The Insight by Lateef Adewole
The day, 29th of April, 2023, marked another milestone in the life of the man, who many referred to as “The Bull”, Otunba (Dr.) Micheal Adeniyi Agbolade Ishola Adenuga, as he clocked the Platinum age of 70! It was a great moment in the life any human being to have reached such age. Therefore, I am using this auspicious moment to say a big congratulation to “Mr. Chairman”, as people in his close circle call him, and wish him a blissful birthday. May the Almighty God spare his life for many more years to come, in sound health and abundance of grace.
I didn’t bother to include “wealth”, as usual, because God has already blessed him stupendously. I also want to believe God has fulfilled most of his dreams and aspirations, if not all. However, if there are things he desires even at that, but have not been fulfilled, may those desires come to fruition. In many ramifications, Nigeria and Nigerians are proud of Adenuga, for his achievements and immense contributions to the socio-cultural, economic, and human development of our country.
He is also considered, not just as a Nigerian, but an African and a global citizen, which reflected in the diversity of the sources of encomiums poured on him on this day, from around the world; Ghana, Benin, Togo, France, Canada, USA, UK, India and all over. His case isn’t like a “prophet not valued at home”. The tributes to him from around the country were too numerous to mention. Most dailies (print media) of 29th April, 2023, were filled with his pictures from paid advertisements by his well wishers. Some papers did editorials on him.
I took particular interest in few of them, especially Thisday. I had to buy the hard copies of Thisday and Tribune, as “souvenirs”. The Nigerian Tribune is an Ibadan-based media house and Adenuga sees himself as an “Ibadan boy”, having spent a sizeable part of his formative years in Ibadan, where he attended the prestigious Ibadan Grammar School, Ibadan, Oyo state, which he is usually be very proud of. He also started cutting his teeth in trading in the ancient city. This was despite being a royal, from Ijebu Igbo, in Ogun state. The present Awujale of Ijebu-Ode, HRM, Oba Sikiru Adetona is his cousin. So, Tribune’s case was understandable.
The most elaborate commentaries and tributes to Adenuga must have been in Thisday. Apart from the paper making him a front page story and doing a comprehensive cover story about him, that ran from Page 32 to 42, there were many other advertisements congratulating him that took up more than half of the 88 page daily. All the top, highly respected feature writers of the newspaper and other guest writers, specifically wrote an article each, about him. I counted about 11 of these articles. They included; Dele Momodu, Reuben Abati, Olusegun Adeniyi, Simon Kolawole, Ebere Wabara, Yemi Ogunbiyi, Chidiebere Nwobodo, Nduka Irabor, Mike Jituboh, Amaju Pinic, and Richard Mofe Damijo (RMD).
All these people had wonderful tales to tell about him, his exploits in the business world, his philanthropic activities, his boundless generosity, his enigmatic personality, how kind-hearted and sociable he is, despite his reclusiveness. His background about how he followed the footsteps of his mother, who was a trader, by selling lace materials and also drinks. How he travelled abroad, drove taxis, did bouncer’s job at clubs, went to universities to get his degrees on self-sponsorship and so on. They all seem like fairy tales but were real. That is the man, Adenuga.
Now, many might begin to wonder how Adenuga’s matter concerns me to the extent I am writing such a personal article with such title. Yes, I have my own Adenuga story too. Otunba Mike Adenuga was the owner and chairman of the oil company I worked for about 15 years, before I left to start off on my own. He was my former employer. This is part of my story I intend to relate here, as it concerns Adenuga.
In some of my past articles, I have regaled readers with my humble background. And how I was determined to break free from the shackle of poverty by working very hard while I attended schools. Unlike now, at the time I was still going through schools, the main chance of the children of poor parents to compete in the society was education. It was very tough and difficult then too, but that was still a driver of our hope. This was why I put all my heart and being into my academics, and it paid off, such that on graduation from the university, I had a First Class (Honours).
Not only that, I was the Overall Best Graduand in my department, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Overall Best Graduand in my Faculty of Engineering. I had the Second Overall Best result in the whole university, a step lower than what I had aimed. I wanted to be the valeditorian, but a man wishes, God knows best. I went on to do my Youth Service the following year. Growing up, my ambition was to work in the Oil and Gas, particularly in the upstream, being an Engineering student. Sadly, in spite of all my efforts, I never got job in any of them.
While working in a small company in 2001, there was this advert in a newspaper (I can’t remember precisely which now), by the then National Oil and Chemical Marketing Company Plc (NOLCHEM), a frontline indeginous downstream oil company. In those days, jobs seekers search for jobs in the newspapers, especially “The Guardian on Thursdays”, unlike these days where everything has gone global with the internet penetration and preponderance of mobile phones. This is a revolution in Nigeria that Adenuga helped pioneered and advanced through his Globacom Telecommunications Company, along with others.
So, my friends, who lived in Lagos, helped me applied, along with theirs, because I lived far away, outside Lagos at the time. After a long wait, we were invited for an aptitude test, a physically written one. Unlike now that everything could be done online. Arriving at that venue on that faithful day, one would think all the youths seeking employment opportunities in Nigeria converged in that place. This was at a time the unemployment rate in Nigeria was far lower than what we have now. That mammoth crowd alone was intimidating and could make someone lose hope of any chance of being employed. But as a desperate man who must succeed that I was, I was determined to succeed, with the grace of God.
We did the test, very tasking and rigorous. I was fortunate to pass. It was an incredible feeling. Unknown to me that that was the beginning of more rigorous recruitment process of series of interview stages, that spanned about six months. The successful candidates were invited to multiple levels of interview that involved different levels of management. Many of them involved waiting for many hours, which often led to us leaving the interview venue at very late hours of the night. That should have given a hint about what I was about to get into and the life of the owner, a hard worker. But all those pains were inconsequential to a man desperate to succeed. My motto has always been: “No Pain, No Gain”.
At a stage in the interview process nearing the end, when the thousands of applicants that started have been reduced to a sizable population of few hundred persons, we were told we had to meet the management for our final interview, at which moment the fate of each candidate will finally be decided. You can imagine the amount of adrenaline that would be flowing in my body at the time. It was like someone going for judgement. It was scary.
Then came the D-day and the hour that it was my turn to enter. I strolled in to the expansive conference room, clad in my well ironed suit, fully corporately dressed with tie, and shining shoes, all of which I had to procure specifically for the interviews, cuddling the bag containing my credentials. I never had means to dress like that before then. I saw many immaculately dressed top management staff surrounded the wide conference table, with a single seat for the interviewee at a distance, opposite them.
As I walked in and surveyed the room, I also noticed that there was a man who stood out and more impressive, sitting quietly at the separate end of the table, watching all proceedings and taking notes. I never knew who that was exactly, until later time, that it was “The Bull” himself. It was an habit of his that we found out later that he always did the final assessment personally, of whoever he wanted to employ. He makes the final choices.
In summary, I had my interview, answering series of questions from many people sitting across me. The distinct man only nodding once in a while showing his attentiveness, as I saw from the corner of my eyes. It was like going through the lion’s den. At the end, I left, satisfied that I had done my best and I left the rest to God. We were told they will get back to us at later date. That day, I was at the Head Office of National Oil, in Marina, Lagos, up till past 10pm, since 9am in the morning.
After what seemed like endless wait, I received a letter through post office, by which means communications were done then, unlike now that we have mobile phones, emails, sms and other means of passing information in real-time. I was invited to the Head Office again, for negotiation, that I had been shortlisted and needed to come to negotiate my remuneration. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was overjoyed but had to be discrete about it as I was scared that they could change their minds.
I went, was asked how much I was earning where I was working and how much I would like to be paid. This was a most difficult and scary question due to poverty and inexperience in such. I had to up my current salary at the time only a bit, which was N15,000. and demanded for N20,000 or N25,000, just to be on safe side, so they wouldn’t say I was too “greedy” or they couldn’t pay any such high amount I might asked for, thereby losing the opportunity. At the end, that exercise was just formality. The company already had their standardised salary they planned to pay all their new recruits.
Eventually, I was offered a salary of a little over N70,000. per month, in 2001. That was incredible. I couldn’t believe my ears. That was a very huge amount at the time. I could remember that my friend, who was working with Lagos State government as Level 8 officer was earning about N14,000. per month. That was just 20% of what I was about to earn. National Minimum Wage was about N7,500. My salary was almost ten times the National Minimum Wage. I told myself that I was finally leaving poverty.
Our induction programme finally came later in 2001. We were treated like new brides. At the last count, only about 50 of us were eventually employed. We were always treated to sumptuous meals of assorted foods, massive roasted chicken and fishes, and chilled soft drinks on daily basis, during our lunch breaks. This was different from daily morning tea breaks. I felt I was in another planet. “Poverty na bastard”. No one is supposed to experience it. I was later deployed to Aba, Abia state, managing the company’s businesses in about three states, Abia, Imo, and Akwa Ibom, under our Regional Office in Port Harcourt, Rivers state. That was how I started my journey in the Oil and Gas industry.
Many might wondered what is so spectacular about all I have written, which could seem as routine in a standard organisation, especially now that our society has advanced and how this had anything to do ‘specially’ with Adenuga. I will get down to the meat of the story now.
Firstly, to get a job in Nigeria, especially such a lucrative one like that, even then, you need to have “connections”. It is not everyday that people easily get employed on merit. But, as we later got to know after we have started working in the company, we learnt that the new owner of the company, Mike Adenuga, who just bought National Oil a year earlier during the privatisation exercise of the Federal Government, gave a mandate that he wanted new recruits. And that these new recruits must be the best available!
He did not give room for the usual “man-know-man” that characterised Nigeria’s society. The whole recruitment was taken off the existing management and outsourced to completely insulated external professional firm, and it was headed by a non-Nigerian, new to the country, who knew nobody. Adenuga was said to have given a stern warning that no extraneous influence should be entertained. These claims were confirmed in few events I was later privy to.
A friend of mine, who we took the test together but didn’t make it, got a connection to a prominent Oba in Lagos. He got a letter from the King but that achieved nothing. He was never employed. The letter couldn’t even get to Adenuga. It might have been trashed by the foreigner who did not know who was who, and didn’t care to know, based on Adenuga’s stern instructions.
Also, at one of the days of our induction, the company’s Managing Director (MD) came to see us. After congratulating us, he confessed that that was the first time such recruitment would take place and he would not have inputs in it. He told us that he saw few among us who he knew their parents, only after we had been recruited. Mr. Abiola Ajimobi was our MD at the time. He later left to become a one-term senator and two-term governor of Oyo state, before he passed away in 2020, during covid-19. May his soul rest in peace.
So, if not for Adenuga’s open mindedness, kindness and demand for the best, where would a poor child of a nobody like me have gotten employed in a leading downstream oil and gas company like National Oil? I never knew where their Head Office was before then. We were the first set of Adenuga’s direct employees engaged immediately after buying the company.
It was while working with the company over the years that I earned my first one million naira. So, I could say, with gratitude that, not only I was taken out of poverty by Adenuga as I worked in National Oil, which later became Conoil Plc, he made me a millionaire (in Naira). For this, I was indebted to him forever. And all through the years I served the company, I never forgot that, it was my driving principle, I was absolutely loyal to the company and dedicated all my life to it, as my own form of pay back to Adenuga. I never left for another company until I finally exited to establish my own private company, which I am managing till date. I was still inspired by Adenuga’s business sagacity, acumen and exploits, to do so.
Again, as a young man, working in Aba, it was in Adenuga’s company, National Oil (later Conoil), which gave me my first car, as official car. Not only that, it was a brand new, what we call “mint or tear rubber”, in local parlance, in 2002. It was a Honda City, a new brand that Honda Company just produced a year before. At that time, only top executives of banks and big companies drove such brand new cars. Many of them even had to park it in their offices after closing. But there I was, cruising around in such luxurious sporty car, as an individual, as I performed my duties. It was a great feeling. My second brand new Toyota Corolla 2010 was also given to me in 2011 by Conoil. I bought personal (“tokunbo”) cars in-between.
Thank you, Otunba (Dr.) Mike Adenuga. I cannot finish my Adenuga story for want of space. This is just a part of it. Working in his company simply transformed my life for better. This percolated down to my immediate and extended family. This my story represents that of most of the guys we were employed together. You touched our lives positively to a measure you cannot imagine. God bless you sir.
“Eniyan ki mo rin, kori o ma min” (no one is perfect). It is natural that on a day like that, people rarely mention any shortcoming of such an icon being celebrated, for obvious reason. In the tens of articles, commentaries and adverts I read, no single one mentioned any flaw of “Mr. Chairman”. This is understandable. And I don’t intend to do same too. However, I will like to make few observations. This is because, people at such height might find it difficult to know what goes on at the grass root. My observations have to do with Conoil Plc, a company I so much cherished and served diligently.
I have just narrated how Adenuga was all about merit and the best, at the inception of the company. This brought in so many brilliant guys I know personally, who worked so hard and dedicated their lives to Conoil. However many of them felt or are still feeling left out. At a stage, as the company continued to expand, with the exit of majority of former staff of the old National Oil, those foundation members like me, who have learnt the trade and mastered the business, expected that they should have been progressively promoted, with proportional betterment in their welfare with increased salaries and better remunerations, but that didn’t happen.
People from outside were being recruited, even outside of Oil and Gas, sometimes less qualified, to head them, with humongous salaries paid to them, far higher than those of existing, longstanding and vastly experienced staff of many years, who remained stagnant. This lowered morale of many. By now, people who joined the company with me or just after me, are supposed to have been leading the organisation at top management level in the last ten years. That didn’t happen reasonably. Many of them have spent over 20 years in the company.
There are still some of them in the system who just remained, either out of loyalty or fear of unknown if they decide to resign. Many have left. This is one sore point for me. It often made me realise how “captured” the people in power could be, who surbordinates could have told that all is well, whereas, the people at the lower rung of the ladder are suffering and unhappy. How could they, having neither promotion nor salary increment in over 10 years? This is one thing I hope “baba”, as we fondly called him in Conoil while I was there, should look into. Many of his staff in this category have been forgotten and unhappy. This is a duty I owe my former colleagues and the company, for better future.
Once again, congratulations to “The Guru”. Your indelible marks on the sand of time will forever be appreciated.
Long Live Otunba (Dr.) Mike Adeniyi Agbolade Ishola Adenuga.
May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.
God Bless Nigeria.
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May 6, 2023.