My ultimate goal is to build a car- Oduwa Agboneni, mechanical engineer and automotive trainer, consultant

Her name is Oduwa Agboneni, a Mechanical Engineering graduate of the University of Benin. She started off as an engineer with Coscharis Motors in 2006 and a year after, she joined the telecommunications industry. In 2015, the quest for career fulfilment led her into starting Nenis Auto Care with a staff strength of two. Today, she has 15 persons on her payroll and over 30 interns. In the nearest future, Agboneni, one of the very few female auto technicians in Nigeria says she hopes to start manufacturing her own vehicles, she tells us more in this interview with JOY ANYIM. 

When did you start Nenis Auto Care?

I started this business in 2015, January 9, to be precise.

What prompted the idea of owning an auto care garage?

I read Mechanical Engineering at the University of Benin. Coincidentally, all my internship while at university were done in auto care garages. This exposed me to the automobile industry. In 2006, I was among the first set of 25 girls employed by Coscharis Motors.

I worked there for a year and left for the telecommunications industry. But after a while, I just was not satisfied. So, sometime in February 2014, I was having a discussion with my mum and sisters in Benin, Edo State. They advised me that instead of working for someone, why don’t I open an auto diagnostic centre.

They offered to support me and insisted I should not work for anyone. That day, I called my husband on phone and told him what my mum and sisters said. He told me he was in, that if that was what I wanted to do, he would support me. Fast forward to September 2014, I got this place. I registered the business in November same year and in 2015 January, I opened for business.

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What aspect of auto care does Nenis Auto Care specialise in?

We call ourselves automotive consultants. As automotive consultants, we take our customers through the journey of making the right buying decisions and maintenance. So if you need to make up your mind on a vehicle to go for, depending on your needs, we are available for advice. We do a pre-vehicle purchase assessment, we sell vehicles, we do maintenance.

So, when it comes to giving you a schedule of how you should maintain your car, we do that too. What we preach here is more of preventive maintenance, we believe you save more when you have a routine maintenance schedule or plan for your vehicle. Meaning when it is time to do an oil change, you do it, when it is time to do a tyre rotation, which so many people ignore, you do it too.

When you do your tyre rotation once in six months, your tyres will carry you for a long time. But people prefer to do a reactive. We are in the space of when your vehicle gives you signs what you should do before it develops a fault and that is preventive maintenance. We also do reactive, which is when your vehicle is down.

Also, after your vehicle has achieved its total life, we are into recycling of vehicles. Vehicles can be revamped, if you want to revamp it, you can turn them into scrap and still get some useful parts. So we also do that.

We import vehicle from the USA and Europe which we sell. We also sell used vehicles. For example when our clients want to sell their vehicles, we help them sell. I also have some dealers who I connect with buyers. So, I am an automotive consultant. We even produce car wash soap, air fresheners and we sell car accessories.

How does it feel to be doing a job dominated by men ?

First, I would want to state that my upbringing prepared me for where I am today. I have already been standing in the men’s world from my secondary school days. While in secondary school, I joined the technical drawing classes because I had made up my mind to be an engineer. We were not up to five girls in that class. It was dominated by the boys. Also when I got into the university to study Mechanical Engineering, in a class of over 159 persons we had just three girls. For me, that was the foundation. I was already used to the industry I was coming into.

However, being in a male-dominated business is quite impressive. If it were another woman in my position, I will commend her and give her the support that she requires because it is not easy. Being in the midst of guys running this kind of business means you just have to be on your toes, you need to work really hard. I commend women who are in a gender sensitive industry like mine.

Have you ever been underrated by a customer, especially a male customer,  based on your sex?

Yes, I have had men who are irritated by the fact that I am a female auto care expert. Well it is just the stereotype, and we need to work towards changing that. When such people come to Nenis Auto Care, if they don’t want a woman to touch their car, I have guys here who are auto-care experts, so the guys will go ahead and attend to them. Gender mainstreaming is not that it should be women everywhere. All we are saying is that it should be a blend of both sexes. Even these days, unlike when taking cars to the auto care garage to fix is a man’s job, women now bring their cars themselves to fix. Even some men now prefer me fixing their cars. Tell them someone else will attend to them, they will insist on coming when I am around.

Tell us more about the partnership with Nigerian Institute of Mechanical Engineers (NIME), to train 500 girls…

Yes, NIME is to train 500 girls in Lagos and Abuja in auto-mechanic skills. Nenis Auto Care and another female auto care expert in Abuja will be training the girls. Now we have the first 60 we are training in Lagos and Abuja.

Have you at anytime accessed fundings or support from the government or private bodies?

Well private support, yes. I started business in January 2015, that same year, I saw the application on the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme (TEEP) online and I gave it a try, I even saw it late and I submitted my application late. Funny enough, I was successful. I got the money from there to develop my business. From then on, they have been very supportive even in terms of patronage. From the government in Nigeria, I have not accessed any financial support. But I remember I had  participated in the youth enterprise support  program by the Bank of Industry (BOI), in 2017. We trained for 12 weeks, we had online classes with an institute in Kenya,  it was supported by Enterprise Development Centre (EDC), and they were supposed to give us a loan for our business. If you pass all the courses, you will go to EDC for about a week training. After that, you apply for the loan. I was not interested in taking a loan then, so I just got the knowledge from the training and did not follow through to get the loan because the bureaucracy was too much and maybe then too I was not too exposed. I just felt it was not a good idea to take a loan for a business I was just starting.

But at the international level, I have had some form of support, not necessarily on monetary level. I participated in the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), an Initiative by the  former US President Barack Obama. I also participated in Vital Voices by former US first lady, Hillary Clinton, where I travelled to Ireland for training and we got grants. Presently, I am in 10,000 women Goldman Search, a training for women entrepreneurs. It is sponsored by Bank of America. Recently, I just got the Tech Women Fellow by the U.S. I will be travelling to the U.S. where I will be spending five weeks and will be mentored in one of the companies in Silicon Valley. Those of us selected from across the world will be trained in our chosen field and my chosen field was green technology, how we can make the automotive industry clean, environmental friendly and how we can reduce waste in the automotive industry.

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Any major challenges in this business?

Business has been good. No regrets, whatsoever. But then I won’t say business has been flourishing the way it was before now. The economy has affected business. Customers are driving their cars, managing them, not wanting to do maintenance because the economy is not friendly. It is not like what it used to be, I must say. But then, business has been good so far. We just keep pushing, we just keep moving.

How are you able to balance your job and family?

I am a mum, I have four boys and I definitely need to balance my home and my work life. When it comes to the home front, our society believes that it is meant for the women to take care of the home front. As a woman combining home with job, and at the same time still being social, it is really not easy.

You have to help yourself and have a support structure. One thing that helps me is that I use a daily planner. When I am planning my activities for the day, I also look at developing my personal life. I work on my personal life, which includes my health, I work on my business and family life daily. I wake up at 4:00am daily, and I have a two-hour power-packed personal time. I draw up my task for the day and wake my kids by 6am. So by 7:00am they are set for school. Because I have a baby who is less than a year, I have a crech in my auto care garage, so this means that a nursing mother can also enrol to become an auto care consultant. Personally, I advocate that we make our work place female-friendly. We definitely need to advocate for creches in organisations. When I am close to my baby, my mind is at rest and I will not be scared of what is happening to my baby anytime I am working, because he is in sight.

Would you categorise yourself as one of the successful entrepreneurs in Nigeria?

Well, I am not there yet, but yes, I will. When I hear my interns talk, see them write, and exhibit passion for the job, that is just my success story.

Where do you see your business in the nearest future?

I am an entrepreneur and there is a difference between a technician and an entrepreneur and that is why I describe myself as automotive consultant. I want to do everything about automobile from sales to maintenance to comfortability, so when you think of Nenis Auto Care, you are going there because of the way your vehicle will look, the accessories you will get, the comfort you will get. In the future, we hope to be able to build a vehicle. I also want to be involved in everything that has to do with automobiles.

Any word for young entrepreneurs and  women aspiring to achieve same feat?

Whatever you want to do, as long as you believe in yourself, you can achieve it. Just keep dreaming. Dream big, because I dream big. And work towards achieving your dreams. You have to be determined. I was not scared of the unknown when I started, I was not sacred of if I won’t get customers, I just believed in myself and started. Today see where I am.