Dehinde Harrison, the man behind the success story of Ebony Funeral, though the name may not quickly ring bell, but the name Ebony Funeral Home is virtually household name in Nigeria. Ebony has helped interred several deaths, both rich and poor, in the Nigerian society and beyond. Ebony had helped buried important dignitaries in the country. The names included but not limited to Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, the first President of Nigeria; the first Senate President of Nigeria, Nwafor Orizu, the then Akanu Ibiam, Sam Mbakwe, Stella Obasanjo, wife of former Nigerian president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and a host of others. Ebony, as Harrison is popularly called, took time out of his tight schedules to speak with Adewale Ogunniran about how the funeral business started, the passion he has for the business and others in this interview
Who is Ebony?
Ebony is a funeral home that was established in 1985. We do A to Z of funeral and when we started in
1985, we started with one casket and thank goodness, we are where we are now due to the grace of God, hard work of all the staff members, the entire family and friends of the company. I believe in Nigeria now because if you want to mention some companies in the same line of our business, before you mention three, you will mention Ebony. God has really blessed us, He has being so kind to us. The important thing in life to me is when you render service and people come back to say thank you either by phone call or by writing a letter of appreciation, that is my own joy in this business.
One thing about life is that you set up a company because of a mission, and if you are not meeting up with that mission, it means you have not really accomplished the mission you have stated. When it comes to business, the joy of doing the business is doing it from A to Z. To me; we have not gotten to the pick; I still believe there are one or two things we need to put in place. I have had people calling me even from outside the country to appreciate what we are doing. I’m not saying there are no other better ones. I have always wanted to do something different because I have spent almost 31 years of my life doing this business and if you spent that much in business, even in anything that you do, you should be able to do something that people will say ‘This is fantastic’. That was the reason I decided to set up a cemetery. Cemetery is the last bus stop on this business. The first thing you do for the dead is to pick up the body, and do the burial in a cemetery. Other things that will be done for that person is done by people who are alive; parties, anniversaries and what have you are for the livings, you are not doing it for the dead any more. That is why I set up a cemetery that people can look back and say that is where I buried my person.
What are the challenges in the business?
To me, what makes you a man is when you encounter the challenges of life and you overcome or conquer them. To me, that will give you a lot of joy that what you thought you wouldn’t achieve, you were able to achieve them. I know when we were about to move in here, there were a lot of people that were not happy, and this the land that have been mapped out for cemetery in the past, but many people were not happy. Government has been so helpful and assisting us in providing what we need.
Can you tell us what it will take to start this line of business?
It will be very hard to put a certain cost on the running of this business. To me, money doesn’t really make any meaning to me, especially when you are in this funeral business, you can’t put the cost together. My major aim is not to make profit but to satisfy my clients. It’s my bank that can come up with what we are spending to run the business, and I must confess, my bank has been assisting us in doing that. To me, if I have a project, I focus on its fulfillment instead of counting the costs. I always let the bank handle the problem of costing. This has been my style of doing thing because I believe if I start looking at the cost, it will affect me; even releasing money to the staff. My thinking is that this will draw the progress of the business backward.
You said you are in this business not to make money…
Yes as I mentioned earlier, we render valuable services and you can not quantify the value of the services especially when people are emotionally shattered. The way some people mourn when somebody dies, sometimes they are not mourning because of the dead but because they don’t know where to go in terms of financial needs at that particular point of time. So when you are talking to them, you put yourself in their shoes. Now, God has given you the opportunity to render the service, at times money will come and at the other time money will not come. So the justification will now be that at last you were able to render the service and put smiles on the faces of some people in time of their needs. Now when you make much money from one person and ignore the other, there is a tendency that the rich will not introduce you to anybody but the poor with a little. When you help to take away the sorrow from him, he sees you as an angel and would be glad to introduce you to others. May be that one person will introduce you to more than 50 persons. Anywhere he sees people in the same situation; he assists by introducing you to them; that is the joy unlike the one that you make a million from that will not have chance to introduce you to anybody. That is the reason you need to study your clients to know their abilities; so you don’t first think about the money; money will come but it should not be the first priority. The first thing should be “help this man, help this woman” and you will be happy you did.
How successful is Ebony from what you have said?
Success comes in different forms, in terms of our business, having everything in place, Ebony is successful because we are always moving forward, we are always striving to raise the bar and when you do that, you are on your way to success. In Ebony’s team, we have passion for what we do. At any time you call us, we are there to answer you, and we are ever ready. We pick from the hospitals, which shows you how ready we are. In terms of the service we render, we are successful and financially, since we have branches all over Nigeria, we can say we are successful too.
Are you thinking of expanding the business in the future?
We already have a branch in Abuja for more than ten years now. We are aspiring further, we want any state we enter, and we want to solidify the state we started from. For example , the cemetery we have in Lagos, people have been coming from other states to snap pictures. It shows the interest they have in what we are doing. People have been coming to say, can we have this in our state? We gave them conditions.
In the last 31 years, can you tell us some of those jobs that you have done that were extraordinary in the past years?
Every job we do, we appreciate and attach significance to it. There is significance in every job we do, for example the people that have more and the people that does not have money to pay. We regard every service we render as high premium. It is like people we render service to turn to promote our company; so every job we do is importance because we do not know where our referral can come from.
Each family we render service to, we appreciates them. But if I am to mention names starting from the top, I may start from the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, the first President of Nigeria; the first Senate President of Nigeria, Nwafor Orizu, the then Akanu Ibiam, Sam Mbakwe, wife of former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, Stella and many more.
Which ones of these jobs were more tasking?
They were all tasking, because they came with lots of demands. To us, they were all tasking; it depends on the person involved and who he was when he was alive; was the person a political or business person, or a religious leader. Those are the things that will determine the kind of pressure it will put on you. Mostly, the politicians put more pressure on us than the ordinary people who are just a private person or a religious leader. But we are equal to the task at any situation we find ourselves. If we could handle the funerals of those few names that I just mentioned without having problems, it means we can deal with anybody and handle any job successfully.
How have you being able to train your staff for them to withstand the fear of seeing or handle dead bodies?
As I said earlier, what we are doing is a kind of business that someone needs to have passion for. Everybody don’t have to be running away from dead bodies, someone has to do it. For you to be successful in any business you need to have passion for it, you need to know the onus of the business. You need to recognize that you are dealing with people who are emotionally challenged and you need to prepare for them, to take that burden away from them. For you to do that, you need to treat everybody you are dealing with as if they are related to you.
I noticed the comportment of your staff, how did you do this?
We train our staff for months. We trained them so that they will know that any person they are dealing with in the course of the business is already emotionally challenged and can do anything when they are provoked. We have seen situations that people carry guns to chase service providers because they mess up with them. We want our staff to put them in their shoes, see them as brothers or sisters whether you are being paid well or not. Before we send our staff out, we train them for at least three months before they have any interaction with the customers. We rehearse every Tuesday despite the fact that they have done the work for years; and I train with them so that they see me as their role model. This shows the importance I attach to training and it’s what I have signed for. We live by example. I tell them what to do, we rehearse and I let them know there is a penalty if anyone drop box. This is being done for them to be more serious in their assignments.
In which area do you think government can come in to help?
In the funeral industry in Nigeria, especially in Lagos, the government is trying and we show appreciation to make the government proud of us. For everybody that cares, I use to tell them that Lagos State has done a lot because if you have the brain, the money but you don’t have the environment to do the business, it’s like a dream wasted. The issue of land, we need more lands, government should give us tax relief. Although 70 percent of what we need is produced here, but some we import, we pay very high for these because of the exchange rates. So that is the area we need help. They should give us more enabling environment and we will make them proud
