Tribute to the ‘Bull’ at 70

By Yemi Ogunbiyi

I first met Otunba Mike Adenuga in the summer of 1975 in Brooklyn, New York, through our common late friend, Dele Giwa. He was at that time a young ‘hippish-looking’ 22-year old, who was visiting, it turned out, from his base at the Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, Oklahoma, where he was studying Business Management. My memory of those years is hazy now; but I recall that he and Dele-Giwa, were, in between summer school, engaged in the driving of ‘gypsy’ cabs!

Then, our paths crossed again in 1991, when I was at the Daily Times as Managing Director and he had become, apart from owing other strings of businesses, the founder of Devcom Merchant Bank. At that time, the Daily Times was sourcing for funds to develop a new corporate head office at Kakawa Street in Lagos. Otunba was determined that Devcom should provide the funding for the project. What was most striking for me at the time, and remains etched in my memory was his doggedness, considering also that he was only 38! I recall that in his drive to secure the business for Devcom, Mike was in touch with me practically on a daily basis, for weeks on end!! He was unrelenting. Unfortunately, just when we were about to close on the deal, our common friend, President Babangida, relieved me of my duties at the Daily Times. Then, with the inception of GLO, our relationship blossomed again, thanks to the modest role I played in persuading Professor Wole Soyinka to agree to do one of the earliest advertisement materials for the nascent mobile company.

In the intervening years since our first meeting in 1975 to date, our relationship has remained, surprisingly, enduring. At first contact, Mike Adenuga has an uneasy calm to him, one that even betrays a touch of humility, especially when such contacts are older friends. But, as I have learnt over the years, that perception could be dangerously misleading! Beneath that outer calm is a volcanic restless energy that is in a permanent state of flux, constantly in search of new business frontiers to capture and conquer.

Unfortunately, the perverse and erroneous assumption that Mike Adenuga stumbled on wealth only because he had a head-start from his priviledged pedigree or because of his early close links to the Nigerian military seems to have, somehow, percolated. But that misses the point, and obscures the important fundamentals about his life that should engage us today as Mike, at 70, gradually commences that inevitable ascent of the elders’ hill!! Even without the benefit of the brilliant biography of Adenuga by Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe, Mike Adenuga: Africa’s Business Guru, it is clear to all today that this bundle of enigma called Mike Adenuga is one of the most successful African businessmen of our time. What, in my view, should occupy our minds today is to seek and find out how this “young” 70-year did it!!! How did he come from where I first met him in 1975 to becoming one of the legends of our time? Are there lessons to be learnt from his example, his style and precepts?

For Mike Adenuga, business, any business, is a series of manoeuvres, something akin to a warfare that needs to be pursued with aggressive determination and unwavering energy. As he himself declared to Newswatch editors in a rare 1992 incisive press interview, “Essentially, running a business is similar to leading a military operation…. The over-riding objective is to out-manoeuvre the opposing forces, to out-smart the other party; to out-perform the competition; to out-wit the other guy, to achieve. This may sound harsh. But that’s the way it is”. It is instructive to note that in the long preparation for the launch of GLO, Mike and his staff, whom he called the “roll-out soldiers,” met every Sunday, from 9am to past mid-night for one full year, plotting the strategy for the final roll-out of the mobile company.

Apparently, Mike Adenuga, who was born (April 29) under the Zodiac sign of Taurus revels in, and imbibes the astrological stereotype of that Zodiac sign, the Bull! Like a charging, rampaging Bull that is determined and energetic, Mike is constantly driven by an intrepid aggressive, domineering mind-set to succeed and excel, all the time. Failure is never an option in his scheme of things. All who have interacted with him in, or even outside the business terrain testify to the fact that his capacity for work is legendary.

To these attributes of fabulous energy and domineering zeal should be added a number of others, too numerous to be outlined in a short tribute such as this. There are, for instance, such attributes as his stupendous generosity, his near obsession with acquiring any new knowledge that would be useful in the course of his business, his love for delicious food and good wine and his undying love for his family and children. Take, for instance, his love for good food and excellent wine. Mike is the ultimate dream of every good chef, who measures his culinary skills and achievements by the consuming capacity of his clientele! I testify that at those rare moments when he came visiting at our Victoria Island residence, after he would have put a call across to “Aunty Sade to get ready,” dining with Mike, in the company of other friends, was not just pure pleasure, it was always an elemental performance!!!

Ironically, there is something of an agreeable contradiction to Mike Adenuga’s life. Here, we have one of the most public figures of our country, who also founded one of the most public of our institutions, but who is hardly ever seen at public events! Mike Adenuga cultivates his privacy like an art. In a society where the monied class does everything to provoke adulation and ovation with out-flung hands, Mike Adenuga has continuously shied away, preferring to remain diffidently reclusive.

As he turns 70, we all wish him the very best and many more years of outstanding service to a country he loves dearly. There is no question that he has set standards by which Nigerian businesses would be judged for a long time to come. Considering how early he started out as a businessman and entrepreneur, he is, perhaps, one of the ‘oldest’ most successful businessmen of his calibre still around, and that itself is a milestone worth celebrating today, and always. His enviable place in the history of our country is assured because he has earned the right to it.

Happy Birthday, Otunba. Long may you reign and glow!

(Although, this was written for Otunba Adenuga’s 65th Birthday and never widely published, every detail here remains relevant today as he marks his 70th birthday)