By
Emmanuel Ayomide-Praise (@eapthecolossus)
Nigeria is blessed with many
outstanding capitalists and wealthy industrialists who own multi-billion dollar
conglomerates with assets in excess of trillions of naira and who collectively
employ thousands of Nigerians across their various business operations, thereby
contributing remarkably to the size, scope and direction of our nation’s
economy.
Notable among these lot are Aliko
Dangote, founder and chairman of the Dangote Group, which holds large-scale
interests in the commodities, agriculture, real estate and petroleum
sub-sectors of our economy, and is now ranked by Forbes magazine as Africa’s
richest man with a net-worth of US$20.8 Billion, as at November 2013, Otunba
Mike Adenuga, the telecommunications magnate whose operations now span across
the West African hub and who is worth US$4.3 Billion, as of March 2013, as well
as the youthful Femi Otedola, founder and CEO of Forte Oil Plc, who was ranked by Forbes in 2009 with a net-worth of
US$1.2Billion.
However, among these enviable lot,
none is as inspiring, for me, as Jimoh Ibrahim, the 47 year old lawyer turned
oil baron from Ondo State, South-West, Nigeria, who himself is now said to be
worth some hundreds of millions of dollars, and is the founder of a large
conglomerate in Nigeria, which has interests in the insurance, hospitality, oil
and gas and media sectors of the Nigerian economy.
Unlike Dangote or Otedola, Ibrahim is
a man who had a humble beginning as he was born without a silver spoon and came
from a very rough background with a lot of deprivation in his growing up days.
Reportedly from a polygamous family, he managed to, against all odds, obtain
admission into the University and eventually graduated as a barrister at law
from the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University in 1991.
So while the Dangotes and Otedolas of
this world had the privileges of being born with silver spoons (Dangote, being
from a wealthy Northern industrial family and Otedola, the son of a former
civilian governor of Lagos state), Ibrahim had no such luxuries but had an
intense desire and a strong conviction to become successful in life, concluding
in his mind that obtaining a University degree held the only promise to a
better life and a rewarding future.
The story of this great entrepreneur
is one that I think that every young Nigerian and aspiring entrepreneur must
pay close attention to as it could serve as the much needed inspiration to
giant strides in business as well as great accomplishments in life. After
obtaining his Bachelor’s degree in law from OAU, Ibrahim saw that waiting to
acquire working experience as an attorney by interning at an established law
firm, as is common practice amongst many young lawyers in Nigeria today, could
take many years so he decided to specialize on taxation, which was an area of
interest to him during his undergraduate days and was even the subject of some
of his dissertation papers.
With this wealth of information on
the practice of taxation in Nigeria, Ibrahim, unlike many fresh University
graduates in Nigeria, some of whom believe securing a paid employment first
after graduating from school could be the only way to charting a successful
future, set out by conducting trainings and workshops on taxation for local and
state governments and later the federal government of Nigeria, becoming in the
process a nationally acclaimed tax consultant.
Honing his expertise in the areas of
tax administration, reform and financial management and later obtaining his
Masters degrees in Public Administration and international taxation from
OAU and Harvard University in America
respectively, Ibrahim was at one time chief executive consultant to the federal
government of Nigeria on petroleum tax payment, collection and monitoring,
member, Federation Accounts Allocation Committee, consultant to the IMF on tax
reform in Croatia and Lithuania and also a key member of the team that designed
tax reform for the state of Bangladesh.
Needless to say that by the time he
turned 30, while some of his peers may still have been searching for jobs,
Jimoh Ibrahim was already a multi-millionaire! So when he decided to set up his
conglomerate in 2003, after failing woefully in an attempt to become Executive
Governor of Ondo State on the platform of the old All People’s Party (APP), he
was well armed with a rich experience of how business works in Nigeria, how
government policy is formulated and implemented and how to raise sufficient
capital to start a business.
For many budding entrepreneurs, what
are the lessons to learn on building great businesses from the journey and
strategy of Barrister Ibrahim? For me, one of such is that when planning to
start a business, going out to raise all of the capital required may not be the
most paramount thing and may even amount to putting the cart before the horse,
sometimes. This is because, in a country like Nigeria, dreaming of raising
capital to start a business using bank loans or debt equity, without having
grown the business to a substantial state where sound financial management and
ambitious growth plans can be adequately demonstrated to the financial
institutions or angel investors, may seem like a mirage!
Looking at the phenomenal growth of
some of Mr. Ibrahim’s business ventures, one is keen to note some of the
principles which he has imbibed, which have contributed in no small measure to
the growth of those businesses today. Some of these include sound financial
management, persistence, short, medium and long-term planning, effective
utilization of credit as well as prompt repayment of such credit when taken.
However, while his passion for
building and growing large business organizations that would provide gainful
employment to thousands of teeming Nigerian youths while positively impacting
our economy must be commended, it remains to be seen what is the clear
corporate social responsibility (CSR) thrust of some of these businesses and
how they seek to create better lives and impact communities they operate in and
the people living in them, other than by just creating employment.
It is interesting to note that while
many large corporations and giant-sized businesses in Nigeria like those of
Ibrahim, Dangote or Otedola make lots of profits through the patronage of the
generality of Nigerians and even repatriate such profits home at little or no
cost, as in the case of multi-nationals, only few of them do very little to
give back to society through scholarships, schemes and life-changing programs
that can benefit the whole of the populace. Very few Nigerian wealthy
capitalists or industrialists like Ibrahim own notable foundations like the
ones set up by Bill Gates, the world’s richest man and founder of Microsoft and
his wife, as well as those established by remarkable American businessmen like
Henry Ford or John D Rockefeller.
Another important point worthy of
note amongst Nigeria’s most successful businessmen is a lack of a system or
structure where adequate mentoring can be provided to build an ecosystem of
great entrepreneurs and remarkable young businessmen in Nigeria. To this end,
many budding entrepreneurs are often left confused about how to go about
setting their own businesses, what tools to use and what to discard and how to
tap into the brains of many of these great entrepreneurs that have gone ahead.
It is through efforts like these that great Nigerian entrepreneurs like
Ibrahim, Dangote, Otedola or Adenuga can leave a worthy legacy because as far
as many Nigerians are concerned, the legacies of some these men still remain
largely unclear if not outrightly unknown or undefined!
Emmanuel Ayomide-Praise is a Nigerian
journalist, blogger and TV/Radio host. Email:eapgold@gmail.com.
Twitter:@eapthecolossus, http://ayomidepraise.blogspot
