The Group Managing Director, Courtville Business Solutions, Mr. Bola Akindele, is the brain behind the automated vehicle licence registration, Autoreg. He speaks with ANNA OKON on the challenges of extending the system to the ECOWAS region
AutoReg initially appeared to be an initiative of the Lagos State government; now some other state governments have adopted the system. Who really owns the AutoReg scheme, Lagos or your company?
AutoReg is an enterprise solution that was designed by Courtville to address the challenges of motor vehicle documentation. We started in 2007 in Lagos State. The state government and most of its agencies use the AutoReg service platform to serve their motorists and their people. Courtville supplies the solution platform to help the state serve motorists.
Courtville owns 100 per cent of AutoReg. About 20 states and Sierra Leone are using AutoReg for motor vehicle licence and documentation.
How did you come about the automated registration?
I have about four other partners and our background is in banking. We are bankers with a lot of experience in business development. I was the general manager in charge of business development in my former bank. When I left banking in 2004, my four friends and I came up with the idea of starting Courtville as a business adviser to transport companies and other large local corporations. But we found out that we did not get the kind of business deals that we were hoping to get because they considered us small, local and very close. The relationship with our clients at the time was casual and payment was difficult to effect. We started looking for what to do in terms of a mass market approach. That was how we came up with AutoReg; school management system and other automated service programmes in our portfolio.
I have a Master’s degree in Banking and Finance from the University of Lagos. I also trained as a chartered accountant at KPMG Peat Marwick; I am a member of the Nigerian Institute of management.
Why did you leave banking?
We left when the industry was going haywire; I left just before the issue of the N25bn capitalisation. My partners or colleagues left about that time also.
After six years of being in operation, why has the Autoreg system not spread to all the states in the federation?
The constitution of Nigeria allows every state to decide how they want to administer their vehicle licence programme; so each state is autonomous in what to use. We hope to reach 30 states at the end of the year. Every other state that we have not reached is still running the rudimentary manual system. The individual states would still determine when and how to go ahead. The challenge is that we always have to deal with civil servants. There are some states where the governors have indicated interest in the programme but the interests of the governors are frustrated by the activities of civil servants.
Why has Auto Insure not been as effective as the Autoreg?
Auto Insure is not an insurance policy; it is a marketing platform created for insurance companies to market their insurance policies and programmes. What we came up with is a system that will also automate the process of issuing motor vehicle insurance like the process of issuing motor vehicle licence.
The Lagos State government is aware that there is a policy in place for every vehicle. It is authentic; it is verifiable. We have a number of insurance companies that have come together to start a consortium in Lagos State. In different states, they have their own appointed insurance scheme and not necessarily Auto Insure scheme. So, in Auto Insure, we don’t have a licence as an insurance company but what we have is a platform for insurance companies to come and sell their insurance policies.
How do you guide against counterfeiting of the programme?
We started in 2007. And anything that has to do with control, you will always have people that will want to circumvent it. And you must remember that we are dislodging a whole parallel market that comprises a generation of people and touts that have subsisted over the parallel market operations.
How do you deal with touts that fight back?
What we have successfully achieved in AutoReg is that we have converted them into agents of government. There are people who are too busy to go to the motor licensing office; so these agents work with those people and volunteer to do the running around for them for a small fee. Whatever document comes out will also show how much the individual has paid them.
They have not been able to counterfeit the documents and they have not been able to breach the internal disk. You can’t rule out collusion but one thing about counterfeiting is that when you make it unprofitable for the operator of the parallel system and make the service very cheap and convenient for its user, then you have taken out the reason for the user of the service to patronise counterfeiters. Apart from the involvement of government, the materials we use are spread over millions of production. We actually get to issue between three and four million documents in Nigeria alone every year; the process is costly. It will be difficult for anybody to compete.
Why are you operating only in Sierra Leone and not border countries to Nigeria?
We have been trying to break into other countries without success. We found out something about ourselves as Nigerians as we tried to introduce the programme to neighbouring African countries. It does not matter how friendly people are when they come to Nigeria, the moment you step into their territory, they do not trust Nigerians at all. We have been working with these other countries since 2007. We have been going to the ECOWAS presentations to convince them about the effectiveness of the system, but we have not been able to get them to agree to the programme. In terms of actually working with the government of the countries, we have only been successful with Sierra Leone. And we are about doing one or two things with Rwanda and Burundi but these are not countries close to Nigeria; the ones close to Nigeria are very suspicious about Nigerians. They like our money but they don’t like us. Even in Sierra Leone, where we are operating, despite the fact that we are registered with them as a local business, paying taxes and employing the local people, they still regard Nigerians as people who have come to take over something that belongs to them and this is something they were not doing before.
We have been going to Ghana since 2008. But they have not allowed us to operate. It would be good if we have this across the border but it would take every single government to agree. Then, there is this issue with the Francophone countries where everything has to do with French and you have to get approval from France for everything.
Do you find time to relax?
My type of work gives me time because everybody is responsible for what they do. I largely strategise. Almost everyone on the executive is currently running one academic programme or the other and that is because we have given ourselves different responsibilities and we come together every week to assess what we have achieved.
I don’t work too late. I don’t know if I work very hard but I know when there is work to do. I have a family that is quite young and they need a lot of time. I take my vacation when I can. I start work by 8.30am and close by 6pm or 7pm.