Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi is the Founder of Juli Plc, Chairman of the Board of MTN Foundation, and a former Minister of Health. The pharmacist and lawyer shares his childhood and career experie...
Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi is the Founder of Juli Plc, Chairman of the Board of MTN Foundation, and a former Minister of Health. The pharmacist and lawyer shares his childhood and career experiences witha child, you won a scholarship to attend Government College, Ibadan, but had to settle for St Thomas Aquinas College, Akure, which is a Catholic college.
The person that influenced me the most was Reverend Monsignor Anthony Oguntuyi. He taught me orderliness, simplicity, cleanliness and discipline. He taught me that not to be unduly influenced by the rush for material accumulation is very important – simplicity is very important. I was taught to pay attention to details and to realise that whatsoever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
When I finished studying at secondary school, I was a bit too young, at 17, and I had wanted to go straight to the University of Ibadan. But they didn’t allow people who were 17 to go into the university because of age restrictions. So, I took the time off to teach at St Michael’s Catholic Secondary School in Ibadan, where at least 80 per cent of the students were older than I was. Then I went on to work at the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service.
I helped to create national student unions around the world in Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries. And I either led or was part of demonstrations in different countries. And these demonstrations were often around civil liberties and human rights. I remember leading a demonstration of students in Athens. I think at the time we were clamouring for democracy and all that in different parts of the world.
Juli Pharmacy was about reliability. You got whatever you wanted, promptly. That’s why our tagline was ‘the sign of service.’ We’ve always striven to epitomise great service delivery. People still come to Juli Pharmacy from as far as Kano and other distant places in search of genuine drugs. I should add that Juli was also a great training ground for pharmacists, especially those who would eventually go into the retail side of the business.
I am regularly appealing to my colleagues in academia, in universities, to stay back in the country so that Nigeria can benefit from their knowledge and their research work. But even I know how difficult this is. I know how frustrated many of our researchers are. I cannot begin to describe the terrible conditions under which they are forced to work. In laboratories abroad, every convenience imaginable is provided for you when you’re doing research.
You worked with the late Chief Rotimi Williams for some time after law school. Did you at any point combine law practice with pharmacy practice?
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