Mike Adenuga: Portrait of an Industrialist, Philanthropist

Ayodeji Ake writes on the philanthropic role and entrepreneurial excellence of the Chairman of the Mike Adenuga Group, Dr. Mike Adeniyi Ishola Adenuga Jr., and his contribution to nation-building

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he Chairman of the Mike Adenuga Group, Dr. Mike Adeniyi Ishola Adenuga Jr. who was born on April 29th, 1953, would be 71 years on Monday.  Adenuga, who is the founder of Globacom, is a study in diligence and entrepreneurial excellence. In the last few decades, he has emerged a shining symbol of the irrepressible spirit of the quintessential African entrepreneur. He is passionate, committed, resilient and extremely hardworking.

The billionaire was born in the ancient city of Ibadan, into the family of Chief Mike Adenuga Snr. and Madam Oyindamola Adenuga, a successful trader and Yeyeoba of Ijebuland. He attended the famous Ibadan Grammar School, in Oyo State, Nigeria, for his secondary education and studied Business Administration at Northwestern State University, Alva Oklahoma, in the United States. He also earned a Master’s degree at Pace University, New York, majoring in Business Administration with emphasis on Marketing.

In recognition of his business accomplishments and outstanding contributions to the growth of the country, he was awarded the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON). He also holds honorary doctorate degrees conferred on him by the University of Ibadan and the Ogun State University. During Nigeria’s 50th anniversary celebration, Adenuga was one of the 50 pre-eminent Nigerians who were conferred with the Special Golden Jubilee Independence Anniversary Awards by the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The hard work has paid off spectacularly, and he is today one of the best known names in business and investment on the African continent.  Adenuga has put his imprimatur of excellence on key sectors of the Nigerian economy, leading him to currently preside over one of Africa’s largest business empires, spanning oil and gas, telecoms, aviation, banking and real estate.

Each of his businesses in these sectors plays leadership roles, helping to set the pace and contributing to the growth of the Nigerian economy.

For instance, in the oil and gas sector, Conoil Plc is one of the largest and most profitable oil marketing companies in Nigeria.  Conoil Producing, the downstream arm of the conglomerate, made history by becoming the first Nigerian company to strike oil and produce it in commercial quantity in 1991. In banking, Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB) was one of the few banks that effortlessly met the N25 billion capital requirement during the 2005 banking consolidation exercise without going to the stock market. It only merged with Devcom Bank which was also owned by Adenuga. Few years back, ETB merged with Sterling Bank.

Adenuga also has a multi-billion-dollar investment in real estate. These companies provide direct employment to thousands of Nigerians and people from the international community, as well as millions of other indirect employment.

In telecoms, Globacom is one of the most innovative networks in Africa and has operations in Nigeria and Ghana with footprints in Senegal, Gambia and Cote d’Ivoire. Adenuga made history in 2010 when his telecoms firm inaugurated its solely-financed international submarine cable, Glo 1. The cable has provided a solution to the long-standing problem of insufficient internet bandwidth for Africa and has led to a much faster and robust connectivity for voice, data and video. He is credited with playing a major role in the telecom revolution in Nigeria as Globacom’s historic introduction of Per Second Billing and crashing of SIM cost to as low as N100 led to the over 165 million active telephone lines in Nigeria today. The network also pioneered such revolutionary products as Blackberry, mobile internet and mobile banking services in Nigeria.

Digital solutions provider, Globacom, has since it began operations in Nigeria on August 29, 2003, pioneered numerous innovations which have helped propel the rapid growth and revolutionary changes witnessed in Nigeria’s telecommunications industry.

Its crashing of the cost of acquiring SIM cards from about N25,000 to just about N200 and pioneering of Per Second Billing system are primarily responsible for the massive telephone penetration in the country. 

Prominent among the innovations Glo pioneered in Nigeria are Blackberry Services, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Magic Plus, Glo Direct, International MMS, Inflight Roaming, Prepaid Roaming, Glo Mobile Internet, GloFleetmanager, M-Banking, Glo Mobile Office, Glo TV,  Glo Cloud, Glo Always On, and Glo Berekete. 

The company is the only operator with a wholly owned submarine cable, Glo 1, which connects West Africa directly to the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. It also connects 12 nations in the West Africa sub-region, including some of them that are landlocked. This ensures the availability of bandwidth to Wholesale, Enterprise & SME customers in West Africa. The undersea cable delivers a much faster and robust connectivity for voice, data and video with some of the lowest latencies between Africa and its gateway in London. It unleashes limitless opportunities for global and other African carriers, global content and digital media providers, government and corporate bodies in Nigeria and West Africa.

For instance, telecommunication subscribers in Nigeria and some other countries in Africa were few weeks ago thrown into panic following a major cut in submarine cables and the disruption persisted for weeks. Major undersea cables close to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, were reportedly damaged, and this caused internet outages in West and South African nations. The West Africa Cable System (WACS), the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE), MainOne, and SAT3 were the undersea cables that were impacted.

However, in the midst of all the confusion, Globacom subscribers continued to enjoy uninterrupted internet connection and other services as they were not affected by the interruption.

The development was a reflection of the strength and capacity of the telco, which has made significant investment in infrastructure.

This was made possible due to the foresight of a man who entered the telecommunications industry and became a leading light with a list of firsts – Dr. Mike Adenuga.

Glo-1 powers financial institutions, internet service providers and data consumers and all organisations that are Globacom’s subscribers have continued to carry on with business as usual despite the breakdown of other telcos and internet services producers.

Industry observers were of the view that Glo-1 International Submarine Cable’s resilient construction and durability were the reasons the damage did not compromise the cable.

The telco was the only company among its peers that invested over $250 million to install its own submarine cables from Nigeria to Europe.

Glo-1 or Globacom Main 1 is a submarine fiber optic cable that rans from Nigeria to Europe.

Globacom was the first African telecom company to build an intercontinental submarine cable, the Glo 1 cable, which ran from Bude, a seaside rural town in north Cornwall, England and traversed seventeen countries, including Ghana, before terminating in Nigeria, findings showed. The 9,800-km-long cable with 169 repeaters originates from Bude in the UK and branches out at Osu landing station, Accra, Ghana, and terminates at Alpha Beach landing station, Lagos.

By going from Europe to the West Coast of Africa, the company avoided the more turbulent but cheaper to maintain Middle-East and North Africa region.

Just like it did with the 2.5G and 3G technologies, Globacom was the first telecom operator to accomplish a nationwide launch of 4G-LTE network in Nigeria in 2016. With the 4G LTE Network in Nigeria, Glo provides seamless voice and data connectivity; enabling superfast HD video streaming, video downloads, online gaming and much more.

The 4G LTE Advanced technology combines three spectrums of 700 MHz, 1,800MHz and 2,600 MHz to provide a better internet experience to subscribers. It is faster, stronger, and better. The video and voice quality in video calls on different applications like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber etc is a lot clearer while the picture quality is crispier, and the transmission is faster. It also enables optimum performance for use in a variety of other life-enhancing cases such as telemedicine, e-agriculture, 3D Games, etc.

Additionally, Glo is credited with crashing the cost of internet services and is today the preferred cable system by global OTT providers. It connects thousands of kilometres of national fibre to all parts of Nigeria and cross connects with landlocked West African countries providing them access to world class internet services and enable these countries connect with Content Delivery Networks (CDN) & caching with Over The Top (OTT) networks in Lagos.

The business accomplishments of Adenuga have continued to seek him out for national and global accolades. In Ghana, he was given the highest national award, “The Companion of the Star of Ghana” in 2016, while in 2017, he was honoured by the French government with the award of the “Chevalier la Legion d’Honnuer” in 2017. In July 2018, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, elevated him to ‘Commander of the Legion of Honour’, France’s highest national honour.

A self-effacing philanthropist, Adenuga Jr., through his company, Globacom, is the biggest supporter of football in Africa and has raised the profile of football in Nigeria and Ghana with the sponsorship of the Premier Leagues and national football teams of the two countries for several years.

The company spent over N15 billion in cash and kind on Nigerian football. It also transformed the annual CAF Awards and made it the most glamorous sports event on the continent. CAF awarded Adenuga the Pillar of Football in Africa for his strong support for African Football at both national and continental levels.

Adenuga has won numerous other awards in recognition of his personal and business accomplishments among which is the African Telecoms Entrepreneur of the year for his courageous and rapid investment in the telecoms sector. He was early 2010 voted Nigeria’s Most Outstanding Business Personality in the last 50 years by This Day, Nigeria’s most influential newspaper.

In 2009, Adenuga won the coveted Silverbird Man of the Year Award, polling over 75 per cent of the votes cast to beat other eminent personalities nominated for the same award. Similarly, several other media organisations, Sun Newspapers, Independent Newspapers, Leadership Newspapers; City People and Ovation International Magazine have also honoured the Globacom Chairman with their Man of the Year Award within the last few years.

In 2020, THISDAY named him ‘Entrepreneur of the Decade’ at its Silver Jubilee celebration, while Nigeria’s oldest private newspaper, Tribune, awarded him Nigeria’s Most Outstanding and Innovative Entrepreneur at its 70th anniversary event.

He is the first Nigerian to be conferred with a Knight of the Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur) award by the President of the French Republic, Mr. Emmanuel Macron.

The award was presented to Adenuga at the glamorous Bellisma on the Waterfront, Banana Island, Lagos, by the Ambassador of France in Nigeria, Denys Gauer, on behalf the France President.

While decorating Adenuga with the award insignia, Gauer had said, “I have the great pleasure to inform you that, by decree signed on the 10th of May by the President of the French Republic, you have been made a Knight of the Legion of Honour (Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur).”

The Legion of Honour, (Ordre National de la Legion d’Honneur) is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits, established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte. 

As Dr. Adenuga marks his birthday on Monday, we wish his more grace, good health of mind and body and that he would continue to add value to humanity and remains committed towards nation-building.