Things You Never Knew About Mike Adenuga, Nigeria’s Second Richest Man

This reclusive billionaire has one rule that no one can change: he will only get across to you when there is the need for it, but you cannot get across to him. And when he wants to get across to you, he does everything possible to track you down. Nobody in his office gets letters or invitation cards without earlier notice irrespective of where they originated from. You just can’t reach him, and if you work for a courier company, it is nearly-impossible for you to deliver a package to his office. You feel the swagger? That was just an intro, let’s roll! 

-Although his roots are in Ijebu-Igbo, Ogun State, he was born in Ibadan, Oyo State on 29thApril, 1953. The Bull will turn 60 in about two months when his 682-paged biography Mike Adenuga: African Business Guru (written by award-winning Mike Awoyinfa & Dimgba Igwe) will be launched. Mike Adenuga was so big at birth that he was called John Bull in the hospital. 

-His parents: Chief Michael Agbolade Adenuga Snr. was a school teacher while his mum Chief (Mrs.) Juliana Oyindamola Adenuga (nee Onashile of Okesopin, Ijebu Igbo) was a businesswoman. She got married at the age of 17, learnt sewing and succeeded greatly as a dressmaker. Well-educated, she was made the Iya Alaje of Ijebu-Igbo and the Yeye Oba of Ijebuland. 

-He studied at the Ibadan Grammar School (IGS) before jetting out to the US to read Business Administration with a focus on Marketing. While at Ibadan, he was very impressed with the Cocoa House (then the tallest building in Africa) built by the Awolowo government. He dreamt of having such an edifice of his own one day, and today, we all know Mike Adenuga Towers. Located on Adeola Odeku Street, the 13-storey edifice which took him 13 years to erect dazzles with gold-on-granite finishing. You just can’t miss it! The first time I saw his building, I was mesmerized. It has a landing pad for a helicopter and was opened in 2004 by Atiku Abubakar. Now, don’t ask me if I want to build one too…lol! He also has a mansion in Ibadan and he named it ‘The Gold Digger’s Place’. 

-The billionaire is a descendant of Pariola, a very wealthy and influential female trader born in the mid-19th century. Apart from being the ancestor of the Adenugas, Pariola would also produce the Adetonas, the family of the Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Kayode Adetona. 

-Upon his birth, his father was so overjoyed at having another son that he named him after himself. His elder brother, Demola explained that he was not given the name because as at the time of his birth, the fad was to bear purely Nigerian names. Otunba was the last child so his father took the opportunity to name him after himself. He would later die in 1993 in a car accident and his son did a superlative re-burial for him in 2005 with one of the most expensive coffins on earth. 

-While at IGS, he and his brother (Demola) were nicknamed ‘Ad Belly’ for their huge stature and protruding bellies. Both used to cross the Ogunpa River (which they called River Jordan) whenever they felt like sneaking out of school. They took the huge frame after their parents. Demola was more of his dad while Mike took everything, including his business skills, from his mum. As a child, and under the supervision of his mum, he hawked goat feed, and picked up the street wisdom that came with it. 

-Although Mike was more fashionable and even introduced his elder brother to the latest wears and perfumes, he still had to seek his help when it came to academic matters. 

-His mother had always been quite cautious about the adventurous and somewhat rascally nature of Mike. She really did not want him to go abroad to study & wanted him to join his brother who was studying biochemistry at the University of Ibadan. She reported him to a commissioner of police in Oyo State then but he encouraged Madam Juliana to let him go, perhaps, that was God’s plan for him. Worefa, his mind was made up. He was leaving Nigeria. And he left. When he also wanted to dabble into the very risky oil and gas sector and do what no other Nigerian had done before (drill oil), she made her fears known again thinking it was a senseless gamble. He calmed her down, and he would later announce to her excitedly: ‘Mama, we found oil!’ Today, his Conoil PLC is the largest indigenous oil production company in Nigeria operating six producing oil blocks in addition to owning ¼ of the Nigeria/Sao Tome Joint Development Zone Block 4, which has been proven to have almost one billion barrels of crude oil and about one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Some people, like Dele Momodu, his mentee, believe Adenuga is actually the richest man in Africa. I must chip in here that in November 2011, 500 pensioners of Conoil engaged Adenuga in a tussle over unpaid pensions. #AneyeToto! 

-There is something about Adenuga that caught my attention: he would never disobey his mother. The late matriarch had enormous influence over her son, and the only time he went against her directive was the oil business issue. Friends say that whenever there was any disagreement, just mention his mother’s name, and he would mellow down. Such was the degree of tremendous respect he has for his mother. #Iyaniwura. 

-While studying in the 1970s, he had to survive and raise his school fees by working as a security man and a taxi driver, an extremely dangerous job for a blackman in the crime-ridden boroughs of New York -Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. His curiosity in Nigeria where a little Mike tugged the steering wheel with drivers amused them, and they taught him how to drive. This, he made use of as a means of survival. If you are thinking he drove those shiny yellow New York cabs, you are wrong. He drove an unregistered jalopy and had to ply areas where the police would not harass him. It was as a taxi driver that he met a man named Dele Giwa, who was also surviving as a cab driver. Giwa would later be blown out of existence in 1986 by Nigeria’s first parcel bomb. As a student in America, Adenuga suffered and laboured for months as he was not getting a kobo from home. He knew the consequences, faced the challenges and triumphed. He might not have finished schooling without his extra efforts. Did I tell you that he also worked as a waiter and a mortuary attendant in the US? Yes, he did. And by the time he came back to Nigeria then, he was with a bushy beard. #HustlingThins #IgboroORerin! 

-As a student in North Western Oklahoma State University, the school slogan was ‘Ride With Pride’, and he would later transform it to become ‘Glo With Pride’, when he launched Globacom. 

-After graduating, he headed straight for Naija, and without wasting any time, started utilizing all he learnt. He did not seek any paid employment but took the risky road of entrepreneurship. He took over the management of the family’s small sawmill in Ogun State and was also selling removable car stereos at the same time as he had noticed the problem caused by the rampant theft of car stereos. Civil servants awash with the Udoji Commission salary raise were buying cars but thieves would do away with the car stereos. With Adenuga’s stereos, people could then park their cars, detach the stereos and go to bed. Simple. And he made cool cash. If you want to make money too, look around you, find a pressing problem and create a much-needed solution. 

-By the age of 22, he had delved into the business of commodities, general merchandise, construction, importation (of mainly sawmill equipment, tomato paste, wines, beer and textile materials (especially lace) made in Austria). Why is my mischievous mind thinking that good fabrics and chilled beer are integral components of an Ijebu owambe parry? Anyways, just saying…lol! 

-Believe it or not, there was a time when Adenuga was so reclusive that it was nearly impossible for you to see even his picture in the newspapers. He even hired consultants to blank him out of the media and the general public. His daughter, Bella, corroborates this: “My dad has always been a kind of quiet person. It was Globacom that shot him into the limelight.” 

-In one of his very rare interviews, he narrates how he met an Austrian businessman to Newswatch: “I went on a trip to New York and when I was coming back, I missed my flight, being on British Airways, so I had to fly Swiss Air and I sat next to the owner of one of the biggest lace manufacturing factories in Austria. So, we were talking and he got me interested in importing laces, and all sorts of things.” Okay, you know why Iyaniwura had to point that out to you? Learn to identify and utilize opportunities! Adenuga later reveals: ”The secret of my success is hard work, God’s blessings and luck.” 

-By 26, Michael ‘Aneye Toto’ Ishola was already a millionaire. Now, chill. At this point, some critics will take him up saying that he became fabulously wealthy by benefiting from the close and cosy links he had with Nigerian military dictators. Well, that’s not a rumour. Babangida’s oil minister, Professor Jubril Aminu came up with a policy to grant licenses to individuals and encourage private sector participation in oil exploration and exploitation. Otunba was one of the first beneficiaries of the Petroleum Act (MKO Abiola of Summit Oil was another). Upon getting his oil bloc prospecting license (OPL 113), Adenuga went straight to work in the South Western Niger Delta Region and in less than a year on 24th December, 1991, he struck oil in the shallow (offshore) waters of Ondo State in his first oil well (named Bella-1) becoming the first indigenous oil firm to do so. Other Nigerians could not take the risk, and had sold off their licences to expatriates. An incorrigible risk taker, he had hired an oil rig for $5 million BUT he recruited only Nigerian oil specialists to do the job (he has always been a patriotic man). Since then, he has never looked back. The first seed money that he used to start business was given to him by his late mum. It was a modest sum but he used it judiciously. #Iyaniwura. 

-At a point, he acted as a private middleman who got term-based oil contracts from the Nigerian government in the name of Tradoil & Crownway Enterprises while the UK-based Arcadia would handle the fuel cargoes. He also built military barracks (and the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna with Lt. General Ipoola Alani Akinrinade’s younger brother, Femi. Akinrinade, a former Chief of Army Staff, was the General Officer Commanding, I Infantry Division, 1975-1979 at the time), supplied the armed forces and the police with weapons while also working as a distributor for Coca Cola, Nigerian Breweries, Cadbury, Guinness and Continental Breweries. He was also a dealer for Peugeot Automobile of France. For him, it was to ‘go into anything that gives me profit.’ 

-With time, his fortune grew so amazingly that he was buoyant enough to sink over $100 million into his own oil prospecting and drilling company, the Consolidated Oil Company. This company, founded in 1990, is the very first indigenous Nigerian company to discover, drill and produce oil. And you know na, we are not talking of palm oil here….lol! Thus, his fortunes are based on a tripod: telecommunications, oil & gas and banking. He is also into real estate, food manufacturing & processing (b*tter, cocoa cake and vegetable oil), domestic & international market activities and aviation (not many know he is the owner of Southern Airlines). 

-Under the General Sani Abacha regime, his Communication Investment Limited (CIL) was given a conditional licence and frequencies to operate. The licence has earlier been given to the Chagouris of Lebanon. Obasanjo would later cancel all the approvals given to him by previous governments. But a relentless fighter that he is, he told his men: “Let’s go into this thing. Let us forget going to court and all that. Let’s go under the new system and fight for the licence. We must fight with everything we have to get the licence.” When he made a second deposit of $20 million for Globacom licence, many scoffed at him and he was told to stop chasing shadows. His brother, Demola says of those dark days: “Mike lost $20 million, but he never lost hope. He never gave up hope. He kept hope alive; that is one thing about my brother: he is an eternal optimist. Something kept propelling him not to give up on the matter. He pursued it and he eventually got the licence.” 

-For those who believe he is a proxy for IBB, sorry to burst your bubble. They’ve been friends since the 1980s and have remained so till date. Here is what the top-of-the-hill-residing, gap-toothed General has to say about the widespread rumour: “We meet, we talk, like the good friends that we are. But I also have one policy that governs my relationship with friends that are very close to me. Whether it was M.K.O Abiola, whether it is Mike Adenuga, and probably five or so others, I don’t get involved in their businesses. You can go and ask them.” The General went ahead to describe Mike Adenuga as a very loyal and reliable friend, and one who never forgets favours, unlike many who abandoned him when he left power in August 1993. He states: “When I left office, a few of my friends honestly stood by me and I remain eternally grateful to them. Mike is one of them. Another man who doesn’t want his name mentioned any time I speak on this issue is one of them. What I like about them is this: they appreciate whatever little effort you did for them and so, they don’t abandon you. Some people will tell you, ‘ah, when I was in the office, a lot of people used to come to me, now I left office, you don’t find anybody.’ This is the Nigerian factor for you. But these characters remain close and I honestly remain grateful.” 

-When his mother died, he gave her a most befitting burial in Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State on 13th September, 2005. A carnival-like ceremony, it was stormed by former President Obasanjo who buzzed in in a helicopter (that man and effizy sha…lol!) and when he entered the church, no one else was allowed to come in except Titi Atiku Abubakar (wife of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and WOTCLEF Founder). Other guests: Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola. Governors of Lagos, Ogun, Taraba, Bauchi, Niger, Kaduna and Imo also gave a new definition to the Yoruba parlance of olowonshoreolowo (the wealthy always mingle with one another). Even IBB showed up at the wake-keeping. But the Awujale of Ijebuland, who is the Paramount Ruler of Ijebus was not able to attend because it is against the tradition for the Kabiyesi to lay his eyes on a corpse. His staff of office was placed on her hearse. Encased in a casket made of gold, Mama Adenuga was laid to rest in a marble grave. 

-He faced a lot of troubles in the hands of fellow Ogun dude and former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. In his efforts aimed at procuring a telecommunications licence, he was thoroughly humiliated by Baba Iyabo (some felt he was being persecuted because of his ally, Atiku Abubakar who was then slugging it out with OBJ). The following scenario occurred in Aso Rock Presidential Villa when Obasanjo still held sway: “Okay, I would show you that I am playing God and kuku (ultimately) destroy you once and for all” said Obasanjo; a threat to which the frightened and weather-beaten Adenuga replied with his knees crawling on the floors in Aso Rock and his palms stretched full length in the charged, steamy atmosphere: “Sir, I am your son. Please don’t be angry with me.” Obasanjo: “I shouldn’t be angry? Why shouldn’t I be angry? See you now. You would come and prostrate and when you leave here, tomorrow, you would go and be publishing your adverts, abusing me. No be so (Is that not true)?” Adenuga lost $20 million (N3.2 billion) when he was denied the license not even after he had donated a multi-million naira library to Obasanjo’s Bells University of Technology in Ota. But he didn’t give up. He applied again. He would send people to beg OBJ and on occasions, he would prostrate to the Ebora of Owu as a Yorubaman but the former president would stare into his eyes and thunder: ‘I would not give you my licence!’ He would then mutter some curses. But Adenuga was undettered. He was always full of hope and optimism (that is important, I tell you). At another point, IBB tried to intervene on the issue of Adenuga’s licence with Obasanjo. The Commander-in-Chief was enraged, and accused IBB of using Adenuga as a screen to protect his vested interests. IBB denied the allegations and told Obasanjo that the so-called security report on the issue was a figment of the imagination of his EFCC boys. Obasanjo practically ordered IBB out of Aso Rock, and shouted at him as he left ‘‘Get out, just go!’ ‘. Still in his yet to be released biography, he talks of how Obasanjo demanded a sum of £ 1 million donation (N250 million) from him for his Presidential Library Project. Adenuga had no choice but to drop a quarter of a billion naira as the Chief Launcher. In the book, the scenario was described thus: “Adenuga had gone to Abeokuta with Dr. Yemi Ogunbuyi for the occasion and the duo had decided to go to greet Baba first. But they were intercepted by a man in a white Kaftan robe who turned out to be Obasanjo’s cousin. The cousin politely said Baba wanted to know how much Adenuga was going to donate. Incidentally, Adenuga had raised this question with Ogunbiyi on their way coming. ‘How much do you think I should donate to this thing?’

‘I don’t really know may be N100 million,’ Ogunbiyi suggested.

‘That’s exactly how much I have in mind,’ declared Adenuga.

“Now the question from Obasanjo’s emissary was curious and unusual, he thought, but nevertheless, he had no choice but to inform the man that he planned to donate N100 million, thinking the man would be very impressed. Wrong. Obasanjo’s cousin brought out a piece of paper and handed it to Adenuga. ‘Sorry sir, but Baba says you can’t donate less than that amount,’ the man had written.

“Inside the piece of paper was the sum of N250 million scribbled in Obasanjo’s handwriting with a red pen. ‘No problem,’ Adenuga told the emissary, wondering if others were subjected to the same experience, but also knowing he dared not ask anybody, lest he be betrayed. He later showed Ogunbiyi the piece of paper. ‘I’ll give anything he wants,’ he told Ogunbiyi. ‘I’m afraid of that man o. N250 million is about the price of an oil well,’ Adenuga added.”