Winston Churchill once said: “Some see private enterprise as the predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.” 
Dr. Mike Adenuga (GCON) belongs to those few. In this season of Nigeria’s 62nd independence anniversary, may I celebrate this industrial captain proudly flying the nation’s telecoms flag, a behind-the-scene business leader in the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy?
If you are looking for the secrets of resilience in business, the man to ask is Mike Adenuga, the hero who single-handedly and audaciously built a Nigerian telecoms business and brand from point zero, even though he had no previous experience in that highly technical and capital-intensive field. We all remember how in 2001, Adenuga’s bid to own a GSM licence hit the rocks when the NCC revoked the licence of his company, CIL, over controversy about the payment of his licence fee of $285 million. Adenuga had placed a caveat on the payment of the licence fee to NCC account when he discovered that the frequency allocated to his company was under litigation. However, while MTN and Econet Wireless Company, all foreign-owned companies went home with their licences, CIL’s licence got bogged down in controversy. In the end, he not only lost the licence, he also forfeited the whopping $20 million bid deposit.
As the only indigenous company in the race, he felt he should have been given a fair treatment, if not preferential treatment. In the light of the peculiar situation he found himself with a litigious licence, Adenuga wondered: “Could they not have said, let us slow down? This is our own. This is the only 100 per cent Nigerian player.”
It was a huge blow that would have knocked many faint-hearted tycoons out of the telecoms market forever, but not Adenuga. All through the crisis, Adenuga never gave up hope. His faith in getting back his licence remained as high as Mount Kilimanjaro, which left people around him wondering what fuelled his optimism. When he even had the opportunity to get back his $20 million deposit, he rebuffed it, saying: “I don’t want the $20 million. I didn’t go into this just to get $20 million back.” As his biographer, I should know. And as God will have it, he soon bounced back with a new company, Globacom, that miraculously won a basket of licences for a lesser amount—$200 million. The challenges that faced Adenuga were more than daunting. First, was obviously mobilising the hundreds of millions of dollars required to take off. Next, was meeting up the technological requirements, especially for a wholly indigenous company. But even more daunting was how to enter a market already dominated by two highly experienced, marketing-driven multinationals that were determined to frustrate any newcomer.
Many sceptics didn’t give Globacom much of a chance, especially with the poor showing of the government-owned M-Tel, which promised so much and delivered so little. Adenuga’s challenge was to identify a void in the existing market sphere and exploit it to the fullest. He knew that Nigerians like to talk but not at the exorbitant rate the existing companies were charging through their per-minute, rather than per-second, billing. Adenuga’s market entry strategy was not only to offer his airtime at a cheaper rate than the existing companies but also to offer the per-second billing, which the existing companies had claimed, was impracticable because of the great technological requirements. Taking on a market leader in a price war has always been considered a grave gamble in marketing that is more often than not fraught with great danger for the underdog. But Adenuga had strong muscles and was ready for war at whatever price. As events turned out, the market rewarded his bravery with passion and a sense of relief.
It was not only that Globacom achieved market penetration through the per-second billing offering, it also forced a strategic revolution in the telecoms market when the huge swing of consumers’ patronage forced the market leaders to follow suit with the per-second billing, thereby exploding the myth that per-second billing required extraordinary technology. Nigerians instantly hailed the per-second billing system and Globacom brand became an instant hero, shaking the market and causing disruptions. Like the Ukrainians taking on the superpower Russia, Globacom took the nation by storm, rolling on across the nation, backed by a blitz of powerful advertising and low-pricing strategy. Overnight, buildings were taken over and painted in the corporate colours of green, evoking the Nigerian colour.
Next, Prof Wole Soyinka, 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature winner was seen on television ads evangelising the gospel according to Globacom. That in itself was big news! Soyinka, a Nigerian and a global literary icon doing a commercial for Globacom, which was aired several times on CNN. A Nigerian brand Glo arriving on the global stage. It was a marketing coup. And the man behind the coup was Globacom’s chairman, Dr Mike Adenuga, a man with an indefatigable passion for business and branding. “The Globacom proposition is founded more on passion than economic returns,” he says. The story of Adenuga is the story of the fall and rise of a man who refuses to give up until he attains his goal. Nineteen years ago, in my time as the pioneer MD/Editor-in-chief, The Sun Newspaper chose Mike Adenuga as the first ever Sun Man of The Year for creating Glo, a proudly Nigerian telecoms brand with the spirit and colour of Nigeria; a fighter and advocate for the cause of Nigerian masses through the famous per-second billing which in the words of a brand specialist Dr. Osaren Emokpae “is a demonstration of transparency and integrity, that you don’t need to cheat Nigerians in order to make profit.” For all he has done in brand building and entrepreneurship, Mike Adenuga deserves to be studied in higher institutions of learning by scholars using him as a veritable case study. Long before we heard Kizz Daniel’s massive hit song ‘Buga,’ catching fire globally, Glo had asked Nigerians to ‘Glo with Pride,’ stirring up the spirit of patriotism and national awakening among Nigerian consumers.