Ebenezer Adurokiya, Reporting
FOR pretty Tolulope Ariyibi-Oke, success did not begin in a boardroom in Scotland. It began on the streets of Agbowo, Ibadan, where, at about nine years old, she hawked bread to help navigate a childhood marked by poverty.
Today, Ariyibi-Oke is a Scotland-based lawyer and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan School of Business and Management (MSBM), United Kingdom. Her journey has taken her from Agbowo in Ibadan to Lagos, Dubai, London and, eventually, Glasgow.
But she is careful not to romanticise the hardship that preceded her achievements.
“Success has a funny way of editing poverty afterwards,” she said. “Once people make it, everything becomes ‘humble beginnings’. The crowded house becomes character-building, hunger becomes motivation, and struggle becomes a beautiful chapter before the breakthrough.”
For her, however, poverty was never beautiful while she was experiencing it.
“Poverty did not deserve me, and it does not deserve Nigerian children,” she said.
A childhood of limited choices
Ariyibi-Oke grew up in Agbowo, Ibadan, in a family she described as poor. The reality of poverty, she recalled, was not simply about lacking money but about learning early what her parents could and could not afford.
“It is about knowing what your parents cannot afford before they tell you, learning not to ask for certain things and hearing adults discuss money without understanding the figures, but knowing something is wrong,” she said.
The family lived in a face-me-I-face-you house, where privacy was scarce.
At about nine, she began selling bread.
She disliked shouting on the streets, so she devised her own approach. Rather than hawking from street to street, she took the bread into university hostels and sold directly to students.
The experience would later influence the way she viewed poverty, opportunity and leadership.
She rejects the notion that hardship should be celebrated simply because someone eventually escapes it.
“I know what it feels like to have ability before access,” she said.
The lessons behind the struggle
Her parents, she said, placed considerable emphasis on education, discipline and responsibility.
Her mother would often tell her: “À ń kọ́ ọ́ bí ẹni tí ń kọ́ ilé” — translated roughly as, “We are teaching you like someone building a house.”
As a child, the expression sounded like another parental lecture. With hindsight, Ariyibi-Oke now sees it as a philosophy that shaped her life.
Her childhood also taught her to distinguish between effort and opportunity.
She said she finds it difficult to look at people struggling and immediately conclude that they are lazy or have simply made poor choices.
“I have seen intelligent, hardworking people limited by things that had little to do with effort,” she said.
“Sometimes the opportunity never came. Sometimes the money was not there. Sometimes family responsibility arrived too early. Sometimes someone simply had the right introduction.”
That does not, she stressed, eliminate personal responsibility.
“You still have to work, prepare and take responsibility for your decisions. But I do not believe everyone was given the same choices.”
That understanding has become central to her leadership philosophy.
“Merit matters, but access matters too,” she said.
From Law to business
Ariyibi-Oke studied Law at Obafemi Awolowo University before beginning her professional career at Layi Babatunde (SAN) & Co.
Her career later moved beyond traditional legal practice into business development and advertising.
In 2011, she joined the founding team of Metropolitan School of Business and Management, working in business development in Lagos.
By 2013, she and her colleagues were looking beyond Nigeria.
The next stage of the journey took her to Dubai, where she lived from December 2013 until June 2022.
Almost nine years in Dubai exposed her to people from different nationalities, cultures and professional backgrounds, forcing her to reconsider assumptions about business.
“I learnt that what works in Lagos may need to be presented differently elsewhere,” she said.
Dubai also became an important test of whether a business developed in Nigeria could operate successfully in an international environment.
The answer would eventually help shape MSBM’s international expansion.
From Dubai to Britain
In 2022, Ariyibi-Oke moved to the United Kingdom and enrolled for an MBA at the University of Sussex.
She lived in London until August 2023 before moving to Glasgow, Scotland.
Rather than describing the experience simply as a journey from Nigeria to Britain, she sees each location as having contributed something different.
“Nigeria gave me my foundation, Dubai international exposure, London another professional and academic environment, and Glasgow stability,” she said.
“Migration adds places to you; it does not completely remove those that came before.”
But relocation brought its own difficulties.
She was simultaneously studying, working, raising a family and learning to operate within a new system.
“Relocation does not clear your desk because the emails still come, children need you, businesses have problems and bills arrive,” she said.
The objective of moving abroad, she explained, was to achieve scale, but scaling meant learning not to assume that methods that had worked previously would automatically work elsewhere.
When the naira crisis changed the business equation
One of the defining moments in MSBM’s development came as the naira lost significant value against the pound.
Ariyibi-Oke recalled a period when the exchange rate moved from about £1 to ₦250 to more than ₦600.
For her, the consequences were not abstract economic statistics.
They were visible in the experiences of students.
She said some students who could previously afford programmes suddenly found themselves priced out, even though MSBM had not necessarily increased its fees.
“A programme had not become more expensive because we increased the fee; it became more expensive because the currency had weakened,” she said.
The experience forced her to confront the extent to which economic circumstances can determine access to education.
“You can genuinely want to make education accessible, but the exchange rate does not care about your mission statement,” she said.
The lesson was significant for the business.
If MSBM remained heavily dependent on Nigeria, she said, every major economic problem in the country could become a major problem for the organisation.
The response was to think beyond the market where the business began.
“We realised we could build something Nigerian and serve people elsewhere,” she said.
The years when investors said no
Ariyibi-Oke’s journey has not been without disappointment.
One of the most difficult periods came during attempts to raise investment.
For two or three years, she and her colleagues met potential investors, prepared pitch decks, followed up on discussions and went through due diligence.
There were encouraging conversations, but there was also silence.
The experience taught her that the quality of an idea is not the only factor that determines whether it receives funding.
“Connections, timing, geography and familiarity matter,” she said.
Eventually, the team stopped operating on the assumption that external funding would come to rescue the business.
There were salaries to pay, students to teach and customers to serve.
So they returned to fundamentals: students, products, revenue, technology and staff.
“Disappointment is real, but disappointment and defeat are not the same thing,” she said.
That experience also changed her relationship with uncertainty.
“I stopped expecting certainty before moving,” she said. “Sometimes you are afraid and still make the decision.”
Why education became the meeting point
Ariyibi-Oke’s decision to build a career in education and business was influenced by her own experience of access and opportunity.
Her legal training taught her to examine arguments, evidence and consequences.
Business development and advertising taught her how to understand markets and communicate value.
Education brought those experiences together.
For her, education has both an intellectual and commercial dimension.
“You can care about students and still have salaries, technology, staff and systems to fund,” she said.
“A good mission can collapse if the numbers do not work. For me, education gives the reason, while business provides the structure that keeps it alive.”
The Nigerian influence on her leadership
Despite living abroad for many years, Ariyibi-Oke said her Nigerian upbringing remains central to her understanding of leadership.
She rejects the description of successful people as entirely “self-made”.
“Nobody really succeeds alone,” she said.
There is usually a parent, teacher, relative, colleague, mentor or benefactor somewhere in the story — someone who provided money, an introduction, an education or an opportunity.
Even institutions and infrastructure, she noted, contribute to individual success.
That understanding has influenced how she approaches leadership.
“I do not see leadership as standing above people,” she said. “I see it as holding something temporarily that affects other people’s lives.”
The responsibility, she added, can extend to people’s salaries, careers, education and futures.
But she also recognises the complications that can accompany success in a Nigerian family.
The first person to succeed can quickly become the family bank, employment agency and emergency department.
Her response has been to combine compassion with boundaries and systems.
“I have learnt to care about people, remember who helped me, maintain boundaries, build fair systems and remember that power is temporary,” she said.
The sacrifices behind the title
The public often sees the title and the eventual achievement, but not the ordinary days that precede them.
For Ariyibi-Oke, those ordinary days involved studying for an MBA, working, raising children, managing a business, answering emails and thinking about payroll.
“People usually see the title at the end. They do not see Wednesday, and most of life happens on Wednesday,” she said.
Yet she is cautious about turning personal sacrifice into a prescription for success.
“I do not want my children to suffer because I suffered or prove themselves through exhaustion because I once did,” she said.
Her philosophy is that hardship should produce lessons rather than become a standard that future generations must repeat.
“If hardship teaches you something, take the lesson and build from it,” she said.
“For me, success should make life better. Otherwise, we are simply becoming better at surviving.”
The reality behind the diaspora dream
Having lived in Nigeria, Dubai and Britain, Ariyibi-Oke is also familiar with the misconceptions surrounding life abroad.
One of the most common, she said, is the tendency to convert diaspora earnings into naira without considering the cost of living.
She joked about people hearing that someone earns £4,000 a month and immediately multiplying the figure by the prevailing exchange rate.
But rent, council tax, electricity, childcare, food and other expenses are paid in pounds.
“The bigger misconception is that once you leave Nigeria, life becomes easy,” she said.
Migration may provide access to different systems and opportunities, but it can also remove familiar networks.
A person’s social standing may not carry the same weight in another country, while friends and relatives who would ordinarily provide support may be thousands of miles away.
“Migration does not remove difficulty; it changes its shape,” she said.
Looking back at Nigeria from abroad
Ariyibi-Oke also believes Nigerians living abroad can sometimes forget how difficult daily life can be for people back home.
Once life becomes more stable, she said, instability can begin to look like the result of poor decisions.
Questions such as “Why doesn’t he just save?” or “Why doesn’t she start a business?” often ignore the realities of limited income, family obligations and lack of capital.
“Save from what? Why doesn’t she start a business? With what capital?” she asked.
She nevertheless maintains that context should not become an excuse for abandoning personal responsibility.
Her argument is about recognising that people operate within different circumstances.
“One person makes a mistake, and it becomes a lesson; another makes the same mistake, and it becomes a crisis,” she said.
Finding home in more than one place
Living in different countries also forced Ariyibi-Oke to think about identity and belonging.
Initially, she felt the pressure to determine whether she was still Nigerian or whether her new surroundings had become home.
Eventually, she concluded that she did not need to choose.
She remains Nigerian, while acknowledging that Dubai, London and Scotland have all contributed to the person she has become.
“Migration adds layers; it does not erase those underneath,” she said.
Life abroad, she added, has also given her enough distance to examine Nigerian culture more critically.
Stepping outside one’s culture, she believes, can make it easier to distinguish between wisdom and habit, and between traditions worth preserving and practices that may need to change.
“Loving a culture does not mean defending everything within it,” she said.
Beyond survival
Ariyibi-Oke’s journey from selling bread as a child in Ibadan to leading a business in Scotland is, on the surface, a story of social and professional mobility.
But she sees it as something more complicated.
It is a story about opportunity, access, migration, education, business, family and the invisible networks that often determine who gets a chance.
Her experience has not convinced her that hard work is unimportant. Rather, it has made her wary of the belief that hard work alone explains every success or failure.
She knows what it means to possess ability without access.
And perhaps that is why, after crossing several borders and building a career in the diaspora, she remains interested not only in what people achieve, but in the circumstances that determine how far their abilities are allowed to take them.
Her journey began with a child carrying bread into university hostels in Ibadan.
Decades later, the setting is different, the responsibilities are greater and the title is more impressive.
But the lesson she carries from those early years remains clear: opportunity can change the trajectory of a life — and talent cannot always create opportunity on its own.
Source: The Punch