How Johnson Samuel turns problems into profitable ventures

Johnson Samuel’s entrepreneurial journey is a testament to the power of problem-solving. By turning real-life challenges into business opportunities, he has built a successful enterprise that demonstrates how creativity and determination can drive both impact and profit.

Johnson, the co-founder of WalterSam Technologies Services, began to learn how to convert challenges into solutions in 2017 when he gained admission into the University of Lagos.

“In December 2017, immediately after my 100- level exams, I was like, there’s a lot of problems around me and I had to learn to leverage these problems that students were facing to create wealth for myself.

“That was how I started my first business, known as WalterSam Services, on December 17, 2018. We started by solving accommodation problems for students at the university.

“What happened then was that there were over 40,000 undergraduates seeking accommodation, and the bed-spaces on campus then was about 8,000, which means that less than 20 percent of the students could get accommodation,” he said

With the majority, over 32,000 students faced with the challenges of finding accommodation off campus, Johnson and his team started rendering accommodation services by connecting students with private hostel owners.

As if that was not enough, in 2019, he saw another problem in the university, which was the problem of overcrowded classrooms and inadequate teaching facilities, especially for 100- level students, most of whom were offering combined courses.

Johnson emphasised that he has a passion for solving problems faced by his fellow students.

“I started from primary school, secondary school. I love solving problems; when I came into the university as well,

I was seeing problems. It was from the passion that I’ve always had in solving problems that led me to see the problems faced by students in the university, and the mindset to solve them.

Aside from the accommodation challenges, we started by providing educational products and services for students to help them to prepare well for exams.

“We started by creating educational books that contain past questions and solutions, we’re very innovative about it. We added a CVT software, a computer-based software, to the books so that once they buy the book, they can also prepare with the computer-based software,” he explained.

During the pandemic in 2020, when students were asked to stay at home, he came up with a unique online mock examination platform for students.

Basically, students were able to take CVT exams from home, preparing themselves ahead of the main school exams. With this service, he was able to impact over 5,000 students in the last five years and has generated millions in revenue.

Johnson explained that the UNILAG’s Entrepreneurship and Skills Development Centre sharpened his entrepreneurial skills. “In 2021, at the maiden edition of the University of Lagos Business Innovation and Talent Expression Competition, I happened to be the winner of the competition.

“I got N2 million equity-free grant, and with the money, he was able to buy a multifunctional printer that could help him produce the book himself, and that reduced the cost of production and increased how he serves students,” he noted.

Also, from this BITES, he was able to have access to some investors who invested in his accommodation business.

“We started having private hostels, from four-bed spaces set up, and the investors supported him; and in 2024, he represented the university at Kigali, Rwanda.

“That’s another global experience for me to go out there and see how things are being done. Besides, the university created an enabling environment in terms of the ecosystem designs, in the sense that what he is working on currently, which is the bigger picture, from solving small educational problems,” he said.

The WalterSam Technologies Services is currently focused on some global technologies, building smart, scalable, tech-driven solutions to solve overcrowded classrooms problems in universities.

“I’m looking at the bigger picture of building a mobile app, and through this mobile app, students can have access to curriculum online and tutorial videos.

“They can have access to take a computer-based test software and computer-based test examinations. They can have access to chat rooms for their respective courses, and the chat room would be AI-powered,” he stressed.

Furthermore, he explained that the mobile application is an educational support mobile education designed for students in tertiary institutions. “Basically, universities nationwide have the app.

“The beauty of it is that now we have CCMAS, which means that the federal government has imposed that 70 percent of the curriculum of all universities must be the same; so, what we build can serve the course for all 275 public and private universities in Nigeria,” he said.