Though she prayed for a companion who will stick closer than a friend, she wasn’t thinking of loyalty in the real sense of the word. What was unmistakable to her was that she saw her husband as a man of vision. It is that vision that has kept the Maduegbunas together in business for years. In this piece, Vanessa Obioha explores the life’s episodes of Jane Maduegbuna, the Executive Director of Afrinolly Creative Hub, a happy wife, and mother
Her cheerfulness is unmistakable. Be you a friend or an acquaintance, on first meeting, you are likely to be infected by the bubbling mien of Jane Maduegbuna, the Executive Director of Afrinolly Creative Hub. Although there are times when that geniality is misleading. For instance, during the MTN Y’ello Star production last year, her blood pressure shot up. No one suspected her state of health. However, her husband, Chike noticed something was wrong and insisted she visit a hospital where it was confirmed that her blood pressure had skyrocketed. That was a second episode. The first time was when one of her daughters caught an adverse cold.
As she sat at the Southern Sun Hotel’s lobby, enjoying the soft splashes of the blue fountain, Jane was the image of a calm woman.
“I’m not calm oh,” she said, “Wait till you see me in my atarodo form.” She was on a mini-vacation with her husband in the hotel. The Maduegbunas hardly go anywhere separately. Their love story will make a good Nollywood romance. He from a poor background, she from a wealthy background and together they faced daunting challenges and built a business empire that celebrates Nigerian creativity.
“It was us against the world,” she revealed.
Though she prayed for a companion who will stick closer than a friend, she wasn’t thinking of loyalty in the real sense of the word. Actually, what was unmistakable to her was that she saw her husband as a man of vision even when others didn’t. But Jane had always been the rebel at home. The one given to unconventional behaviours. Unknown to Chike, he was the one who sowed the seed in her to desire the extraordinary and the bizarre.
“Following rules and convention is the most boring thing to me,” said Jane matter-of-factly, as she reeled out instances when her choices stood her out. On the surface, it would look like she was acting on impulse, when, for example, she cut her hair. However, the deeper reason was to manage her tendency to sweat a lot.
“If I want to go somewhere or look different, I wear a wig.”
Her proclivity towards oddity may be seen in mundane desires like making a fetish of her meals during pregnancies.
“In the morning, it has to be Agoyin beans. If it’s not Agoyin beans, there’s going to be a problem that day. Don’t cook it for me. I had the Agoyin woman that brings it. The day she wasn’t around, ask my husband: it was terrible,” she rolled her eyes, laughing.
“My husband says, ‘you are the most easily impressed pregnant woman I know.’ In the afternoon, it must be draw soup, okra, ogbono. And if you’re making ewedu, make sure you put iru. In all my pregnancies, I had to have orobo. Coke was my first favourite brand but I used to say, if you can’t find Coke, just get Pepsi. So, they will get me this giant Pepsi bottle. In fact, I have the weirdest meal. Coke was the only constant thing. Once, I hear the pop sound from the bottle of Cola drink, then all is well with the world. Nothing else mattered. I was at peace.”
Jane is in her 23rd year in marriage and not a few things have turned full circle. Could it be that God is reminding her of something because today she warns her daughter against having a sweet tooth?
Even now, Jane doesn’t wish anyone to encounter her rebellious side.
“Right from my youth, I have always been a rebel. In my university days, I went everywhere that the road could take me. But as much as I went out, I wasn’t a party person. I could enter a party and just find a spot and that’s where I’ll sit. But if I’m alone with friends, then you could have a party. To date, I don’t like crowds. But if you see me at a crowded party you think I do, because I mix easily.”
That lifestyle fitted the profile that her father, the one she famously calls “jaiye-jaiye master” (one who loves the good life), assumed. He was the commercial manager of a company and worked under white bosses who loved him. Every Sunday was brunch with the family at the Federal Palace Hotel and if he heard of a new hotel, even in Badagry, he was willing to check it out.
“One person who taught me diligence was my father; loyalty and being content. I’m not after wealth. I’m not. Growing up, he used to tell us, ‘I rather show you a good time than you meet a guy who does something small and you think he is amazing.’”
It’s not exactly a shock that Jane is not the lawyer her father wanted. In the first instance, her father cajoled her into the legal profession. “I wanted to study International Relations because I saw my uncles, aunties, in that profession and as much as I was an introvert, I love meeting people. My father insisted I study law. Festus Keyamo was my course mate at the time.”
A few stints in law offices could not convince the ED to pursue the profession wholeheartedly.
“I think the adjournments in court got the best of me. Those days, there were no air-conditioners in the court and we were sweating with the wigs and we wore black. Since I stopped law, I don’t own anything that’s a jacket. The only time you see me wear a jacket is when I travel out,” she disclosed.
Of all the factors that contributed to the success of the Maduegbunas, it is Chike’s willingness to surrender everything including his right to lead that has ensured that they remain together and on top of their game. In more ways than one, he is everything she prayed for in a husband. Only on a few unavoidable occasions does he go anywhere without her. Friends and family members have to know her as his mascot, even to the point that they wish for their kind of relationship and readily approach the Maduegbunas for answers to problems in their relationship.
Jane started to talk about their relationship cautiously but soon opened up in a rush.
“I remember telling my brother that my goal was to marry a man who thinks of the sun and moon of me,” she ventured, then waited, considering if it was well said before she proceeded. “I have to see it visibly and I have to know it’s genuine. My husband calls me Ajebee (a short form of Ajebutter). That’s the name he gave me from the first day we met. But you could see the sense in all he does. You could see this sense of gratitude. When we married, he took me everywhere. I got tired. ‘Can’t you travel alone? Must I follow you like a handbag?’ At first, it was fun. But later, I just wanted to stay alone. But he wouldn’t pay attention to me. It was either I leave with him or the trip is cancelled. If you invite him on a business trip and there’s no provision for me, he would pay for my trip and we would go together. Only on a few occasions has he travelled without me and he usually cuts the trip short.
“I remember telling my mom one day about it and she said: ‘Hey, look at foolishness. These are what people are praying for and that’s what you are complaining about.’ I sat down one day, whether it’s a vision or a dream, all I kept hearing is, ‘you asked for a friend close to you, you asked for somebody inseparable…’ And I’m like ‘oh is this it?”
Jane does not credit herself with too much. She has the humility to give all the kudos to her husband. “I now found out that that which I was wishing for is already happening because all our accounts are literally in my name. The bankers don’t know him.”
It can be said convincingly that Jane has applied her training as a lawyer, her free-spirited disposition, and her ability to hold a conversation and convince people to buy from her to their business. She started selling things on the side as she gradually withdrew from the courts. She dropped the wig and gown altogether as her trade grew in size. But things took a big positive turn when she and her husband found what she calls “passion points.”
“Any business,” she emphasized, “that has a passion point component to it, we are there. Because when you deal with people’s passion points, they will find the money. For instance, music, it’s a passion point. That’s where the youths are domiciled.”
The Maduegbunas started with football, now they have delved into Nollywood and this is where they appear to have established an increasingly popular brand called Afrinolly. But Afrinolly is not limited to the film industry. it is a hybrid of creativity and technology. Unlike other businesses that felt the biting financial constraints of COVID-19 last year, for the Maduegbunas, it was an exhausting year.
“We were working constantly.”
The manifestation of success in business for the Maduegbunas has come in varying degrees, but it always brings waves of joy. Jane counts herself lucky to be married to a man who is always brimming with ideas. Explaining how Afrinolly was born, she said, “Chike has always been the creative one. I told somebody my only challenge with him is how to curb the stream of ideas. Because he comes up with 20 ideas in a minute. Anybody that works with us knows. Every day I’m so grateful to God for the privilege and the life I have and for using me as a poster child of the fact that there’s nothing God cannot do. Sometimes like this year when I see deals coming towards us, I’m like hey, is this us? When no one looked at us my pastor, Tunde Bakare of The Latter Rain Assembly, was the one that gave us N9 million to start the first business.”
Jane gives a ringside perspective that is completely overwhelming about crawling days of Afrinolly before it took a quantum leap and became unstoppable. The company started in 2012. The previous year, it won the Google award for the best app in 2011.
“There’s a funny thing about us is that we start something, we know what we want, but we don’t know what society calls it. When we started Afrinolly, we tried to give the app to people who we felt strategically needed it because we knew mobile was the next frontier, but a lot of people didn’t understand what we were talking about. And I guess that’s the biggest problem we have. When Chike comes up with these things, it’s usually futuristic. Ninety-nine per cent of our clients are usually businesses from abroad because they seem to understand strategic trust; we are on par with where they want to go. He has the gift of coming up with creative ideas that command resources both for our partners and us, which is what we’ve now changed Afrinolly Creative Hub to.
“Our tagline is ‘Creative Ideas that Command Resources.’ It was a phrase that was spoken to us five years ago by our pastor. It is who we are. As a rule, whatever business we can’t find how our client is going to make money, we don’t touch. Because if you don’t make money, you won’t stay with us for long. Funny enough, every business we have done is by referral, not adverts. From Facebook to Ford Foundation, every business we got has met us in our office.”
Her compelling narrative about their love life is very instructive.
“Love doesn’t need to be fought for. If love is yours, you don’t fight. There’s just this agreement. ‘Are you coming with me? We are going together. Are we fighting everybody? We are fighting them.’ If you are the one fighting, then there’s something wrong.”
