Adenuga: Celebrating the new definition of enterprise at 69

Dr Michael Adenuga’s companies are exceptional. His Consolidated Oil (now Conoil Plc) pioneered indigenous oil exploration in Nigeria, while his Globacom democratised access to telephone communication in the country. As Adenuga turns 69 today, SULAIMON OLANREWAJU takes a look at the exploits of this business personage beyond the world of business.

Dr Michael Adenuga is viewed by many as a puzzling phenomenon because they can’t figure him out. He hardly speaks in the public space, yet his name is all over the place. He is rarely seen anywhere but his footprints dot everywhere. He never struggles for control, yet a huge chunk of the nation’s economy is at his beck and call. Adenuga is a rare combination of vision, passion, innovation, energy and strategy. So, from telecommunications to oil and gas, from banking to real estate, and from construction to hospitality, Adenuga holds the ace, sets the pace and stands taller than most Nigerian business people.

Despite his reputation as a bull and his intimidating profile, Adenuga is humane and urbane. He neither believes in crowding out competitors nor in fleecing customers. He holds on to global best practices and has made value creation his raison d’être in business. This has made him both a path finder and a trail blazer.

In 1989, the Ibrahim Babangida military government decided to grant Nigerian entrepreneurs licences to prospect for oil with a view to encouraging indigenous participation in the critical sector. Dr Adenuga was one of the 11 beneficiaries of the gesture. But unlike some of those awarded the licence who opted to sell same while others developed cold feet, Adenuga deployed his resources and trudged headlong into the project. After a while, fortune smiled on him as his company, Consolidated Oil Limited, struck oil in 1991. Thus, the company emerged the first among those awarded licences to bring to reality the expectation of the government.

Apart from the fortune and fame that oil prospecting has conferred on him, his pioneering effort in the field gave fillip to others to toe his path with the effect that today, the country is the better for it as it is no longer solely dependent on International Oil Companies (IOCs) as there are many thriving indigenous companies in the sector. Currently, Conoil Plc, (as Consolidated Oil is now known), is one of the largest and most profitable oil marketing companies in Nigeria.

But if Adenuga’s venture in the oil and gas industry is inspiring, his adventure in the telecommunications is even more so; it is a stuff of which legends are made.

After the transition to democratic rule in 1999, the new government sought to deepen the country’s telephone density and advertised to sell four Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) licences to operators through the auction system in 2001. Adenuga’s company, Communications Investment Limited (CIL), paid the required initial deposit of $20million and got a conditional licence which was later revoked, thus forfeiting the deposit. But he was undaunted. Two years later, Globacom, another company owned by him, was awarded the Second National Carrier Licence.

Globacom’s entry into the telecoms industry on August 29, 2003 was the game changer Nigerians had long awaited as tariffs tumbled following the introduction of per second billing system which other networks had said was not possible at that time. Globacom was also responsible for the crash of the price of SIM card from the prohibitive N25,000 or more, which other networks were charging, to less than N1,000. Thus, for the first time in the nation’s history, low income people had access to telephone. Ordinarily, these feats should have sufficed as the company’s unique selling proposition given the pull they had for subscribers, but Glo was out to make an unequivocal statement that it was (and still is) passionate about customer satisfaction. So, it also introduced the 2.5G technology, which offered GPRS with services such as multimedia messaging, mobile banking, mobile internet and BlackBerry, among other services that were hitherto not available in the country as other telecoms companies had operated on the 2G technology.

Then, in 2008, Glo launched the third generation technology (3G Plus), thus scoring another first, as the pioneer of this technology which supports video calling, high speed internet (HSI), mobile TV and video not only in Nigeria but in the whole of the West African sub-region. This has since been upgraded to the 4G technology.

In 2011, Globacom became the first single telecommunication company in the world to own its international submarine cable when it unveiled Glo 1, the 9,800 km-long submarine cable with a minimum capacity of 2.5 Tbit/s. Glo 1, which enables direct connectivity between West Africa, and the rest of the world, has landing points in Lagos in Nigeria, Accra in Ghana, Senegal, Nouakchott in Mauritania, Casablanca in Morocco, Bude in England and Vigo in Spain, among others. Recently, Glo signed a partnership agreement with an Israeli network equipment supplier, Ceragon Network, to improve its service in rural areas and also increase broadband access to the latest 5G network.

Currently, Globacom, which started two years after other networks, has over 55million subscribers in Nigeria and is a major player in a number of other West African countries.

As a result of Dr Adenuga’s business wizardry, management dexterity and profound acuity, which position him to identify opportunities when they are not apparent as well as decipher where and when to invest, which personnel to attract and the technology to deploy, he has recorded repeated success in all his business endeavours. For this reason, some people refer to him as the man with the Midas touch. While that is true, he is more than that, Adenuga is the new definition of enterprise.

However, Adenuga’s life does not just revolve around money-making activities, the man is committed to making impact. Though said to be cloistered, Adenuga hardly misses anything. He knows what goes on around the country and the world and makes appropriate interventions with his immense means to put smiles on the faces of people without any intention to hug the limelight in the process.

In March 2020, when COVID-19 was raging and spreading across the country, Mike Adenuga Foundation, the body that coordinates his philanthropic endeavours, donated N500million to Lagos State Government and N1billion to the Federal Government to support efforts to curtail the scourge. Not long ago, a Nollywood actor, Gbolahan Adetayo, was diagnosed with lung, liver and kidney infection. Somehow, this got to the attention of Adenuga who sent him enough money to cover the cost of treatment and post-treatment rehabilitation. Such interventions happen almost on a weekly basis. For Adenuga, benevolence is a culture.

Adenuga has been a major pillar of support for football in Nigeria and Africa. At a point, Adenuga’s Globacom sponsored the Nigerian league and paid the salary of the Super Eagles Technical Adviser, Berti Vogts, between 2007 and 2008. According to a former Minister of Sports, Bala Ka’Oje, Globacom expended over N3billion to sponsor the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and the then Nigeria Premier League (NPL) during his tenure as minister. Globacom also sponsored the premier league in Ghana. It has also transformed the annual CAF Awards and made it the most glamorous and prestigious sports event on the continent.

A major supporter of African culture, Globacom has consistently sponsored the annual Ojude Oba Festival in Ijebu Ode. It has also sponsored the Ofala Festival in Onitsha, Lishabi Day in Abeokuta, the Puuskaat Festival in Mwangu, Plateau State; the Benin Great GSM Village Festival and a host of others. Adenuga also collaborated with the French Government to build the Alliance Francaise, a French Cultural Centre in Ikoyi, Lagos. Globacom also supported the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature for a number of years.

A well-decorated man, Adenuga holds Nigeria’s second highest title of Grand Commander of the Order of Niger (GCON). Before being conferred with the GCON, which is the highest individual honour for a private citizen in Nigeria, , he had earlier been awarded at different times, the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) and the Commander of the Order of the Niger (CON). In 2017, he was conferred with The Companion of the Star of Ghana, the highest national award in Ghana. That same year, he bagged the French National Award of the “Chevalier la Legion d’Honnuer”. In July 2018, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, elevated him to ‘Commander of the Legion of Honour’, France’s highest national honour. Adenuga is probably the only African holding the highest national honour in three different countries.

Dr Adenuga is the Otunba Apesin of Ijebuland. He also holds honorary doctorate degrees of the University of Ibadan and the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ogun State. During Nigeria’s 50th Independence anniversary celebration, he was one of the 50 Nigerians conferred with the Special Golden Jubilee Independence Anniversary Awards by the Federal Government.

Michael Adeniyi Agbolade Ishola Adenuga (Jnr) was born on April 29, 1953, in Ibadan, into the family of Chief Michael Adenuga Snr., a school teacher and Madam Oyindamola Adenuga, a successful trader, who later became the Yeyeoba of Ijebuland. He attended Ibadan Grammar School, Ibadan in Oyo State, for his secondary education and studied Business Administration at Northwestern State University, Alva Oklahoma in the United States. He also earned a Masters degree at Pace University, New York, majoring in Business Administration with emphasis on Marketing.

On his return to Nigeria, Adenuga, taking a cue from his mom, went straight into business, dealing in clothing materials and carbonated drinks. He struck gold in 1979 when, at the age of 26, he made his first million. Since then, his wealth has grown ceaselessly.

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