Femi Oshofowora and the business of being believed

At Emerge Conference 5.0 in Lagos in 2024, the rewards included something rather more substantial than a certificate. Mbraiz Innovations gave plots of land to outstanding staff. For a gathering concerned with financial opportunity, this was a pleasingly literal gesture: some people left with a stake in the ground. Its host, Femi Oshofowora, had brought property, professional ambition and the business of helping people advance into the same room.

More than 300 people attended that edition. There were lessons about money, conversations about careers and a mentor-mentee dialogue involving Oshofowora himself. The CEO of Mbraiz Innovations was also there as someone willing to acknowledge the value of guidance. That detail helps explain his public work. Alongside the business of selling property, he has made a recurring commitment to gathering people who want to build something of their own.

The buyer arrives with a history

Oshofowora leads Mbraiz Innovations from the Ikorodu area of Lagos State. His account of the company’s beginnings starts with people who had been disappointed when buying property. He wanted to offer an experience they could approach with confidence. It is an origin story organised around somebody else’s hesitation: the prospective customer who has already heard a fine promise, and has reasons to be careful when another one comes along.

That is an awkward starting point for any salesperson. A buyer may be evaluating the offer in front of them while remembering an entirely different transaction. The price has a number attached; confidence is harder to itemise. Oshofowora’s stated ambition puts that difficulty close to the centre of his work. A property business has to persuade people about a place, a process and the people responsible for carrying it through.

He has also described property as a route through which young people can develop their businesses. Put the two aims together and his proposition becomes clearer. He wants customers to feel able to transact, and younger entrepreneurs to find opportunities in the industry. Both depend on relationships that can survive questions. The glossy brochure gets to speak first. Eventually, somebody must answer the telephone.

“Trust and quality delivery”

Femi Oshofowora, describing what he wants Mbraiz to be known for

The conversation after payment

One of the more revealing parts of Oshofowora’s account concerns the period after a purchase. He describes asking clients for feedback, maintaining contact and keeping them informed. The completed sale remains the beginning of further conversation. It is a modest subject beside the customary language of expansion, yet it says a good deal about how he wants the company to behave when the immediate incentive to impress has passed.

There is a useful editorial test here. Imagine removing the sales presentation and looking only at the follow-up. Would the customer recognise the same organisation? The question follows naturally from his emphasis on continued attention. It also makes his preferred words, trust and delivery, more demanding. They concern what another person experiences, including the ordinary moments when no advertisement is being written and no new deal is waiting to be announced.

His comments about technology have a similar practical cast. He discusses communication, managing operations and reaching people through social media. These are recognisable business tasks. The interesting question is how a tool helps someone do them. In the context of his customer relationships, a digital channel has an everyday job: help information travel between the business and the people who need it. Its usefulness should be visible at the receiving end.

Leaving room for another opinion

The company biography gives Oshofowora a wider brief as chairman and group managing director of The Mbraiz Group. It also names leadership responsibilities at Mbraiz Facility Management and Xcellentluk. His education includes accounting studies; the business administration doctorate listed in his biography is honorary. The mix places him in a world of management, property and service, with several responsibilities sitting behind the public-facing chief executive title.

When describing his team, he has said that employees should contribute ideas and have room to make decisions. “I don’t impose my views on them because they’re stakeholders too,” he said. A chief executive’s preference is easy to establish. Making other people’s judgement useful requires more attention. His description presents leadership as a shared discussion, with the person at the top responsible for allowing it to happen.

His professional affiliations extend beyond the company. The biography lists membership of the Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria and the African Real Estate Society, alongside participation in real estate education programmes. These are specific connections to the field he works in. They also sit comfortably beside his interest in convening: his public career includes joining professional communities as well as creating an occasion for other people to meet.

Mbraiz’s management roster gives that discussion a practical shape. It includes executive director Samuel Okpaluku, operations director Okechukwu Azubuike and business manager Olaide Peters, alongside people responsible for marketing, administration, projects, finance and the Ibadan branch. Those functions help make the word “team” concrete. Property requires several kinds of work to meet in the same transaction. An appealing idea still needs someone to manage its details.

A mentor takes the stage

The 2024 Emerge programme made the role of guidance unusually explicit. Oshofowora appeared in a mentor-mentee dialogue with Oladapo Oluseyi, identified at the gathering as a senior finance executive and Mbraiz patron. Bukola Oshofowora co-chaired the planning team. The conference brought together people with different roles around a shared subject: how to make progress in business and working life. His own participation placed an ongoing relationship on the programme.

Elsewhere, he has described himself as a product of mentorship. It is a useful admission for someone who convenes an event for others. The speaker’s platform can make a career look like an individual construction, with all the scaffolding discreetly removed. A conversation between mentor and mentee leaves some of that scaffolding visible. It gives the audience a way to think about guidance as a relationship with another person.

The land gifts to staff at that fifth edition gave the day another connection to his working life. Employees appeared among the people receiving opportunities, rather than remaining somewhere behind the event. There is a neat circularity to a property company recognising people through property. It also brought an abstract conference subject, financial advancement, into the form of an actual allocation. The gesture was particularly suited to the business hosting the conversation.

The distinction matters when reading his ambitions for younger entrepreneurs. Access to experienced people is a specific form of help. So is the opportunity to ask a question in a room where someone may understand its difficulty. A conference cannot promise what a participant will do next. It can create the occasion for a useful encounter. That is the more grounded way to understand the gathering’s place in Oshofowora’s work.

Returning to the room

By the sixth edition’s announcement in 2025, the programme extended across personal branding, financial leadership, property investment and entrepreneurship. The proposed lineup included people from several industries. Oshofowora’s stated purpose was to give entrepreneurs knowledge, tools and connections. That combination fits a convener whose main business involves property but whose public gathering leaves space for a wider set of professional interests. A room can accommodate more than one career plan.

The official conference website carries the idea into a seventh edition, advertised for July 11, 2026, at The Wonders Cathedral in Magodo, Lagos. It names Oshofowora as convener and gives the edition the theme “Pathfinder”. The site explains the annual July timing through Mbraiz Innovations’ founding anniversary. A company milestone becomes an occasion to invite others in. That recurring calendar commitment is one of the clearest connections between his executive and convening roles.

The announced 2025 speakers included Seyi Awolowo, Veronica Folorunsho, Kunle Adeyemi and Oladipupo Clement, alongside Oluseyi Oladapo and others. The range gave the programme several possible points of entry. A student considering a career and an established entrepreneur thinking about their business could come with different questions. The convener’s task was to make an occasion where those different interests could meet, without requiring everyone to be pursuing the same opportunity.

There is a temptation to read any business anniversary as a celebration of the organisation alone. Here, the programme gives it another purpose: professional learning and introductions. The people attending need not share the same ambitions, or even work in property. What connects the gathering to Oshofowora’s business life is the value he places on relationships. Customers, colleagues, mentors and aspiring entrepreneurs occupy different places in that account, but none is incidental.

Returning to a gathering each year also changes the nature of the commitment. A single invitation can be answered once. A recurring conference asks its organiser to keep finding a reason for people to return. That is a useful parallel with the customer attention Oshofowora describes: the relationship needs another conversation, and then another. A good first impression has plenty of work waiting behind it.

His story, as it appears in his public work, turns on the distance between making an offer and becoming someone another person will deal with. The subject is property; the recurring concern is confidence. The conference adds a second setting in which to work on that concern. There are buyers deciding whom to trust and younger professionals deciding whom to learn from. Oshofowora has given himself responsibilities on both sides of that room.