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THE FALL OF A BILLIONAIRE FROM IJEBU
The story of Alhaji Safiriyu Tiamiyu,
the man who started ST Soap from a single face me i face you room apartment in Ijebu.
A business that would later make him a billionaire.
From a very young age, Alhaji Tiamiyu understood struggle.
He was travelling all the way to Kogi State to buy garri,
bringing it down to Lagos to sell.
Day in, day out, he kept pushing.
For more than 20 good years, he stayed consistent in that garri business.
After all those years,
he was finally able to save some money.
In 1979, he borrowed ₦3,000 from his father and joined it with his own ₦2,000,
money he had painfully saved from selling garri
Making ₦5,000
and he decided to enter into soap making....And nylon business
At that time, soap was in very high demand.
What people knew more were detergents like OMO detergent and Klin detergent.
The real bathing soap was scarce.
That gap became his opportunity.
Pushed by this motivation, Mr Tiamiyu decided to focus on producing soap specially made for bathing and wahing clothes.
And so, in 1979, ST Soap was born.
“ST” an abbreviation of his name, Safiriyu Tiamiyu.
From that small beginning,
something big started rising.
Because of his strong business sense, within just a few years, ST grew into a large conglomerate.
The company employed more than 1,000 people.
Its headquarters was in Ijebu Mushin, with branches spread across Ogun State.
His success did not come by chance.
It came from his diligent spirit.
And also from his heavy investment in advertisement.
If you grew up in the early 2000s in the South West,
it was almost impossible not to hear the famous ST advert on radio and television.
He also sponsored many programs on Tv and radio...
Including the popular Kola Olawuyi Show Nkan Mbe.
In fact, he was one of the major sponsors of that show.
Business was booming for him..
ST became a household name.
Infact.... the soap was my dad’s favourite.
I still remember the first time I saw it.
My dad made me love it.
Anytime we went to the stream to bathe back then in the village,
he would always use ST Soap.
Very white, foamy soap.
After bathing, rinsing the foam from the sponge was a serious battle.
You needed plenty of water.
But something happened that changed the life of Alhaji Tiamiyu forever...
In 2005, Alhaji Safiriyu Tiamiyu was accused of buying human p@rts and doing money r!tuals.
A serious allegation that would later cru$hed him.
Though the court later cleared him of of that...
But the d@mage had already been done.
His reputation was b@dly affected.
Gradually, the business began to coll@pse.
He withdrew from the public eye, and the once-famous ST Soap slowly disappeared from the market.
In October 2020, Alhaji Safiriyu Tiamiyu d!ed after a prolonged !llness,
an !llness many believed was worsened by the pa!n of watching his multi-billion naira company f@ll apart.
This is w!ckedness.
Am sure his enem!es, thre@tened by his success, decided to bring him down.
But what they didn’t know was that, they didn’t just hur*t one man.
They took food away from over 1,000 workers who depended on that company.
Something like this can never happened abroad.
That is why their country would keep growing, and many of us would always dream of going there.
Because they don't pull themselves down...
Here,we are too quick to pull ourselves down.
And we wonder why we are not progressing as a nation... everything is not government.
It's well
@Onuche Onueje
#businesstycoon
#truelifestory
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