Mike Adenuga’s story remains a writer’s delight any day. Add Africa’s richest man – by Forbes magazine’s estimates – Aliko Dangote to it, and your pay day is made in the art of profiling. More importantly, they are prodigious subjects for reporters in search of redemption. Why? Because a writer once described journalists as writers who fell by the wayside. Put in simple language, they are chroniclers in a hurry.
But every once in a while, a journalist emerges as a writer, wins a double crown and reclaims his or her birth right. This perhaps defines the present incarnation of Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe, both parading till date five titles including two business best sellers: 50 Nigeria’s Corporate Strategists: Top CEO’s Share Their Experiences in Managing Companies in Nigeria and Nigeria’s Marketing Memoirs: 50 Case Studies, and now Mike Adenuga, Africa’s Business Guru.
The Nigerian scene is replete with such writers. Tony Momoh in the 80s penned his Simple Strokes, a reporter’s notebook based on a holiday in Britain, Naiwo Osahon’s novel Sex is a Nigger’s Game and Ben Okri, who worked as a reporter in Uche Chukwumerije’s Afriscope when the hope of a university education was not forthcoming, are a few examples.
In The Famished Road, Okri’s world like Adenuga’s, sets the pace for the journey to the unknown, the unauthorised biography Awoyinfa and Igwe set sail to chronicle. “In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world… a dream can be the highest point of life”.
This dream in biographical sketches became real right from the day Awoyinfa and Igwe tendered their resignation in the National Concord rather than be deployed to the editorial board. Before that, however, they had brought to the bookstands the best sellers that built their Taj Mahal, which according to Awoyinfa was supervised by Igwe from joint resources.
Critics may argue that the twins of two worlds – the multicultural art of writing and reporting may have opted for the material dollar at this time, gripped by the buccaneering spirit. No, they were only worthy evangelists in the fine art of writing – good ambassadors of a genial, vanishing culture.
The preface sets the stage: “In this gripping book, Mike Adenuga: Africa’s Business Guru, money, power, politics, high-wire intrigues, betrayals and bloody escapes from the jaws of death, blend into an explosive alchemy as award winning journalists, Mike Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe, unmask the mystery of the enigmatic African billionaire, Dr Mike Adenuga, Jr., the first man in the world to single-handedly float a mass consumer telecommunications company, Globacom.
“This riveting book is a product of five years of investigative efforts by two of Africa’s most tenacious writers. The story of Mike Adenuga is an inspiring and an unorthodox entrepreneurial manual drawn from the long-concealed secrets of Africa’s most elusive personality and certainly one of the richest black men in the world”
In the opening chapter, what initially looked like an assassination attempt, a stunning, blood-chilling rehash of an armed robbery attack unfolds: “Around him, there was blood, blood, everywhere. Blood oozing from the ruptured arteries of his fleshy body. Precious blood wasting on the floor, like a vandalised oil pipe ruptured by some rampaging fuel thieves. And amidst the splatter and blotches of blood on the floor lay Mike Adenuga groaning. He had just been shot. Shot point-blank in the sanctity of his home, his castle… An argument had ensued between them, with the rebel robber saying adamantly: “Let’s finish the job. We have to finish this job. We must kill him. We must kill him.”
In one fatal moment of unprovoked madness, he pulled the trigger and bang! Shot point blank. It’s lights out for Adenuga!
Beyond this mild beat, Awoyinfa and Igwe present the image of addicts of the gutsy adventure story of crime and criminals, where action rips along in a series of explosions, what another writer described as a blood and cyclone adventure saga full of action, where menace mingles with violence and horror with mystery stashed on mystery, death on brutal death.
On a humorous note, however, they are glad the man survived the bullets of the black angels of the night to give themselves a self appointed assignment. They continue: “If he had died at that point in December 1982, perhaps the story would have ended there. If he had died, we wouldn’t be embarking on this long, arduous, literary epic, a journey to unmask this enigmatic, shy, evasive and reclusive business colossus, who shares some character traits with the Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich. Abramovich, the Russian Oligarch who had quietly amassed immense wealth and was living his life unobtrusively, until he bought a top football team in the English Premiership called Chelsea. Then the Pandora box of global media glare exposed him to all the troubles it contains.”
Traumatised by Obasanjo
Like a fellow writer Brian Moore whom the lucid and celebrated Graham Greene extolled the way he brought his subtle sensibilities into several varieties of genre fiction, in Awoyinfa and Igwe’s new book, what they excitedly described as their Opus Magnus, “Stale old forces embrace fresh new spirits.” Example: “Okay, I would show you that I am playing God and kuku destroy you once and for all” to which the frightened and weather beaten Adenuga replies President Obasanjo, with his knees crawling on the floors of Aso Rock, 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)?”
Again in Africa’s Business Guru, bedraggled characters turn what should have been a sweet farewell into a bitter retreat. Another example: “Their discussion progressed on a cordial note until IBB brought up the issue of restoring Adenuga’s licence. Obasanjo pointedly accused IBB of hiding behind Adenuga to play in the telecoms market without the courtesy of disclosing his vested interests to him. Babangida refuted this charge, declaring he was not in partnership with Adenuga.
“Obasanjo said there was a full security report on the matter, but Babangida dismissed (the) so called security report as fiction concocted by his EFCC boys. The discussion soon degenerated into acrimony. Presidential Villa insiders said that an enraged Obasanjo bullied and practically chased IBB out. Obasanjo was shouting, ‘Get out, just go!’ to a retreating IBB.”
The book reveals how generous the businessman was to Obasanjo donating a multi-million library to Obasanjo’s Bell University, yet the man bluntly refused to grant his licence. At the launch of the Obasanjo Library, this is the account of story behind the library’s launch: “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.”
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