The Story of Michael Adenuga

CHIEF MICHEAL ISHOLA ADENUGA

The name Mike Adenuga rings a bell. It is synonymous to Globacom – a telecommunications giant in Africa. The lessons to be learnt from the life of this colossus in the African business climate are enormous.

You may wonder why the inclusion of Mike Adenuga in this small business book. Of course, his’ occupies an upper class in the big business league. I believe to become big, you must learn from the really big. That’s the simple reason for his inclusion.

As it stands today, Mike Adenuga is arguably Nigeria’s richest man. Although Forbes magazinbe may not acknowledge this because their estimates are based on stock prices, exchange rates and ownership of shares of companies. On that basis, only one of Adenuga’s numerous investments may be considered – Consolidated oil (Conoil). Meanwhile his various investments include among others, Equatorial Trust Bank, Globacom, Real estates in Nigeria, Europe, Asia, US, etc. One of his interests – Glo recently launched an ambitious Glo-1 submarine fibre cable which was constructed to connect Nigeria to London and the rest part of the world; the cost of this project is put at well over one billion dollars.

My interest is not particularly the glories he has gained but the storms he has weathered to gain them and his resolve and attitude through it all.

Born on April 29, 1953, Adenuga attended Ibadan Grammar School, Northwestern University Oklahoma and Pace University, New York. Rumours have it that, Adenuga drove taxi in the US to sustain himself and kept a straight focus on what he wanted.

When he made his first bid for the GLO telecom license, he lost it – he lost $20 million. Guess he burnt his fingers badly and should have retired from appearing in the public for fear of creditors perhaps. This confidence personified didn’t stop there, he made a second bid later and he eventually got it.

During the banking consolidation and other reforms that followed much later when bank owners(founders) were losing their banks, he was about the only one to have successfully merged his Devcom Merchant with his Equatorial Trust Bank and to have survived the assault of the other reforms without losing his license.

He suffered several political attacks and the EFCC was used to witch-hunt him and for a good number of months, he literally moved his operational and residential base to a neighbouring African country.

He was accused of tax evasion and several other scandals that would have without fail closed down many businesses, his’ stood.

One of the major lessons every growing businessman must pick from the story of Adenuga is resilience. With all that has come against him, he showed what stuff he was made of, he built in the storms and created a brand everyone wants to both have and use not just in Nigeria, but in Africa at large. Another lesson is definitely about his audacity and risk-daring ability. How can you possibly explain how someone would lose whooping $20 million in one singe bid, and yet he is able to wake up the next day thinking about re-bidding for that same license? In the period of the political turmoil when he suffered barrage of attacks, he woke up each day seeing trouble yet he lived through them. He surmounted the odds. The fact that he has buoyant investments in at least three top sectors of the Nigerian economy looks to me like beautiful icing on the cake of the troubles that he has faced.