demola Aladekomo: Yes and the one that I’ve found very obscene, I try not to make public comments about what is going on in the national assembly. But this latest scenario of the girl child, raping, child abduction act that they are considering is crime against humanity and I believe it should be condemned in all it ramification.  And based on the fact that the senate wasted their time towards looking at this underage marriage, instead of concentrating on issues that are crucial in our environment they went on looking at something as unintelligent as that. The security challenges in our environment is also something of a worry and is something we need to tackle, the Boko Haram, Niger-Delta militancy and kidnapping in the south west, armed robbery all over the country; these are thing I believe we need to tackle and we all need to use interconnectivity to tackle it.

NACOSS EDITORIAL: How will you rate the IT industry in Nigeria?

Sir Demola Aladekomo: Not excellent yet, but certainly we are growing, I believe that are quite a number of things that we need to encourage ourselves to do. We have done very well.

NACOSS EDITORIAL: we know you to be lover of Music and most especially classical music. How has been your music life and IT ?

Sir Demola Aladekomo: IT is my profession, arts generally are my passion. I love music, theatre, and literary works. I am passionate about arts and if you are passionate about something you will create thing for it. As humans we have a lot of time at our hands, we only need to prioritize. Off course, sometimes we drive ourselves too hard. Above all, one must be able to create reasonable time for what you like to do.

NACOSS EDITORIAL: Thank you sir for your time.

Sir Demola Aladekomo: God bless you.