Ordinarily one would expect to see a very big man with lots of cronies and staff hanging around. But Suleiman Sulu Gambari, a scion of the famous Gambari family, is not a man with airs around him. He is modest to a fault but dedicated to his businesses. A trained medical practitioner, Gambari who easily tells you that his first love was taking care of animals but went to study medicine because his strict and disciplinarian father,  retired Justice of Appeal Court, Sulu Gambari, insisted that he had the capacity to excel in medical school. He has added automated Court Room Reporting systems to ease the job of Judges and importation of high quality doors for the construction industry to his line of business. Although he will not tell you that he was no longer getting the job satisfaction and challenges he expected, he equally left medical practice at the Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital in Abuja without a single kobo to face the realities of starting a new business.  In this chat with Stanley Nkwazema, the proprietor of NAFS Group, flanked by his wife  who  nodded,   takes us round the world of Stenography, medicine and why we should stop logging to keep a green environment

Early Education and Background
I was born in Ilorin Kwara State about 46 years ago. But I grew up in Borno state and had my Primary Education at Yelwa Practice Primary School in Maiduguri. I started my Secondary School education at the Federal Government College Maiduguri but ended up at the Command Secondary School Ibadan. I studied Medicine at the University of Maiduguri.

Childhood Memories
I am fortunate to have come from a wonderful family. My father was a Judge of the Court of Appeal (now Retired). My parents were always there to see to our upbringing. They tried their best to provide us with almost all that we needed as children. I should say that we were properly brought up, Well trained. My mother in particular encouraged me not to rely only on my academic achievements but to delve into other things such as business so that I will not put my eggs in one basket. She believed that a young man should be able to have time with his knowledge to be in several productive ventures. You can be a doctor on the one hand and also a business man at the same time.

Growing up under my parents and lessons learnt
It was wonderful. They were both loving and understanding parents. They shared their love equally to the children. They provided us with the opportunities to excel in life.
They encouraged us to know that whatever decision we take in life, we must be responsible for it. That was the training we received an always look back at those salient points of life.

Profession that fascinated him while growing up
My choice of profession actually was largely influenced by my father who wanted me to be a medical doctor. But I had so much love for animals. I preferred to engage with animals more than human beings while growing up. But he kept on telling me that I should go for medicine. On that note when I realised that I had the capacity to study Medicine, I went for my MBBS and also in order to please him and make sure his wishes were met, I took the challenge and went for Medicine But left to me alone,  I think I would have applied myself not necessarily  though in Science, I would rather apply my skills to the business sector.

About his first job
Medicine. It was at the Gwagwalada Teaching Hospital in the Federal Capital Territory, and then it used to be Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital. That was from 1997 – 2003

How Interesting/Challenging was it?
No. I really loved it because it was part of me, doing what I loved and enjoyed. Frankly speaking , I will say that I am a person that do not have passion for anything in particular but ironically my passion is that whatever task I undertook for myself and community, I make sure that I do it to the best of my ability and to satisfy myself that I have done noble. In that hospital (referring to the Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital) I did put in my very best and my patients actually had one – on – one relationship with me. I could recall that at that time I was working with the HIV/AIDS patients at the Specialist Hospital. There was a lot of stigmatisation with people affected by the disease. But I felt that they are human beings. I was of the view that while I am serving them as a doctor, I should also give them access to my house. Even then I encouraged them to come and meet me at home for consultations because it was beyond being my patients at that time. There were no medical doctors and staff run away from such patients. I felt it was my duty to actually encourage them and to let them know that having HIV/ AIDS was not the end of their lives.

Wife’s reaction on seeing HIV/AIDS patients at home
My wife is also a medical doctor. She knows that when they come to see me at home, she has to welcome them. We share drinks and meals with them and we also encourage them to live healthy lives, encouraging them to live longer.

Challenges on his way to the top
When I made up my mind not to practice in that hospital, I did that not having money to start. I did not have even the basic seed money. I left the practice without any financial backup. It was a tough decision to take. Of course, due to my nature, I never discussed it with my parents. I never told them that I was leaving because if I had done that, they will make sure that I did not leave.
So for one, it was after leaving the practice that I informed them. I did not because even after I left, I made sure that I did not go to them  for financial assistance because they will ask me to go back and query why I left in the first instance. As I discuss with you today, my father never asked me why I left. But he knows I stopped for reasons which he never asked.
The money was not there to start, so you can imagine somebody in that condition to start business. It was very difficult.

Transition from medical practice to business
I am grateful to God Almighty because as I speak now, our company NAFS SG Nigeria Limited has  three subsidiaries; NAFS View Point Hospital (where the interview was conducted) the NAFS SG Stenography that provides Court Reporting  technology to Court Rooms across the federation and we are the sole representative of stenograph in the whole of Africa. Then the third subsidiary is the NAFS doors which support the construction industry by providing high quality doors; wooden. ND, Security, PVC, Steel fire proofing and other series. Even as we are talking, we are working towards setting up the first NDF Door making factory in the Whole of West Africa.
Lowest and highest points in life
My high point is actually when I look back at  this short period of time and see  what I have been able to accomplish from when I actually stopped practice as a medical doctor up till date. And of course as I have said, for a young man with a lot of challenges, though I come from a big family, my dad never gave a single kobo to support me. Then I was in my 30s now I am 46.

Fear in Life
I detest failure in all its forms and for that reason, I always have that at the back of my mind that when I do something, I must put in my very best, my utmost best. For the fear of not wanting to fail, I don’t go with only one option in life. I make sure I have options A, B C and if possible D. So if something happens, today I will fall back to B C and even D. That is my perception of how things should be. It is understandable and I strongly believe in the notion that a nation could fail but you as an individual cannot afford to fail because you have your family, your kids, parents and numerous dependants. But if you find yourself in a country like ours of today where things are getting tougher by the day, which is not an excuse for you as an individual to accept failure. That has been the driving point to want me to have options of what I want to be in life.

Meeting My wife
My first contact with her was in the anatomy lab. At that time, I was in the clinical aspect of my medical career. All my life, I am such a person that never gets involved in social activities. If I should have any relationship with any lady it has to be with the intention of marriage. That day I left the Teaching Hospital with the intention of seeing the new medical students in the Anatomy Lab so that I would get somebody… When I got there, I saw her at the tail end of the lab.  To my surprise I greeted. Most of the students actually know me and I greeted everybody, I purposely went to her table but to my biggest surprise, she did not answer me. I was not happy about that. I left the lab; the decision was actually made though. When I met her eventually, I knew she could be the person I can share all my life with and I must tell you that I don’t have any regret.

Achieving dreams in life
At this stage, I think I have the platform for things I want to achieve. All I need to do by God’s Grace is to consolidate on what I have. There is great room for improvement for the hospital, even this year we intend to bring in some aspect of medicine that is not available here in Abuja. We still want to invest more to improve the quality of the practice in this hospital. As you know, Viewpoint Hospital is about four years old now and we have close to 2000 clients. But our drive is to improve on our standard. There are certain things that could be done here which most Nigerians travel abroad to seek for medical help.

Desire in life
What I desire most in my life is for the blue prints that I have in hospital, Court Reporting and the Importation of Doors. I want to take them to the next stage. I want a situation whereby not only my family, we should be able to provide jobs for a lot of people. Like the Court Reporting facility we have two training facilities, one in Lagos and another in Abuja. We were contracted last year by Lagos State Government Judicial Service to train 60 Reporters. As I speak, we have reporters whom we trained in close to 30 High Courts in Nigeria including the FCT High Courts. Our company donated a complete set of Court Reporting equipment to FCT. It is there in Court 11. And also we have trained staff working at the Customary Court of Appeal in Abuja. The equipment are fantastic because they are the best Court reporting equipment anywhere around the globe. The benefits are enormous Having Court Reporting equipment in the Court Room takes away the burden of Judges recording Court Proceedings in long hands/manually. It wastes a lot of time, energy and put a lot of stress on the Judges. You can now imagine when technology is doing that. It allows them to stay longer during Court Proceedings and ask intelligent questions. The stress will also be reduced significantly. The reporters are well trained to undertake that task. Some reporters can actually write at a speed of about 240 words per minute. In every second they could write up to 6 words or more in one second. The technology is that fast. You may be wondering how that could be possible in just one second. The fact of that matter is that you will think that when you are asked to do that you think it is the Spelling Bee technology. No. There are two ways you can write. We were trained in our conventional schools to write based on spellings. But we trained our reporters over a period of 18 months to write by sound, so it is a kind of short hand machine. As you write, it instantly translates it to readable text.. With that, they can capture any word. Again, they could equally use the machine to write any word in Advanced Learners Dictionary. You will equally agree with me that those of us that had Masters, PhD cannot write or spell correctly all the words in the Advanced Learners Dictionary because we are looking at about 900,000 (Nine Hundred Thousand) English words. When you have that number of words you can imagine tasking somebody within a period of 18 Months to be able to write all these words. The fact about it is that it is very possible. If it is sound based, within six months you can successfully train somebody to write the entire words in Advanced Learners Dictionary within that period.

About is children
By the Grace of God, I have five kids; Nafisat, Rukayat, Farida, Mariam and Alfaki.


Client base
A lot, we are the leading company in Abuja. We are more of wholesalers. Dealers procure from us to resale. The business is wonderful and encouraging. I spend more of my time in the door business because it is the youngest of the three. I have realised that it has a big potential. The truth about it is that you cannot have a house without having a door or doors. Nigerians spend a lot of money importing doors into our country.

Why do we import doors?
The doors that are mostly imported or produced here are either metallic steel doors or locally made wooden doors. It is not encouraging for continuous logging of woods in our forests just because you want to make doors. If we embark on that, at the end of the day you will wake to find out that we don’t have trees any more. In civilised and modern countries wooden doors are no longer encouraged because what you can achieve from a wooden door you can equally achieve by using other materials that would have naturally gone to waste.  When our people make doors for you, apart from the fact that the finishing is very poor, you also find out that processing wooden door from beginning to the end is about 4 – 5 weeks. Firstly you have to extract the moisture from the trees which is a living organism. The bacteria must be killed, to shed weight of the moisture to be used. It could be bent after a few weeks if not properly processed. But do we need to log off all our woods because we want to make doors and windows? We should encourage HDf and NDF doors.

Another plus is that while it takes about 4 – 5 weeks to make a good wooden door, the factor we are setting up in Nigeria is meant to produce 300 – 500 doors in a day. You can imagine the period of 4- 5 weeks how many doors that could be produced if you multiply the daily production in 4 weeks. It is close to about 200,000 units. By so doing, you will employ a lot of hands and take people away from poverty. It should be a policy. The Federal Government should encourage people to set up these factories. One disturbing aspect of it is that I realised from experience working on this project that the amount of foreign currency we send out of this country by way offering exchange remittances to procure these doors in three months is actually more than what is required to set up the factory here in Nigeria. So why import and not set up the factory here?  

Why then go into manufacturing?
Nigeria is not ready. We have to address the policy. The Federal Ministry of Finance has to play a very big role here. Government needs to bring people that are knowledgeable about real business; not people who spend their entire career moving from one boardroom to another. Government needs to sit down with serious minded business men and come up with policies that are practicable to encourage people to set up factories so that people would be employed.