The Old Boy Spotlight – Agsoba Tobi Benjamin Fletcher
Agsoba Tobi Fletcher, 9501 runs the popular OfadaBoy Catering Services operating out of Surulere, Lagos. The brand name is not by chance, it is a representation of his family genealogy; Tobi hails from Ofada town, Obafemi Owode Area of Ogun State, a place renowned for the production of ofada rice. Indeed, he says his great grandfather was among the first set of farmers to plant the ofada rice. A graduate of Microbiology from Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State, Ofadaboy started his catering services at his dad’s funeral in 2009. “I was the last born and my siblings looked up to me to help them get caterers and all for the burial.
I spoke to my brother that I could run the whole food if they believed in me. He just laughed and said: “it’s kuku your father’s burial, it’s what you cook they would eat,” Tobi says in a recent interview. And that was the start of an adventure that has taken him to two continents and fed thousands of guests at over a hundred events within and outside Nigeria. But OfadaBoy is not just about ofada rice. He is credited with introducing three variants of palm wine into the Nigerian cuisine. He has created palmpine (palmwine and pineapple), palmo (palm wine and orange) and palma (palmwine and apple). His love for palmwine was inspired by his late dad, whose portrait is the logo of OfadaBoy, who would drive to University of Ife to hang out with his friends, Prof Peter Fatomilola and Uncle Jimi Solanke, to mention a few, and to savour fresh, undiluted palmwine. Tobi and his elder brother -Diporepresent the fourth generation of the Fletchers to have attended Abeokuta Grammar School.
In fact, his grandmother is a daughter of Olaseni Moore in whose compound the school was founded in 1908. Recently, he was made an ECOWAS Youth Ambassador, an obvious acknowledgement and recognition of his entrepreneurial exploits and achievements in just over a decade. In 2019, he started World Ofada Rice Day, an annual event aimed at showcasing, advocating and promoting Ofada Rice to a global audience.
