Solomon Onafowokan Built Coleman Wires and Cables From a Cola Idea Into Africa's Biggest Cable Brand

Chief Solomon Kayode Onafowokan, the Asiwaju of Remoland, founded Coleman Technical Industries Limited in 1975. The company, trading as Coleman Wires and Cables, now describes itself as the largest cable manufacturer in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Born in Sagamu, Ogun State, on 22 March 1942, Onafowokan was reported to have turned 84 this year. He holds the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger and is a Fellow of the British and Nigerian Institutes of Directors. His career spans more than five decades of corporate leadership. He is a former deputy chief executive of Chellarams Plc and a past president of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He also serves on the boards of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, the Nigeria Employers' Consultative Association and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.

Coleman did not begin as a factory. Onafowokan traded in wires and cables through the 1980s and 1990s before deciding to make them. His son George Onafowokan, now the company's managing director, says the name was conceived in 1975 for a different ambition. The founder had wanted to go into cola, but his partners did not want that business brought to Nigeria. He chose to carry the name forward himself and set up Coleman Technical Industries.

"People thought it was a foreign name but it is a name that revives our ideology," the younger Onafowokan said.

Production began in the late 1990s. The managing director dates it to 1998, while company profiles give 1996 at a factory in Ikotun, Lagos. The early years were hard. The management team the chairman assembled did not share his vision, according to his son, and within 18 months had pulled the business down. "My father kept it alive until we came in," he said.

George Onafowokan joined around 2002 with the executive director and set about rebuilding. He described working Alaba Market in search of customers and investors, and a business that ran from hand to mouth until suppliers began extending credit. He called it the toughest period of his life, and also a good turn. "In two years, we were able to resolve it and gain substantial market share," he said.

He describes the founder as a strict and frugal parent. The family lived with relatives who were tutored by the same man, and the children were sent to the office in the holidays by public transport and not by driver. "My father would tell you that he does not owe you anything in life aside the best education," he said. The founder, he added, told his children he was not born into riches and had moved from a one-bedroom apartment on Apapa Road in Oyingbo to where he is now. He does not celebrate his own birthdays or mark milestones, because he believes every day matters.

The same discipline shaped the succession. The younger Onafowokan said his father promised him the role of managing director after he helped in the business as a young man. He joined as a consultant for the first three months, then committed fully. One of his first changes was to move bank relationships away from the chairman and to the managers who ran the company.

The company's growth since is set out in its own profiles. It received Standards Organisation of Nigeria and Nigerian Industrial Standard certifications in 2002, commissioned its Arepo plant in 2009, and opened a medium-to-high voltage cable plant in Sagamu in 2014. It says it inaugurated a fibre optic manufacturing facility in 2025. The company says it occupies more than 200,000 square metres across its sites and makes more than 30 product types, including low and high voltage power cables, fire-resistant cables and fibre optic products.

Its claims of scale are its own and have not been independently verified. The company's website calls it the largest cable manufacturer in Sub-Saharan Africa, while the managing director has described it as West Africa's largest producer. He has also said Coleman has the widest cable range in the region.

"Now, we are seen as the elephant of the industry," George Onafowokan said. "We must believe in ourselves as Nigerians."