I spent 10 years in banking in Nigeria, qualified as a UK-varsity-trained nurse at 43, retired after 22 years as a mental health nurse in London and I’m back in Lagos as a businessman

On 28 February 2022, I officially retired as a mental health nurse certified by the United Kingdom’s Nursery and Midwifery Council. 

I started my journey in mental health practice as a support worker in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, in east London. 

I remember the first time I was going for the interview for a support worker role, in 1996 or so, and how a Nigerian lady I used to know in northern Nigeria, told me one of the tasks I could be asked to perform was checking someone’s pulse and she demonstrated to me how best to do it. It happened exactly so. 

My name is Olamiposi Folaju.

I passed out in 1976 from Ibadan Boys’ High School.

A year later, I joined the National Bank of Nigeria (NBN) as a clerk in the Cocoa House, Ibadan branch, keeping and balancing ledgers, among other accounting duties.

At least two of my bosses in the bank’s District Office, located in the same Cocoa House, one of them, Mr Samuel Adedeji, often admonished me not to feel too comfortable – my pay was one thousand, four hundred naira a year - and forget about furthering my education. 

I was living in my own rented room at Lodge Street in Oke Ado. 

As with any ambitious young man in those days interested in going abroad for further education, I had applied and joined the UK Institute of Bankers (now Chartered Banker Institute) but I was putting all the forms I received under my bed in my apartment.

I had a girlfriend who was at the School of Midwifery in Ijemo, Abeokuta. I used to visit her family in Sagamu and I was always well-treated like a son. The mum would go to the market, buy live chicken and cook delicious meals.

On one of those visits, sometimes in 1978, it dawned on me that whenever I was returning to Ibadan, I never gave her a token gift of appreciation for her hospitality and warmth. I was always left with the money for transport back to Ibadan and some little change. I did not even go there with any kind of gift. That made me resolve that I must improve my condition.

On getting back to Ibadan, I brought out all the forms from under my bed, filled and sent the one from a school called Centre for Business Studies where one could go and read to sit for the Part 1 of the Institute’s examination. 

I also left NBN to work with a company in Ibadan, called C.E. Payne Ltd., dealing in hospital and scientific equipment. The owner of the company, Mr Richard Ogunrotimi, had one day walked into our branch where his company’s account was domiciled and asked if I knew someone who could manage his accounts department. I volunteered myself. 

On that role, my duties included travelling to deliver the equipment and follow up on payments with our customers. I once drove, in those safer days, all the way to Makurdi from Ibadan through Ife, Ondo, Ore, Benin, Asaba, Onitsha, 9th Mile Junction, Nsukka and so on. 

Once I decided that I would improve my condition, before I quit NBN, I had begun to set aside some money. My pay at the firm was much more than I was getting from the bank. Mr Ogunrotimi also gave me bonuses when satisfied with my performance. 

So, I had enough money to pay to go the Centre for Business Studies, Greenwich, London. 

One British pound exchanged for, I think, ninety-seven kobo to while one dollar was seventy kobo. 

And, you know, people travelled on Friday from London to have parties in Lagos and return straight to work on Monday. A return ticket on Nigeria Airways was six hundred naira.

Anyhow, on 4 September 1979, I left Nigeria for England to read banking.  Two of my five siblings - we were six, one is deceased, and I am second to the last - were at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, to see me off. My then-heavily-pregnant-with-twins sister gave me a parting gift of words which I did not fully understand then. "When you are there," she said, "remember the son of whom you are and don’t misbehave."

My immediate older sister and her now-late husband were in London then, so I had a place to stay.  Even so, there were times that I was so alone, and homesick and the thoughts of my mother at home would overwhelm me and I would start crying. Then my sister’s parting message to remember the son of whom I am and not misbehave would fleet through my mind.

This was the message that also made me not to be lax or feel too comfortable. So, while working in security with Reliance Security Services and doing my part-time banking programme, I also sat for some exams including that of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), and attended evening classes at South East London College, now Lewisham College. By 1981, I had obtained my Higher National Certificate (HNC) in business studies from the North London Polytechnic (now North London University). This certificate helped me, via exemption, to obtain Part 1 of the Chartered Banker Institute. The Part 2 was divided into three segments – three papers each in A and B and two papers in C. And one must pass each of the stages. When I got to the final paper, I did not pass it the first, second and third times. 

So, I registered for the postgraduate diploma in management studies at the Derby Lonsdale College of Higher Education (later called University of Derbyshire). From the train station to the college, when I went for the interview in Derby, I saw only a couple of Asians, no black person. To get into the bus from the school back to the station, passengers had to pay with coins but I had only paper currency. It was only when I wanted to pay that the driver drew my attention to that, and I was in front of the queue. It was one old, white lady who called me back and offered to pay. That was the first time, and perhaps the only time, that a white person was generous to me. On the train while returning to London and thinking if I would be comfortable returning to a place where I did not see any black person that I felt that, perhaps, the woman who paid my fare did that to get me quickly out of their town. That was the feeling I had, really. God forgive me if that was not so, but as a human being, I had to look for a rationale, rightly or wrongly, for that kind gesture. I eventually did not go for the post-graduate diploma, but it had more to do with the fees than my thoughts of being the only black. Out of the blue, the Conservative government of Mrs Margaret Thatcher introduced disparity in tuition fees' payment between home and overseas students. When I started to pursue the programme it was four hundred and ninety pounds but with the policy and being classified as a foreign student, I was expected to pay three thousand, six hundred pounds. 

By now, I had passed six out of the eight exams in Part 2 of the Institute of Bankers and I decided to return to Nigeria in December 1983. A day after, the coup which brought in Gen Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s military Head of State took place. 

I had my national youth service in Abeokuta, 1984/85, and my primary assignment at the Ibara branch of Union Bank. Immediately after, I got employed as a teacher at Methodist High School, Ogbe, Abeokuta. It was influenced by one of my customers at Union Bank who was a commissioner with the Ogun State Teaching Service Commission. 

I spent just about three months there when an opportunity to practise banking came. 

I used to attend the meetings of the Rotary Club, Ogba because the boss of my then-fiancé-later-wife-and-now-ex was the president. It was during one of the meetings that I met the late Mr Segun Durojaiye, who was then the Area Manager of the old Afribank, previously IBWA, in Kano, and who, in 1985, facilitated my employment by the bank.

I was posted to Dadin Kowa in Bauchi State. No, I was not going.

Fortunately, Durojaiye said because I was new to the north, I should be in Kano. That was it.

Things were all right till 1993 when the bank retrenched some staff and I was one of them. 

I got involved in supplies to some local governments, even as I spoke imperfect Hausa. In the evenings, I played chess with some friends under a tree. It was during one of such moments that one bloke claimed that he could get UK visa for three hundred and forty thousand naira and I was like, if I had such money I would be a successful businessman in Kano. But he had already given me the idea that I should return to the UK. This I did, in 1995, with help from here and there, and after this and that. On my return, I decided that with my experience as a support work in mental health, it would pay me better to return to that sector.  

That was how I ended up at the University of Greenwich in September 1997 and in June 2000 obtained a diploma of health education (nursing) and became a registered nurse with specialist training in mental health nursing (RMN) - licensed not to prescribe but administer medication, give injections and a few other things. My experience in support work gave me some edge, because some experienced support health workers are even better counsellors. 

I had some low and high moments practising as a mental health nurse in the UK, but I have now put those behind me.

I am going to be sixty-five years on 15 April, and, may be in future I may contribute to mental health practice here in Nigeria, but for now, I am finding my way around in Lagos, working on contracted projects while also considering various investments with some partners.