Abdulhaqq Sule

In 2013, I was living in Benin City, working a solid nine-to-five as a Human Resource Manager at a company owned by Tijani Musa, who at the time was married to my cousin.

I didn't just stumble into HR; I was actually sponsored. Tijani saw something in me — a mix of "soft skills" and "hard skills" — and footed the bill for my training. At the time, it felt like the ultimate win. I had the title, the sponsorship, and the security.

Then I started actually managing people.

If you’ve ever had to manage more than ten employees without a rigid structure, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was a nightmare. I’ll say it plainly: managing humans is, quite frankly, the hardest thing you can do. People are unpredictable. They bring their personal opinions, their "mentality" of the day, and their "vibes" into a workspace that should be driven by results.

I quickly realized that no matter how many "soft skills" I had, I couldn't "vibe" my way into a successful organization.

The Undergrad Entrepreneur

While I was sitting in that HR office, my mind was elsewhere. I had spent my undergraduate years being a "consultant engineer" for myself — I was a creative designer, a web developer, and even dabbling in digital marketing back when that was still a frontier.

I knew I could diversify. I knew I could transform. The contrast was too sharp: in code, if you write a correct process, the machine executes it every time. In HR, I was running in circles, managing the same mistakes over and over again because we relied on people being "proactive" without giving them a roadmap.

So, I did the only logical thing. I quit.

My departure wasn't a snap decision; it was the result of a long, heavy period of lamentation. I remember reaching out to my dad in a pivotal call, pouring out my frustrations about the "human management" loop and the pull of my own entrepreneurial vision. With his blessing and a lot of inner fire, I left Benin City for Port Harcourt.

The first thing I did in PH wasn't look for another job. I drove straight to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to get my own entity registered. I was done working for a paycheck; I was ready to build a legacy. That day at the CAC office, Snazzee Interactive Company was officially born.

Structure Over Opinion

The birth of Snazzee Interactive wasn't just about starting a business; it was about the death of chaos. I carried one major lesson from Benin City to my new venture in Port Harcourt: Structures and processes are not optional.

Common wisdom says we want "proactive" people. I disagree — at least, I disagree with the way most people use the word. I don't want someone to be proactive just to make faster mistakes. If you are going to be proactive, you must be forward-thinking enough to take a project from point A to point B without breaking the foundation.

We all hear the cliché: "To succeed, you must fail."

Sure, I get it. But let’s be real — it doesn't make sense to just keep failing and running around in the same cycle. If you fail, you need to be intentional about reflecting on it. You need to find clarity. You need to fix the process so that specific failure never repeats itself.

From Snazzee to Haqqman

Snazzee Interactive was my first step into being a "real" business. It was where I stopped managing "mentalities" and started building systems.

Of course, a lot has changed since then. Snazzee Interactive eventually rebranded to Haqqman Digital Agency, and as we grew, it evolved into the current structure where Haqqman Technology Limited stands as the parent company.

But whether it’s a small team in Benin City or the engineering heavy-lifters I lead today, the rule remains the same: If you rely on people’s opinions, you fail. If you build a process, you scale.

Abdulhaqq Sule is the CTO at Haqqman. This post is a reflection on his journey from HR to Tech leadership, originally drafted in February 2021 as he looked back on the foundations of his entrepreneurial career.