ADENUGA AT 70 THE LOGIC

Behind The Phenomenon

-Mike Jituboh

As Dr Mike Adenuga Jr , the Nigerian Oil and Telecommunications magnate, turns 70 on 29th April, 2023, two of the many questions that come to mind are: What makes him tick and how does one get to accomplish even as little as 1% of his financial achievements to date?

The answers to these straight forward questions are surprisingly simple Virtually all those who have been fortunate to work closely with Dr Adenuga over the years agree, with regards to the first question that the principal assets that stand him apart from billions of others mortals are as follows:

1 Seeing the big picture

2 Focusing on the big picture

3 Extraordinary attention to detail

4 Non forgetful memory

5 Willingness to take risks

6 Ability to think outside of the box

7 Speed in taking decisions but

8 Patience when required

9 Amazing stamina and

10 A totally detribalized disposition towards his entire work force; from the most senior to most junior staff members

The answer to the second question is that in addition to diligently striving to develop sterling qualities that have made Dr Adenuga what he is today, one must also be prepared to work as hard as he does in order to stand a chance of emulating his phenomenal achievements

Exactly two decades ago, Dr Adenuga was thriving in Banking, with Devcom bank preoccupied with the business sector and Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB) in retail banking He was at the same time solidly entrenched in the oil and gas sector with his flagship company, Conoil producing Limited holding pride of place as the foremost indigenous oil producing company in the country

Far from being contented with the big pie that he had in banking and oil, Adenuga had scoped the economic landscape and determined that telecommunications were going to be the next big thing in Nigeria His far-sighted decision to take the plunge has since seen Globacom become the second ranked mobile operator in the country, with over 56 million subscribers.

The journey from then to now has not been easy It was right from inception fraught with steely roadblocks and mortal dangers that would have floored anyone without the type of patience, stamina and willingness to take risks that Adenuga is imbued with

The first major problem was that the mobile telecoms licenses of Adenuga's Communications Investment Limited (CIL) and over fifty other entities were canceled overnight by the Federal government which went on to announce a bidding process under which only four licenses were to be issued The process called for interested bidders to each deposit $20 million which would be forfeited if the bidder could not or had decided not to pay the balance of the biddder's winning bid

While some of those whose licenses were cancelled decided to challenge the decision in court, Dr Adenuga immediately turned his attention to the requirements of the new bidding procedure and promptly made $20 million deposit.

Subsequently internal and external experts were commissioned to prepare and present a very detailed business case that sought to establish the bid level at which it would be advisable to walk away rather than pay a higher price that would make the investment a loss- making proposition The experts determined that the cutoff mark for the bidding team should be $200 million A traditional bidding process was adopted by the organizers of the bid, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), with the reserve price set at $100 million The five contenders, including CIL, were sequestered in separate rooms at the Hilton hotel in Abuja and contact between contending parties or the outside world was forbidden NCC would continually inch up the bidding price until only one contender was left standing; at which point the second to the last agreed price would be offered to all those still left in the race

Dr Adenuga had entrusted a carefully selected team with the task of bidding on behalf of CIL As the team got ready to leave for Abuja, it got a call from Adenuga whose terse and very clear directive made it impossible for CIL not to be amongst the four licenses being auctioned No matter how high the bidding price went, the team was not to stop until CIL ended up as one of the winners CIL was in effect to give the last word on the pricing level of the GSM license

Dr Adenuga's directive made the job of the CIL team to be easier than it would have been Without the directive and with bidders not allowed to contact their principals during the bidding process, it would have been very difficult for the CIL team to decide on its own when to b#following the preceding price of $285 million, the latter was set as the final price and offered to CIL and the other three remaining bidders

With the successful battle for one of the GSM over, attention swiftly turned to planning for the balance of $265 million to be paid before the payment deadline, which was only a few weeks away

Dr Adenuga had no difficulty in getting the amount ready but a few hours before the money was to be transferred to the designated government account, word came in from Abuja that the frequency allocated to CIL was under litigation. The specter of a complex, drawn out process during which CIL could be denied usage of the frequency suddenly loomed, and a go or no- go decision had to be taken With the clock ticking towards the deadline hour mark, the decision taken by Adenuga was to go but with a condition attached to the payment, to the effect that the receiving bank was not to release the funds to the government until the latter provided CIL with an Indemnity Letter The requested letter was to protect the company from losing the funds if the litigants succeeded in keeping their frequencies.

The payment was thus made before the deadline hour, but the government refused to give the Indemnity Letter and ultimately cancelled the award and seized the $20 million deposit

Faced with the new development, Dr Adenuga's extraordinary ability to take on and surmount an intractable challenge came into play. under his guidance, CIL began a protracted battle to not only get back the GSM license but the Indemnity Letter as well Over one year down the road, neither objective had been attained and the prospect of achieving them looked bleak Despite this seemingly intractable hurdle, Dr Adenuga continued to pay the salaries of CIL staff of Network engineers, sales and customer care It would take another one year before both objectives were achieved Under the new name of Globacom, Dr Adenuga once again put in a bid and won the national carrier license and since the license came along with the same litigious frequency, the NCC this time did not hesitate to give the Indemnity Letter

With the license fully obtained, full attention was turned to making up for lost time The other three telecommunications companies were two years ahead in not only providing telecoms services but in garnering the most lucrative segments and entities of the telecoms market; the business entities and high net worth individuals The biggest hurdle for Globacom was however not the difficulty in catching up but the threat of sudden death

As may be expected, the other telecoms companies were not in a welcoming mood to what they saw as a brash novice that should not have ventured into the business in the first place The ploy they came up with to stop Glo in its track was straight forward They did everything they could to frustrate interconnections between Glo and their networks with the result that as a Glo subscriber you could only get in touch with other Glo subscribers; the number of which was unsustainably small at the start

During several meetings that ran into the night, Dr Adenuga listened to suggested solutions that all centered around getting NCC to force the networks to interconnect with Glo, as required by the law At the end of these crises’ sessions, he came up with a fivestage action plan that ultimately worked to not only save Glo but to catapult it to its current number 2 position

The first was to crash the price of sim cards, bringing it to almost zero The second was the momentous decision to introduce per second billing while the third was a deliberate plan to be the first to market with new products and initiatives such as Blackberry and 4G

The fourth action plan was to procure the Glo Sub marine cable, which has been pivotal in propelling Glo to its current enviable position of being the Grand Master of Data while the fifth was to flood the social media with Glo news and top -notch advertisements, which millions of Nigerians have come to see as being as home grown as Glo.

Adenuga's impending attainment of the ripe age of 70 years may give a false sense of hope to all the worried competitors of Glo; an expectation, perhaps, that he may finally decide to slow down and spend most of his time in Acapulco or some other exotic resort Unfortunately for the competitors, three major factors stand in the way of their wishful anticipation The first is that rather than waning, Adenuga's phenomenal stamina continues to wax stronger as the years advance Secondly, his determination to make Glo the first, best and most attractive telecommunications company in Africa and ultimately the world, remains resolute and is well on course to being achieved in the near future

The third and possibly the most important factor is that Adenuga's heart and focus has been and, from all indications, will continue to be in his native country, Nigeria and Africa where he has patriotically invested and continues to invest his massive resources

On behalf of the countless millions of admirers of Dr. Adenuga and on our own behalf, we wish Dr Adenuga, a happy birthday and countless more years of good health, happiness and continued ascendency on the list of the most successful and wealthiest business icons of this country