Mrs. Tosan Duncan Odukoya is an aviation professional of over three decades and currently the chief operating officer of Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited (BASL), operators of the Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two (MMA2). In this interview with Pearl Ngwama of Justnet News, she recounts her laudable experiences on her career growth, stressing that women must do the needful to be at par with the men in order to obtain positions to showcase their potentials. Every woman, she maintains must create a support structure to make room for development and growth in her career and not make an empty noise of not being given the opportunity to actualise her inherent potentials. She however, encouraged the new form of wellbeing at work places when care and concern are given to individual workers. To achieve this, she said MMA2 is already running a flexible work-hour system for the staff. Odukoya is a workaholic who enjoys her work and makes sure it is a form of relaxation. She entails to become an enviable role model not found anywhere yet.
Excerpts
Can we meet you ma?
Well, we want to thank JustNet News because it’s not everybody that goes through life that is asked to be met. So, my name is Tosan, beautiful Ishekiri name, which is Teorishe-san and it’s also Duncan, which is my father’s name, and Odukoya, which is my husband’s name and I grew up here in Lagos.
I went to the primary schools, I went to the secondary schools; beautiful ones and then I went to A-level school and I went to university, all here and I did my national service which is what we call it in my mother’s hometown, which is Accra, Ghana. So, I did the youth corps, then I ran away many years ago but it didn’t work out.
So, I went to Ghana and it is actually in Ghana that I caught my teeth in my career where I began with the airlines, after a few jobs here and there. So, I worked for British Airways for about 10 years then I came over to Nigeria in the early 00s to work for the same British Airways as a form of West Africa promotion. I worked as the operations manager for British Airways and then from there, at a time, I was asked to move to Virgin Nigeria.
You know, Virgin Nigeria was a joint collaboration with the Richard Branson Virgin Atlantic. So, this is an aviation girl, I have always been an aviation girl. And I worked for them when it comes to what we call the IOSA, which is the IATA Operational Safety Audit which actually accredits an airline. After that, for a while, I worked then with a travel company. Now, these are big, huge international travel companies and they work with what we call business travels, so, we’ve got big in multi-nationals – the Chevrons and the Shells of this world they cannot always say, go and buy your tickets from, online. So, these are big companies and I worked for one of them for about two, three years. And at the time, Virgin Atlantic then said they want to start up in Ghana.
So, I ran the Virgin Atlantic system in Ghana for three solid years of its life; it was in Ghana for only three years. At that time, Singapore Airlines was part owner and they sold to Delta, which is the American airline and then the Americans said no, we want to take the model and the vision of Virgin Atlantic from being worldwide to focusing on what they call the North Atlantic. So, that ended the careers of Virgin Atlantic in places like Mauritius, Kenya and even in Ghana as well. Even, I think they came out of Dubai, as far as I know Virgin Atlantic is more of a North American, they came out of South Africa, they work with Nigeria and a lot of North America. So, that’s for their vision.
After a number of years, I thought, look, I’ve worked for the international aviation sector; in Ghana then I was approached by Africa World Airlines and they said, look, why don’t you bring that model of understanding of what the multinationals of aviation sector can do and bring it into our local setting. So, I worked with them as their head of commercial for a number of years, and I was able to speak to them to grow the model between Nigeria and Ghana where they used to do four a week to Nigeria from Ghana. And I said, you can’t do that; Nigeria and Ghana are not luxury goods holiday makers.
This is commerce, this is trade; we have to go daily so, somebody can go today, come tomorrow, go this morning, come this evening. I said, we need daily or double daily and now they do four times a day, for all these and for that they do remember me. It’s not who I am it’s about looking ahead of the system and trying to find out what is going to make it continue to grow. A lot of us have played in the sand as little children and for that ball to roll or for that hand to move we run ahead and we make the pathway easy for the ball to continue rolling. So, we have to have that vision. You see, children’s play is not a joke, it’s very scientific. We see it on some of the adverts. Yes when children are playing, they are actually creating the future. So, we run ahead of the ball and we continue to dig a hole so that the ball will keep rolling.
So, that is what it takes to be able to do this especially in our industry; our industry is a very futuristic industry and we have to make sure that we are able to think wide. Sometimes people say, oh, let’s think outside the box and I say, no, we are not able to think outside the box, there’s no box just keep on. So, sometimes we say, there is no box just keep going. This space is yours create it but then you need to streamline it, go ahead of the game and it works.
Then I actually came out of the aviation industry for a short while and I worked for a bank as their marketing and corporate communications head for about two years. I worked for a beloveth bank which was in Ghana and that is also here in Nigeria because I couldn’t separate my ties with both countries, I consider myself a complete West African when it comes to the way I’m able to have the synergy between Lagos and Accra; they are both tactics cities and I love it the way that we are trying to just bring ourselves closer.
Yes, the Jollof rice war will continue but one day try and take a spoon of Ghana jollof and take a spoon of Nigerian jollof, put them in the same plate you will see that each of the jollof will join together as one and you will never be able to taste the difference. It’s an amazing thing.
So, after that, you know It’s a long story but in February last year I met the chairman of Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited and he said, I’ve heard about you, I’m looking for competency. I’m also looking for integrity which I spoke to you a little earlier about as one of our core values. He said, when do you want to start? I said, okay sir, I can start tomorrow.
And honestly, it’s been an amazing journey, it’s been a synergy of minds and hearts especially with my team members and I said to myself I’ve been working in the aviation industry for 31 years but with the airlines; on the tarmac, in auditing, in compliance, in ticketing, in sales, on the grounds, doing a load sheets. I have never run an airport in my life and I said, wow, what a great career drive and push but when I came in I’m dealing with every member of my team that have done something like that before. I’m dealing with operations, I’m dealing with safety, I’m dealing with security, with compliance, I’m dealing with marketing, I’m dealing with space management. It has been a journey and a half. I think if we have our minds and hearts working together it’s only for the good. That’s what I feel. So that’s who I am, that’s in a nutshell.
Now, along your career path what can you say was your most memorable or strategic experience that you always look back at?
There are many I can say but I think if I’m just to make it short and sweet and simple I remember having worked for an airline; it was a foreign national airline. I came from ticketing, I went to administration and I went back to baggage. I came forward, I went back, and I became a duty manager and then one day the company abroad said we are looking for a West Africa operations manager.
We like to work from within, we’re not going to bring somebody from outside but within West Africa and all the stations from Abuja to Accra to Lagos we have about 11 of you so anybody can apply, they told me. And I thought oh my goodness. So when I applied to become the operations manager it was what they call working amongst equals. It is called working amongst colleagues. They are not going to bring one of their white guys. They said no, we are going to keep it within West Africa, we need an operations manager over all the duty managers.
And so when I applied, putting all my credentials, I put in everything but the people who have been working in this company years before me also applied because at that time the expatriates were the ones that took the higher positions so all of us Africans we get to a point and we can’t go any further. How do you break the ceiling? How do you go to the next level? And some big guy in England had said you know what, we are breaking the ceiling but we are going to break it from within.
I am a woman, I was one of the youngest, I had just come, I was only 11 years in the system and some of those people have been working 19 years in the system. There were applications from about six out of the 11 duty mangers that applied for the job of which I was one of the six.
I tell you we didn’t hear from them for about two to three weeks and they said okay it’s time for interview. I think they disqualified, not disqualified but they said no to one or two; you can’t. We were down to four of us and I was the youngest. I was the only woman. What are we going to do? At a point do you know what happened? They did the normal interviews and they said okay you will hear from us. Everybody went in for the interview carrying their big files; this is who I am – what I have done, how long I have worked here. Oh my goodness and I remember they called back and they said to me, Madam we’ve whittled it down, we’ve done all the disqualifications and we’ve looked at it carefully.
We have only one problem and they said to me that they have only one challenge. If we make you the operations manager over 11 of your colleagues, you are among the youngest and you are the only woman. How are you going to convince us that you can handle it? And as I always say, it was only by the sheer grace of the almighty that I was able to answer and I said; let me tell you something, there are different types of leaderships. There is leadership where you are lording it over them, there is leadership where you are dragging them with carrot and stick, there is leadership where you are informing them, and working it around. Then there is what I call collaborative leadership – let’s do this together but if there is problem it’s my neck but we are going to take a decision together as a team; what do you think? What do you feel? How would you do this if you were in my shoes? But they also know that if they say who is to blame? I will take the blame as the leader.
So I explained to them how I saw collaborative leadership and how I will work with my so called elders especially in the African setting which has a lot of cultural exigencies when you look at it and a lot of protocols and a lot of dovetailing and hello sir, hello ma, I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry ma. So I think they found it fascinating because these our abroad people some of them may not have some of these cultures but they know they are working in a setting, that’s what makes a multinational because they have to learn about the cultures of the places that they operate in.
By the grace of God I got the job, I became the operations manager West Africa and on day one they saw me working with it. I went straight to my colleagues and I said listen guys you’ve been in this a long time; there’s a reason why I’m here but there’s a reason why they trusted me to be here. How are we going to do this together and honestly from that day on they saw that I will respect you, I will collaborate with you but I will go out there and I will take a bullet if I have to, for the sake of the team. So I believe this was one of my greatest experiences working in the industry.
Having said that do you think women have enough opportunity in Nigeria and outside Nigeria to showcase their potentials?
Absolutely not a difficult question and it’s a question which I won’t say I’m tired of answering. But I will say that listen, listen, listen, listen, you call me horrible, you say oh what is wrong with you? Don’t you support women? Are you a feminist? None of all those things, I totally believe in the place of a woman when it comes to the cultural setting. I don’t really have a problem in that setting of marriage, of motherhood because till tomorrow whether you identify or you don’t identify, it is a woman who will give birth to a child. It is a woman who will nurture a child, you cannot change it and it is a father who will be the father figure. There is no mistake from what the creator of this universe has said, everybody has their place, okay.
Therefore when you say women or no women are they being given the opportunity? Have the women stood up and taken their rightful position, have the women worked together to make sure that they are the ones who are trusted to do what they have to do or that they have worked hard? The same woman that will complain that they are not giving us the right, they are not working with us, she’s the same woman that would say, ‘please I can’t come today my child is not well.’
So I remember I had to deal a lot with that; I’ll find sisters, I’ll find friend, I’ll find mother, I’ll beg father so that I’m not always out of the office because child is sick. Child must go to hospital, I don’t have a problem but sometimes we want to have our cake, we want to eat our cake. No you can’t do that, we need to stand up to what we need to do not that a woman can’t do it and we complain but we are not doing it.
The woman complaining will be the same woman to say no I can’t come today my stomach is paining me, really? Nobody should know, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do what we have to do but I’m also saying that come on think of it both ways, what does water do? It will find its level, you pour water around, and it will find where it will pass. So that’s what women have got to do. You can’t sit there and expect that they should come and meet me to be the head, no meet yourself, and do what you have to do, show up, be there, and work it out. Even me as a woman sometimes I regret I say oh God are we going to employ a woman? Even me because I know that lady will come and she will give me stress, she will come and tell me I’m sorry I can’t come my tummy is paining me. No, then you’ll be complaining at the same time that you are not being treated right, so it’s a balance that’s all I’m saying.
Are we being given enough opportunity, are we taking it up, are we showing that we are capable, are we showing that we are there? I’ve seen it a lot maybe even in the political world or here or there, some people do try. So yes, there comes a point where we say no I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do at par with a man but still you haven’t given me the position; yes complain rightfully. So and then we can advocate which we are doing but I’m a big advocate of not just the girl child but of the boy child I’m an advocate too. How are we training the boys from the beginning, how are we training the girls from the beginning? It has to do with grassroots levels and what is being done right from the beginning, through schools, through this, through that to be able to have a mindset for the men.
You can’t expect a man who is only 40 years old and has led through a life 40 years ago where he’s been treated on that level and then we expect him to do the right thing. The same thing with the woman. So we must look at it from all sides and then work together from the grassroots up and then we should be able to get the rightful place for everyone at that point.
So for you how were you able to balance your work life and family, still growing enviably in your career? Is it that you had a strong support system? You know often times people look at career women as not having good marriages.
No, well-being is one of the new aspects that must be really carefully looked at. In those days there was nothing like well-being, nobody thought about what is happening with the staff; are they okay, are they being treated right? We don’t seem to make it a priority, it’s important. So I would be an advocate to say that there’s got to be that balance and that’s what it is called. At the same time like I told you I remember not wanting to be in that position.
I have a child and what do I do? Child is not well, I wake up in the morning child has had a temperature overnight and I’m like hey I cannot say I won’t go to work. So if husband is not there, okay no problem I’m a single woman. What do I do? Is mother there no, okay what do I do? Is sister there, is friend there? You need to nurture a support system; we used to have a system among some of my friends where we were on a pool system. We say this week all sick children we will go to hospital so I’ll take my friend’s child and I will go because that’s the time I’m available. So let’s say in a 12-week period I didn’t go to work once she didn’t go to work once, so you need to gather a structure around you, you create it. You make sure of that.
There was a time when I’ll go to the nurses and I’ll say take my baby I’m coming, let me go to work they’ll watch over the baby and that’s their calling. They will put cold water to reduce the high temperature and I will come after two hours, it’s is a hospital. I begged the nurse I’ll do anything; I’m not being negligent, no, I’m nurturing.
I worked for an airline for over six to seven years on night duty. What does that mean? I will start at 4 pm and I will close at around 1 a.m. I will close at 1am get to my house at two o’clock I will sleep and at 5 am I’ll first of all wake up, carry those children, get them ready and drive them to school so I can chat with them. When I drive them to school at 7. 30 a.m. I will come back home at 8.00 a.m. I’ll cook their lunch, I will iron my uniform and I’ll sleep by 9.00 a.m. and wake up at 11.30 a.m. or 1.00 p.m. and take off at 2 o’clock to go and pick the children. I will manage and drive them back home, chat with them and drop them ‘oya bye-bye bye,’ mummy are you going? I’m going, do that your homework, I’ve gone and 4 o’clock I’ll get to work.
My dear sometimes you will not sleep and it’s something that you do from within, you have to have that power from within because you cannot be relying on people so I had to bring the children up and their father will sometimes say okay I’ll pick them this time. Yes, it’s good to have a support structure but not every woman has that support structure so you create it and you look for friends around you or you look for systems or you go and get a house lady.
I will share my salary with my house lady; at the time she was getting paid quite a lot because she’s the one with my children so if I’m earning 100,000 she can earn up to 30,000 or 40,000. I won’t give her N1,000 naira, no, she will earn more and I will sacrifice more.
I will use this analogy I learnt when I was just growing up with children because I was also growing up and I’ve got a child, I’m newly married and I said to one of my doctor sisters that oh what am I going to do? They said we should eat to breastfeed, she said no, they need your nutrition. Drink a lot of water and eat still the right food don’t eat the wrong food and so I said oh I need to do that? She said do you know that breast milk; and this is something that I learnt and I wish somebody would know; the breast milk as they say a starving woman in Somalia and the breast milk of somebody who has eaten all the food and has all the money the consistency is the same. If it is five per cent fat and 10 per cent protein and four per cent it is the same because the almighty God created breast milk to be one.
So then you say how does that woman in Somalia do it? She will slim down because all the nutrients will be pulled from her body to make sure that the breast milk is breast milk. So breast milk from Somalia or breast milk from Canada is the same. It is breast milk for it to be called breast milk so the only thing you need to do to make breast milk flow is to drink more water, of course if you cannot eat you take nutrients, do this do that but breast milk will find that nutrient. If it’s from your calcium in your tooth it will take it, if it’s so you will be looking much disheveled but it doesn’t matter, the child will get breast milk.
I learnt that and I said to myself okay so let the breast milk take whatever it has to take so that’s how first of all I slimmed down because all I was doing was just breastfeeding the child and it was making me lose weight because I wanted. But then the breast milk of the child was perfect and that is what helped the lungs of the children, it’s what helped their kidneys, it’s what helped them grow so I did not give them any of this artificial milk and it helped their health till today. So that was one thing I learnt but then I used it for my work and I said to myself whatever it takes for me to keep my foot in front of each other I will do it.
I remember my mother was severely ill, so ill we didn’t know what to do. They told us it’s a rare sickness, she was not well, she was in the wheelchair and I was suffering but I’ll go to work every day and I will leave her with the nurses and I’ll come and I’ll be smiling and doing my work.
“So one day we had performance manager; again these foreign people I learned a lot from not just because they are foreign but because there’s a system that has been tried and tested and trusted. You’ll find a lot of multi nationals and we Africans are working for them and they love it because we are doing the right thing, we do the right thing in a multinational system and will not do a right thing within our own government system or within our own private system, no it shouldn’t be, there’s nothing wrong with us, it is not having governance settle right.
So I was there, my mom was sick, I went I came and then we were doing performance management and the man gave me a high grade. I said oh sir thank you and he said let me tell you I’ve watched you; your mother was sick I knew it because you put her on this Aero plane to go to London you brought her back in a wheelchair. I’ve been watching you, I know you are going through a lot yet you remained flat line, when you say flat line it means I was just doing the right thing at work. I would come and not say now my mother is sick I can’t come to work, he said I’ve seen you perform better though you were doing worse at home you’ve kept abreast, you’ve done very well and I commend you and I give you a high grade, take, go and get promotion.”
Hey! I ran to my mother I said mama, do you know what she told me? These mothers of yester years I want to be like them. She said this my sickness I know is not good but I’m glad I got it. I said mama why? She said because it has made me know who my friends are and it has made my family come closer together. At the end of the day she really felt good and I thank her for that small promotion I got at that time and for what the guy told me. He said because you could have crumbled or said my mother is not well, my child is this or that. So that’s what I’m trying to tell you about how to put it together.
You do whatever you can, you hold your shoulders up. Americans will say you pull up your bootstraps, some people say I don’t even have boots what do I do? But at the end of the day you look around and you stop blaming everything else, a workman would blame his tools, no, what is wrong, what can I do to make it better, how will I do it? What went wrong, how can I make sure it doesn’t happen again so a lot of mantras used to come towards me and I’ll think of them and I’ll be down so that’s why I love the new form of well-being because what was happening to a lot of us we were bottling it in.
We were holding it within ourselves, we were getting a form of depression and we didn’t know what we were going through, we didn’t realise because we have to keep the job and we have to make sure we are doing it. But we didn’t realise it was taking a toll on us so now that there is this new form of how are you doing at work, are you okay? Well-being, it helps, a little bit of kindness sometimes it goes a long way because somebody is feeling rough and depressed and sad, you are going through issues but you are able to do what you can within the working system, within what is called the constitution or work around.
The other day one of my colleagues had an issue with her husband, he had an accident and she couldn’t come to work for almost a week or two weeks. I sat with my HR who is fantastic, she thinks just like me and I said what do we do, how do we work this out? So I said okay let’s look at the law and then let’s look at what we are doing with the law; she is supposed to work 40 hours a week actually, so we need her to work 40 hours. The best I can do for her is take off two out of the 40; 35 to 38 hours, I looked at it and I said okay. Number two what work does she do, does she need to be here all the time, can we do a hybrid? Can we let her come to work at 10 o’clock because she would have looked after him, she would have done with that and then on two or three days let her close at 4p.m. or 5 p.m. and on the other day she can close later or sometimes she can come very early? We’re not working against the law; she’s still delivering, she’s still working the 30 or 40 hours but we are very flexible because we want what to do to help, what to do to assist? So now the other day I said ah madam why are you at work? She said oh madam it’s because sometimes I come to work 6 in the morning so that she can live by 3 p.m. She’s still working within the system so I see her sometimes because she says he’s still sleeping so he’s okay but I have to go to the hospital at 3 o’clock so I’ll leave at 3 p.m. and she has still worked eight hours. What do I do, will I be a horrible leader and say no, your work is why you are here? So we work around the system, working with everybody, making sure a little kindness or a little well-being; little flexibility. We’re not breaking the law but we are working within and around the system and we are being very innovative when it comes to how people are working, what they are doing.
Some of us live as far as Mowe, some of us live as far as Ekpe; how do they come to work? I think we have been forced to do these kind of things so we have a flexible system within MMA2 that allows you to either come at 7am, live at 4pm, come at 8am, live at 5pm. It is difficult because it’s like are you people American? No, we are just looking at the system or the exigencies.” I have a lady that comes to work on Saturday but she doesn’t come on Friday because though we have 24 hour system on Friday her place is just impossible. The place is full of traffic; by the time she gets to work she’s exhausted so she comes on Saturday and the kind of work I get delivered on Saturday is so good at the end of the day. So that’s how we do it, we just have to try to work with the well-being of people if you want to.
Do you have a role model?
My role model? I would say that I don’t. Of course a few of the elder ones in my career would have been, I watch what they do but I’m very careful not to put anybody in a basket, I’m very careful not to think people are infallible. Sometimes you say you have a role model and one day the person coughed one way, suddenly she has disappointed you in life, so I don’t allow myself to be tied to that.
What I want to do is I want to be my own role model, what do I want to be and how am I going to make sure somebody else sees me as that role model or at the end of the day if I want to be a role model I want to be a role model for myself so I want to make sure somebody else sees me as that role model or at the end of the day if I’m not a role model what do I aspire to be? Is it plenty money? Does it always work? What are the things that money cannot even buy? So what you do is you look at the system where I call it you put everything in the basket and shake the basket what will come out is a fine tune.
So a role model for me would be something like a cake. Why? Because a cake has full beautiful egg, full flour, full butter; everything that is used in the ingredients of a cake is perfect in itself but look it is when you put it together that you get a cake. You can’t just get it like that so I pull from here and I pull from there and I pull from there and I try to create a role model that probably is nowhere to be seen but we always aspire to be.
How do you relax?
Oh it’s very very boring. I dread to say it. Until today my older sister will say aren’t you going to read a book and I say oh no, I don’t know how to read, she would joke with me. So my relaxation is wonderful. I look for my own companion, I look for my support structures, I chat with them, and I watch boring news on television. I don’t actually watch football but I can tell you everything about it so it’s just in order to say today what is good for me I’ll do it, tomorrow what is better. But I do enjoy the work I do and I make sure that that is my form of relaxation.
Some people say how was your weekend I say I’ve come to work to relax because weekend is very stressful. You have to go to parties, you go to functions so work is a place I come to relax and get ready for the weekend. So it’s all good.