Thank God I once failed all my papers at UNILAG —Chike-Obi

Mustafa Chike-Obi, immediate past Managing Director of Asset Management Corporation Of Nigeria (AMCON), is the son of the legendary Nigerian mathematician, Professor Chike Obi. CHIMA NWOKOJI, SEGUN KASALI and SYLVESTER OKORUWA engaged him on life as a scion of a notable Nigerian and his philosophy of life, among other issues.

 

IS it right to say you had a rosy childhood, considering your background?

Rosy childhood? I don’t think you knew my father, Professor Chike Obi, very well. If you did, it is difficult to say that. My father was a lecturer at the University of Ibadan, which you may consider lower middle-class. Let me tell you about my educational upbringing. First, I went to a school in Ibadan. It was a public school and my brother, Balogun and I used to walk two miles to the school. Then, we went to Mayflower School, Ikenne-remo, Ogun State. It was a very tough school and very underprivileged. After that, because he had become a politician, we moved to Onitsha and I went to St. Joseph’s Primary School, Onitsha. Again, not a school for the privileged. We didn’t own a house and we were living in a rented house in Onitsha. Thereafter, I went to CKC in Onitsha. Then, the war started and because of the war, we didn’t go to school for three years. In 1970, when I came back from the war, I went to King’s College, Lagos. You may consider King’s College a privileged school, but that’s the only privileged school I attended. From there, I went to University of Lagos. So, it was at best, a middle-class background.

 

How has the past shaped today’s Mustafa Chike-Obi?

It’s a difficult question because it has a lot of philosophical issues. There are things you learn and it becomes part of you, and when a situation arises, you react automatically to them. Every experience, except you are a robot, leaves a mark on you. So, you are a product of your experiences and capacity. Yes, my background has an impact on how I see things. I care very much about people at the lower rung of the social stratum because it could have been me. During the war, I was farming. I used to go fishing at night. It was very scary. I know how the underprivileged live. So, my experience may have impacted the way I think. I believe that anything one does, especially public policy, that does not create room for the underprivileged, is not going to stand.

 

How much of this came from your dad’s influence?

My father and I never had any detailed political conversations. He was a remote kind of person. He was an authority figure. By the time I left home, we were not that close in terms of having those kinds of discussions. When he became a lecturer at the University of Ilorin, my older brother, Balogun and my father got very close and exchanged a lot of philosophical ideas. I was in the US at that time. So, I want to believe that a lot must have been transferred to my brother.

 

What is happening to Fermat’s theorem solved by your dad?

Fermat’s theorem is a very archaic and obscure theorem. A lot of noise is made about it because he solved it. It was a differential equation, one of those specialised branches of mathematics. It is nice to talk about it, but I don’t think it was significant to his life. He was a mathematician and he solved Fermat’s theorem. But I think if you could ask him today, he would say he was passionate about how to use politics to improve the lives of the common man.

 

Is there any mathematician among you his children?

No.

 

Any of your own children with the Maths genes?

I have wonderful children but I don’t want to talk about them

 

How come you and your brother have non Igbo names?

The short answer is that my father liked those names. He liked Balogun, because my father was a student of Yoruba history. He believed that the Yoruba are the most organized among the ethnic groups in the south because of their war-like capabilities. There was a time the Fulani wanted to conquer Yorubaland but they were stopped in Osogbo by the Yoruba army. Balogun was a war chief in the Yorubaland and that was why he named my brother Balogun. He liked the name.

 

What about the Mustafa he gave you?

He named me Mustafa for almost the same reason. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a Prime Minister of Turkey, during and after the first world war. Mustafa took Turkey from the primitive age to the modern age, and as a result, the country went from a Muslim State to a modern secular State. My father liked the way he helped the Turkish nationalists against the imperialists. So, for almost the same reasons, he named me Mustafa and my elder brother, Balogun.

 

Any indelible memories?

I think when I got to UNILAG I was having so much fun, and they just introduced the quarter system, where some of our grades are done at every quarter instead of one exam at the end of the year. In my first year, I had a very bad result because I was having so much fun. I think I had ‘F’ in everything. I didn’t go for classes. When I got those grades, I remember that my father was extremely upset with me. My older brother, Balogun was very brilliant and disciplined. He always had straight As all the time. He never had any grade less than A in his entire life. When he did WAEC, he had straight As. When he was in the university, he had a first class. After I got all Fs, I think that was the experience that spurred me to having a first class. I thank God for that first class because it was that class that gave me the opportunity to go to Stanford, feel comfortable and compete with other people out there. That really horrible grade in my first year made me realise that it is important to be disciplined.

 

How much of the socials were you engaged in as an undergraduate?

We did plenty. All my classmates know what we did (laughs). When you publish this story, they will know what we did (laughs).

 

Who were the Lagos boys around you then?

I remember at that time, Aliko (Dangote) had a social circle in Surulere. There were different social circles and they interacted from time to time. There was a UNILAG circle. The vice-president, Professor Yemi Osibanjo, was in UNILAG at the time and definitely not a pastor then.

 

So, he was in your social circle?

Yes, he was.

 

What were you guys doing?

I don’t want to give any bad impressions, but he was in our social circle as at that time. His nickname was Jebi.

 

Since the VP’s nickname was Jebi, what was yours?

I didn’t have a nickname (laughs). We were university students, hanging around with each other. The social circle wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t an organised social circle. We met each other and we went partying together. There’s a place we used to eat at UNILAG then called Matthew’s Buttery.

 

An accident that God saw you through?

I try not to dramatise events in my life. So, was there an accident in the University of Lagos? Twice. One, there was a little jeep my father gave me that I used to drive. The other was much more serious because it was a car accident in Surulere.

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Any indulgence?

I wear one pair of shoes at a time. When I find a shoe comfortable, I wear it and when the shoe wears out, I wear another one. I will tell you a story. I went to London when I was MD of AMCON for a meeting. I packed my things myself and in the process, I forgot to bring a suit. So, I had to go to buy a suit so as to wear it to the meeting the next morning. The only suit I could buy that fitted me at that time, cost 800 pounds. That 800 pounds is still paining me till today. I think wearing a watch is one of the ridiculous things people do today. People accept the fact that cameras have now been displaced by phones. Why does everybody wear a watch when you can check time on your phone. I don’t understand it.

 

What is your philosophy about life?

The thing I’m highly upset with is being unfair to the fellow human being. Fairness can sometimes mean saying no. fairness can mean saying yes, but you must always consider what you’re doing and how it impacts on others. I was going to tell you, when I was at AMCON, I had minimum number of aides. I had one police orderly and he did not travel out of Lagos with me. When I traveled to Abuja and everywhere else, I did not have an orderly with me. I carried my bag myself. In my house in Abuja, I had two domestic staff. In my house in Lagos, I have two domestic staff. When I was let go from AMCON, the thing that gave me the most pride, of everything I did at AMCON is that all my personal staff chose to stay with me.

 

The people you managed their portfolio at AMCON, do they still call you for advice?

Let me say this and I will conclude with this. People do a lot of things because of necessity. I knew that when I was in a position to help people, I would have a lot of apparent attention. But I knew the attention wasn’t about me but about the position I had. I was not going to be surprised that when I left the position the attention would disappear, and it did. I would tell you that my main surprise is the amount of goodwill I still retain in Nigeria. I was very surprised I expected far less. Again, I try to be fair and I try to help people.

 

How do you think people perceive you?

It’s a very tough question. People are keen to get more feedback about how much they are liked. So, everybody is not always clearly objective about it. I would say that things could have been a lot worse and I’m not unhappy the way things turned out. The only people that appear not to like me consciously are elements in this ruling government. They are wrong. I was willing to help and I remain so. But it’s always about doing what is best for the Nigerian people. As long as they do that, I will welcome them. But they seem to think that because I was attached to the last government, I am no longer smart, I’m no longer patriotic, I’m no longer loyal, I’m no longer useful.

 

Any preference when it comes to food?

No preference. Sometimes, I want to eat fried fish. Sometimes, I want to eat Suya. Sometimes, I want to eat fried chicken. I go to the gym six days a week. I generally eat because I am hungry. Food is not my passion.

 

How do you socialise?

I don’t go to clubs. I take alcohol but everything is in moderation. I do say that Nigeria is a fantastic laboratory of life. We have the North that frowns on alcohol and they are not better morally than the south that doesn’t. So, alcohol is not the problem. The problem is who you are. We have people in the North that have four wives and are more faithful than those in the South with one wife. So, its just who you are. It is who you are that determines whether alcohol is a plus or a minus.

 

What’s your favorite alcoholic drink?

My favorite alcoholic brand in the world is freshly-tapped palm wine, but I find it difficult to obtain. I believe it’s the best drink in the world. I look for it all over Lagos, with little or no success.

 

What kind of music do you listen to?

I listen to good music. I will tell you a song I like right now; it’s a song by Wizkid called “Manya Manya.” I also like Femi Otedola’s daughter’s song featuring Tecno called “Greenlight.” There’s another one I like, I just heard it the other day by Tecno, I believe it is called “Yawa go dey.”