After going through the hell of being incarcerated for 18 months in Libya by human traffickers and subjected to dehumanising conditions, nothing could have stopped Jimmy Ofuoyan from attaining his dream of being self-made when he finally made his way to Italy.
Today, he is the CEO of 360Kuts (a haircut service for men) and Khalilimages (a lifestyle digital content company).
The story of Jimmy Ofuoyan’s rise to success is an inspiring one that should motivate young people who are not born with a silver spoon and have to singlehandedly work their way out of the trap of poverty and a life of struggle.
Jimmy Ofuoyan’s humble beginning is a tapestry of poverty, born into a poor family, a large one with nine children, and handicapped with limited education.
He had taken the only option before him: learn a vocation at 12 by becoming an apprentice in his brothers’ unisex salon, where he learnt how to braid and fix women’s hair and also acquired male haircut skills.
After a few years, all he had was the skill of a barber. He decidedly took his fate into his own hands at 18 and decided to migrate to Italy through the deadly Libyan route with like-minded friends in 2016.
Libya was the darkest moment of his life, as he became a victim of human traffickers who incarcerated him along with other migrants. Yet in his state of incarceration, like the biblical Joseph, who used his talent of dream interpretation in prison, Jimmy Ofuoyan was using his skill as a barber to give inmates and traffickers alike good haircuts.
After a year and a half, he escaped and reached Italy, where he went on to live, first in a camp in Sicily and then in Pescara. From there, it was an upward trajectory for Jimmy Ofuoyan, who would go on to win the Blurriest/Fastest Fade Technique Barber Battle and seal his place as a celebrity barber, the first Nigerian migrant to rise to such prominence.
Today, his 360Kuts, which started as a home-service barbering service, and Khalilimages, a digital content creation company, are international brands and testaments that a poor boy from Africa has weathered the storms of life to become a self-made man.
