MIKE ADENUGA JNR

Businessman extraordinaire Mike Adenuga Jnr. Everything he touches turns to gold

From banking to oil and telecommunications, Mike Adenuga Jnr is moving at such a dizzying pace, he is already being touted as Africa's leading businessman. Isaac Umunna reports on what makes the enigmatic Nigerian entrepreneur tick.

hey call him 'the guru' and there is no doubt that he is one, at least in a business sense. In Nigeria and indeed Africa, the name Mike Adenuga Jnr has become synonymous with business and enterprise. His business interests run a wide gamut, straddling banking, oil, aviation, food processing, publishing, manufacturing, real estate, the hospitality industry, local and international market activities, and-more prominently-telecommunications.

So relevant has Adenuga become in African business that Ghanaian President John Kufuor earlier this year described him as the continent's number one businessman. Kufuor, who delivered the accolade during the Glo/CAF African Footballer of the Year Awards held at the Accra International Conference Centre on March 2, noted that Adenuga symbolises the African enterprise spirit and has through his business exploits given hope of an African rebirth.

"When you talk about business in Africa, you talk about Adenuga. He has within a short time left his footprint on different areas of business," the Ghanaian leader stated.

At a recent event in Nigeria during which Adenuga was honoured with the Special Lifetime Achievement Award, the judges concurred with President Kufuor. In a citation, Adenuga was said to have used his entrepreneurial agility to create thousands of jobs and revolutionise the way business is done on the continent.

Those who know Adenuga well enough would hardly be surprised by what he has become. Born to a middle-class family on April 29, 1953, he was a bundle of ambition even as an adolescent. This was reflected in his secondary school nickname, Gold Digger, which he much later in life adopted as the name of his Ibadan country home in southwest Nigeria.

From all indications, Adenuga was prepared to work hard enough to mine the gold that existed in his fertile imagination. As proof of this, he refused to be a burden on anyone during his university days in the United States of America, sustained himself by doing two demanding jobs. He was a cabbie and security guard.

There is no shortage of stories about how Adenuga made his money, with popular theories claiming that he fronts for men of power such as former Nigerian military President Ibrahim Babangida and immediate past Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Both Babangida and Abubakar have consistently denied the claims.

The speculations are apparently encouraged by Adenuga's reclusive nature. He hardly appears in public and very rarely grants interviews, preferring, instead, to let his work speak for him. While many interpret this as a sign of arrogance, a former aide of the business mogul told Africa Today that it is, in fact, informed by shyness. "He is so shy that he can hardly look you in the eye sometimes," said the man, who described his former boss as a workaholic and a perfectionist.

Some observers of Adenuga, such as Stanley Egbochukwu, editor-in-chief of Business Day newspaper of Nigeria, have described him as a masquerade. "Mike Adenuga is a phenomenon," said Egbochukwu. "He is somebody one would call an enigma. You can't see him, if you want to see him. If you call him, he can't take your calls. But if he wants to see you, he would see you. And if he wants you to see him, you would see him."

Justifying this eccentric lifestyle, the veteran journalist said: "Most businessmen tend to behave that way, because of the fear of people. If you are getting very, very rich, you become more careful of people. So that is sensible."

The hub of some of Adenuga's many businesses in Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria

Unknown to most people, Adenuga has logged over three decades as a businessman, building his empire from bottom up, but doing so largely out of public glare. That was after he had armed himself with a good education, having attended reputable schools in Nigeria (Ibadan Grammar School) and in the US (Northwestern State University, Alva, Oklahoma, and Pace University, New York, majoring in business administration with emphasis in marketing).

Adenuga cut his teeth in business at his parents' sawmill in Ijebu-Ode, southwest Nigeria, which they handed over to him to run upon his return from the US. The young man proved his mettle by quickly growing the modest business. A chance meeting with an Austrian tycoon during one of his trips to the US was to dramatically alter his fortunes. Recalling what happened in one of his rare interviews, Adenuga said: "I went on a trip to New York and when I was coming back, I missed my flight, being on British Airways, so I had to fly Swiss Air and I sat next to the owner of one of the biggest lace manufacturing factories in Austria. So, we were talking and he got me interested in importing laces, and all sorts of things."

As his business blossomed, so did his personal fortunes. By the age of 26, Adenuga had already become a millionaire. His fortunes literally exploded when he went into construction and swiftly built a reputation for prompt and quality service. His big break came when his military-officer friends assisted him to get government jobs, which he executed satisfactorily, thus opening the door for bigger contracts.

Isaac Fola-Alade, one of Nigeria's most celebrated architects, recalls his encounter with Adenuga in those his early days as a contractor. The young, bushy-haired Adenuga had been introduced to Fola-Alade in early 1977, when the latter was the permanent secretary in the federal ministry of works and housing. A military governor of one of the southwest states who made the introduction had testified to Adenuga's competence and pleaded for him to be given federal contracts. Though doubting the young man's ability to perform, Fola-Alade nevertheless decided to try him by giving him half of a military barracks in the Kachia area of Kaduna, northern Nigeria, to construct. "However," writes Fola-Alade in his biography, Remember Whose Son Thou Art, "I warned him, 'I will not accept your tender age as an excuse for incompetence, as I would promptly sack you and give your project to better contractors.' "

To Fola-Alade's consternation, when he turned up unannounced a few months later to inspect the progress of work, he found only Adenuga on site directing his workers. According to the renowned architect, "He (Adenuga) had performed so well to my utter surprise, whilst the expatriate firm next door was lagging far behind. I took a silent note of his progress."

Acting on the permanent secretary's report, the ministry's Tenders Board reviewed the contract, withdrew the one given to the underperforming foreign firm and gave it to Adenuga's Consolidated Company Limited, "which did it and handed over on schedule."

From that moment, the dam of fortune simply burst and Adenuga was firmly on his way to super riches, as he consolidated his new status as a federal contractor. After making a success of construction, Adenuga re-engineered his investment portfolio by going into more sophisticated businesses.

Take banking, for instance. In keeping with his adventurous nature, Adenuga in 1989 became one of the early set of Nigerian investors to take advantage of the banking liberalisation policy of the Ibrahim Babangida government. He started with Devcom, a merchant bank, but quickly followed with Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB), which he incorporated on January 30 1990. Granted a commercial banking license the next month (on February 7), ETB commenced business less than a month later on March 1. Within 10 years it had grown into one of the 10 most profitable banks in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

Two years ago ETB merged with Devcom in order to meet the Central Bank of Nigeria's requirement for banks operating in the country to raise their capital base from N2 billion (about $20 million) to N25b (about $200m). The merger and the raising of additional N14b through rights issue took the bank's paid up capital to N26.5b-well ahead of the Central Bank's requirement. Of the 89 banks in Nigeria, only 25 eventually beat the recapitalisation deadline of December 31, 2005. Among them, ETB stands out as the only wholly owned Nigerian bank that internally raised the money without any recourse to the capital market or foreign assistance.

With two banks at his disposal and now the consolidated ETB, Adenuga has found it relatively easy to mobilise funds for more capital-intensive ventures such as oil and telecommunications. He had taken a plunge into oil prospecting at a time when many Nigerians were contented with serving as mere agents of foreign multinational oil companies. His company, Consolidated Oil Limited, made history on December 24 1991 when it became the first indigenous firm to strike crude oil in commercial quantity. The company has since expanded operations into Sao Tome and Principe.

Having stabilised his upstream operations, Adenuga went into the downstream sector with the purchase of the Nigerian government's shares in the troubled National Oil and Chemical Company (NOLCHEM), the country's first indigenous petroleum products marketing firm.

By the time he bought NOLCHEM, which he promptly renamed Conoil, the company had become a shadow of itself, with its shares going for peanuts in the stock market. It took Adenuga only a year to turn around the fortunes of NOLCHEM through a re-engineering programme that plugged leakages in the system and enhanced the firm's efficiency. It logically became the retail arm of Conoil. A Central Operating Unit was introduced to facilitate operational monitoring and control and promote transparency. The result was the restoration of profitability and shareholders' confidence. Today, Conoil is one of the favourite stocks on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

"Conoil Plc," according to Uche Obike, a financial analyst, "has today become a unique yardstick for measuring the success of the privatisation programme... A company that was on the verge of bankruptcy before privatisation, has turned investors' preferred stock with very high potential for growth."

With sure footing in the Nigerian marketplace, Conoil has now set its sights on becoming Africa's leading petroleum marketing company, with the largest retail network offering world-class products and services.

His giant strides in his other businesses notwithstanding, it is telecommunications that has given Adenuga his present reputation as one of Africa's leading businessmen. A man who is perpetually in search of gargantuan challenges, he had plunged headlong into telecoms when the Nigerian government, hugely embarrassed that less than a million of the country's 140 million population had connectivity, decided to fully liberalise the sector.

Early in 2000, Adenuga's Communication Investments Ltd (CIL) was among the five consortia that applied to participate in Nigeria's GSM spectrum auctions. However, after the initial deposit of $20m to qualify for the bid that kicked off on January 17 2001, CIL was accused of failing to pay the balance of $285m by the February 9 2001 deadline and was disqualified by industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission.

But that wouldn't be the end of the dream for the man also nicknamed 'The Bull' in recognition of his tenacity of purpose. Two years after his CIL nightmare, Adenuga bounced back powerfully. On August 12 2002 his other company, Globacom Limited, was issued Nigeria's second national operator (SNO) license at $200m. After unexpected delays, Globacom eventually rolled out its mobile phone services on August 29 2003. It immediately revolutionised the market by crashing call rates and launching per second billing. Other networks which had claimed that per second billing would not be possible until 2007 had to eat their words and quickly introduced it shortly after Globacom's launch so as to avoid being chased out of the market.

Its late entry notwithstanding, Globacom has effectively muscled its way to the number two position in the Nigerian market (behind MTN) with a subscriber base said to have hit the 12 million mark by the middle of this year.

Glo-as the network is widely known-was from day one positioned as a world-class Nigerian enterprise and is accepted as such by Nigerians. It enjoys widespread support among both the masses and the elite.

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, who once did a testimonial TV advertisement for Globacom, said he accepted to do it because "the advert was about an imaginative theme. And I like people who use imaginative theme or creative ideas in business." Continuing, he said: "Adenuga was targeting important people and the idea was that he was trying to use people with high profile to launch a challenge against monopolists in the GSM business. Monopoly being enjoyed in the business then by some operators who are from outside the country was scandalous. And Globacom being a Nigerian brand, owned by a Nigerian who loves a challenge, I decided to support him."

Asked about his impression of Adenuga and how their paths crossed, Soyinka said: "He is a young entrepreneur I have come to admire. I like his drive. He sought me out when he was to begin his Globacom business. I thereafter made enquiries about him. I was actually told by somebody whose judgment I respect that Mike Adenuga is somebody with enormous drive and ideas. And he said I should give him as much help as I could. I checked him out and I discovered that he likes challenges. He has the drive to deliver."

Thanks to the spontaneous support it has received from Nigerians, Globacom has grown so exponentially that early July, Adenuga confidently announced that it was on the way towards becoming the biggest telecommunications company in Africa, eclipsing giants like MTN, Celtel and Vodacom. He spoke shortly after signing a $600-million-network-expansion contract with Alcatel-Lucent of France.

Adenuga Jnr has taken sport in Africa by storm. He is the sponsor of the much coveted African Footballer of the Year award. The 2007 edition was held in Accra, Ghana, where President Kufuor described the mogul as Africa's No. 1 businessman

The 8,600km submarine cable network for Globacom which Alcatel-Lucent is deploying will connect Lagos to London, England. The project will allow Globacom to connect with the US via the UK, thereby expanding Nigeria's international connectivity and contributing to west Africa's economic development.

The new project is expected to eventually increase Globacom's national mobile network capacity from 12 million to 35 million subscribers by the end of this year, thus positioning it as the network with the largest capacity in Africa. The scale of the project could be better appreciated when viewed against the background that it took over 36 African networks, led by Telcom of South Africa, to build the SAT3 submarine cable which is currently being used by many African networks.

Globacom, in 2003, became the first operator in Africa to launch its operations on the superior 2.5G network which enables the convergence of voice, data and multimedia technologies. The company later pioneered Blackberry, one of the most revolutionary Value Added Services in the telecoms sector, in the Nigerian market. Its gateway subsidiary, Glo Gateway, is now one of the largest carriers of voice traffic in Africa, carrying over 1.3 billion international minutes annually. Locally it is the gateway for most network operators in Nigeria and the surrounding African countries.

"We made it clear from the outset that our vision was to be the largest, most successful entertainment, information and telecommunications solutions provider, both in Nigeria and Africa as a whole," Adenuga's stated. "Every step we take is a movement in that direction."

Already, Globacom has announced plans to explore new markets in other African countries such as Ghana, Benin Republic, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Morocco.

Welcoming the company in advance, Ghanaian President Kufuor said: "We are excited about Globacom's imminent coming to Ghana. We are happy with what they have achieved in Nigeria and look forward to having them replicate that success here in Ghana. In just a little over three years, Adenuga has made Globacom a force not only in Nigeria but also in the African telecommunications landscape. I assure Dr. Adenuga of the full support of the government and people of Ghana."

Globacom has, indeed, taken the first step in spreading its telecommunications reach into the west African sub-region. Last month, it secured a Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications operational license in the Republic of Benin, west of Nigeria, after it emerged top in a round of bidding among several telecommunications operators including Lab Green Networks of Libya. Beninoise authorities recently suspended the licenses of two of the GSM operators, MTN and Atlantique Telecom, over dispute on regulatory fees. The suspension of the two prompted the government to hold a new bidding to award one more GSM license in order to improve telecommunications services in the country.

Globacom was preferred ahead of the other bidders because of "its technical superiority and ability to deliver" within a short period. The telecomm firm has promised to roll out GSM services in the French speaking country within the next 60 days.

Adenuga Jnr at one of the many events which his companies sponsor

Outside Africa, Globacom is also on the verge of entering India, the world's second most populous nation of over a billion people. Incidentally, the company's Chief Operating Officer, Mohammed Jameel, is an Indian. He was quoted by The Economic Times of India as saying that Globacom plans to invest some $700m in India and employ some 150 Indians out of the 400 people planned to drive its expansion into global markets.

"We have decided to make India the Asian hub for our manpower needs for telecoms," The Economic Times quoted Jameel as saying. "We are looking at a strategic partnership with one of the existing telecoms operators. The Indian telecom sector is slightly crowded. But it has huge potential and requires significant investment to grow further."

Jameel is not surprised by Glo's phenomenal growth. "At the first meeting (with Adenuga) I was convinced that the brand is going to make a revolution in telecommunications in the market," he stated.

The meeting took place in Adenuga's office in Lagos, Nigeria's economic capital, three days after Jameel joined Globacom. "He was very quiet," the Indian telecoms expert recalled of the disposition of his boss. "I was very impressed with him. He was planning to launch the brand Globacom. I saw in him a lot of passion. I saw in him a lot of commitment. I saw in him a lot of vision. He wanted the brand to succeed. And the kind of figures he was talking about in terms of subscribers, putting in infrastructure did really surprise me.

"My impression of him was that he is no doubt a very, very successful entrepreneur who can turn any venture into good one. He is a very, very aggressive manager. He is a very target-oriented manager. He is a manager who has a huge vision. He always thinks big. If you are hearing him for the first time, you would think this man is just joking. But he is not joking. Whatever he says, he is determined to achieve it. And he doesn't take instant or spontaneous decisions; he goes into the details to get things right."

A good talent hunter, Adenuga has the best brains working in his establishments. (His companies employ more than 8,000 people.) He takes the collective approach to management, listening patiently to everyone before taking a decision. When it comes to implementation, he delegates but closely supervises to ensure that expected results are achieved.

And when the results start tumbling in, the quintessential entrepreneur is not one to gloat about his supposed Midas touch. "The secret of my success is hard work, God's blessings and luck," he once told a Nigerian weekly newsmagazine in which he has substantial interest.

Contrary to what many may think, Adenuga is not driven by a desire to become the richest man in Nigeria or Africa. Explaining what makes him tick, he once said: "If I can be seen as adding value to Nigerians and Africans, it is more fulfilling."

This no doubt explains why he is a philanthropist of the first order and famous for supporting all kinds of activities. An undisputed pillar of sports in Nigeria and Africa, Adenuga has through Globacom literally chased out MTN from the sponsorship of major sporting events. One after another, Glo has out-bided and taken over from the older South African-owned rival, the Nigerian soccer premiership, Nigeria's national teams, the supporters' club, the Lagos International Half Marathon and the African Footballer of the Year Awards. Just recently, Glo bankrolled the employment of Berti Vogts, a world-class German football manager, to coach Nigeria's Super Eagles.

Didier Drogba, Ivory Coast and Chelsea player (M) celebrates with the African Footballer of the Year trophy he won, in Accra, Ghana in early 2007

Adenuga's huge contributions to the continent's development have not been in vain, as he has been routinely honoured by various groups, including the Confederation of African Football, which earlier this year gave him special recognition. Back home in Nigeria, Adenuga has received presidential commendation, as well as the national honours of Member of the Order of Niger (MON) and Commander of the Order of Niger (CON). But that is not to say that he has exactly found favour with Nigerian authorities in appreciation of his huge impact on the country's economy. To the contrary, he has suffered persecution in the hands of some governments, especially the immediate past one headed by Olusegun Obasanjo, to whose private library appeal fund launch of 2005 he donated with N250m (about $2m).

Adenuga's travails in the hands of Obasanjo-who, ironically, is his Yoruba kinsman-climaxed in his arrest and detention by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on July 9 last year. The commission's operatives invaded the head offices of Globacom, Conoil and ETB, going away with documents and computers ostensibly as part of their investigations of Adenuga's alleged illegal business dealings with the then embattled Vice President Abubakar. Released on bail two days later, Adenuga fled to London a month after following a tip-off that EFCC operatives were planning to re-arrest him.

His ordeal, especially the manner of his arrest by EFCC operatives, who forcibly broke into his Lagos residence, claiming that he resisted arrest, was strongly condemned by Nigerians, who warned that it could send wrong signals to potential investors, especially foreigners and the Nigerian Diaspora.

Adenuga's harrowing experience in the hands of Obasanjo is believed to be a punishment for his refusal to support the latter's failed bid to elongate his tenure beyond the maximum eight years allowed by the Nigerian Constitution. According to sources, Adenuga had asked if Obasanjo had a backup plan should his third term gambit fail. The former president was said to have been enrages by Adenuga's impertinence and his goose was cooked. The attempt to demonise the business titan, however, failed when the Nigerian Senate after investigating the matter exonerated him of the charges heaped on him.