I lost $3m in a project, but didn’t give up – Agbonjagwe Leemon Ikpea

A prophet has honour, except among his own kinsmen, says the scripture. But in the case of Chief Agbon­jagwe Leemon Ikpea, the reverse has turned out to be the case. In the sleepy Ewatto community in Esan South East Local Government Area of Edo State, Ikpea is revered almost to a point of being idolized. This is for good reasons. Until recently when he took it upon himself to sink boreholes, the people of Ewatto had never experienced the joy of drink­ing clean water.

Besides giving Ewatto its first borehole, Ikpea, a distin­guished and astute businessman, enterprising engineering services consultant, seasoned administrator, and philanthro­pist par excellence, has also sponsored infrastructural devel­opments in Edo State and within the operational areas of his company. Through the Agbonjagwe Leemon Ikpea Founda­tion (ALIF), which he founded in 2012, he has put smiles on the faces of many less-privileged persons, especially orphans via scholarships and skill acquisition programmes. No fewer than 100 indigent students have benefited from scholarships awarded by his foundation. He has also empowered widows through business start-off grants as well as undertaken the construction of electrification projects in Okpokunoe com­munity in Delta State, town hall in Amukpe in Delta State, community guesthouses in Okari and Ogoloma communities in Okrika, Rivers State among others.
Born on December 19, 1956, Lee, as he’s fondly called, says his dream to impact lives could have been impossible without the Local Content Act signed into law four years ago. According to him, before the law came into effect, the av­erage Nigerian businessmen in the oil and gas sector were mere hewers of wood and drawers of water in the nation’s oil industry. According to Ikpea, indigenous companies in the oil and gas sector were struggling as sub-contractors to multi­national companies in the sector. A fellow of the National In­stitute of Corporate Administration (FNICA), the soft-spoken Edo-born businessman also sheds light on the challenges of running his own company in the last 24 years and his deci­sion to be involved in philanthropy in this interview.