 Today's throwback, Chief Salami Agbage, first construction supplies made magnet, richest Nigerians of the 1800s and the early 1900s and the timeless lessons we must learn from them for lasting ages. Chief Salami Agbage was unargiably Nigerian's first construction supplies made money bag of the late 1800s and the early 1900s during the colonial era. He was reportedly Ibadon's richest personality of his time. Indeed, there was a local dictum that acknowledged the unmatchable majesty of his palatial home. I must build my house like Agbage's resprinted house. He's a devil in dying homeless. Agbage was born in Lagos in 1880 to an Islamic teacher originally from Missaim and his wife, Sinatu, who was a native of Ibadon. Going up in an Islamic family wrote knowledge of the Quran was mandatory. He later apprenticed under a tailor and learned the art of tailoring. However, he did not last in Lagos toward the end of the 19th century. He left for Ibadon to find better opportunities of life. Though Ibadon was the new environment for Agbage, but his mother was from the city and she had lived there before marrying his father. He in Ibadon left the artisanal work of tailoring and focused on logging. His first major commercial success occurred when he was a timber contractor for the construction of the Lagos Ibadon railway line. We started in 1896. The railway soon emerged as an important model of transporting raw materials from the interland to Lagos for onward export to Europe. Agbage cashed in on the colonial economy by not only supplying most of the timber needed for the new railway lines construction, but he also used the railway completion to cargo the many products he imported as a major merchant into Nigeria from Lagos to Ibadon. The timber business was his launching part to greener investment pastures. He diversified the profit from timber contracting and set out to meet with farmers to seek avenues for produce buying in the Yoruba interland. He became a merchant who succeeded in linking and buying goods from the local farmers and selling them to expatriate firms for export. He was also notable for using advertising as a marketing strategy. His name and business could be seen splashed inside the pages of Yoruba news in the 1920s. From the produce buying venture he spread his tentacles to transportation, import and export, imported cutting, gin and rum, building materials, ads, umbrellas and sewing machines. He was not only a success as an importer but actually one of the few indigenous importers of his time. He had also risen to the top in Ibadon's social and traditional political circles and pioneered new ventures in the city. Other pioneering business enterprises or activities he was involved with in Ibadon included the first private motor garage in the city and the first truly indigenously owned business conglomerate, hiring both foreigners and indigenous. He also was the first to establish cinemas. He was the Balogun of Ibadon before his death in 1953. However, many prominent chiefs of Ibadon despised him for according to them being micelly. A culture of exhibitionistic largesse dispensation amongst prominent Ibadon chiefs had become part of the Ibadon society. Wealthy and iron-ranking chiefs were used to dashing out money to Ibadon citizens and all the relatively open feats for marrymaking and enjoyment. Indeed, one of his contemporaries, Chiva Debisigewa Halas, at Debisigewa, was said to be so generous that he once paid the oppressive poll tax of all male Ibadon residents to the colonial district officials office in a particular year from being arrested and incarcerated for non-payment. In 1949, the Mogadgees or clan heads in Ibadon brought charges against Ibadon to forestall him from ever becoming the Olu Ibadon, the king of Ibadon, a meritocratic position which had little to do with blood lineage but rather relied on a person's ascension of the hierarchical order within the company of either warrior or civil chiefs of Ibadon. The underlying reason for the previous allegation was his contempt for the wasteful culture of largesse dispensation and his unpopularity with the Ibadon masses. He was, however, cleared of all charges. At the time of his death in 1953 he had a very large family made up of many wives and children. He was known to have spent a great deal in giving his children the best education money could buy and many of his children rose to occupy positions of I.S. team in the major professions including one who became the first medical doctor from Ibadon and the justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, the didactic. Chief Ibadges' life defined industry and value innovation. The student's money may have end him the dislike of Ibadon masses but it shows his conviction and college of character. He was not out to compete in the frivolity of showing off with other Ibadon personages. His legacy as exemplified in his children and children's children because of the quality of education he invested in them is excellent. And that's it on the show tonight. I am Bola Auoba.