Today, Saturday 29th April 2023, an icon of entrepreneurship, star of charity, Dr. Mike Ishola Adeniyi Adenuga, GCON,
affectionately called The”Bull” by his chums, turned 70.
I wish the successful model of the “Can do” attitude, a happy birthday and many happy returns of the day, as he joins the enviable circle of Septuagenarians.
I first set my eyes on Dr (then Mr) Adenuga, 39 years ago, around September 1984, to be precise.
I was then the Press Secretary to the 2nd of the four (1 civilian and 3 military) Governors of old Oyo State (present-day Oyo and Osun States) whom I served as the Press Secretary, from 1983 to 1989.
My boss, in 1984, the then Lieutenant-Colonel Oladayo Popoola, now a retired Major-General of the Nigerian Army, had sent for me in his office, at the same Treasury Building, Government Secretariat, Agodi, Ibadan, Oyo State. The Oyo State Governor’s Office, Agodi Ibadan, originally named “Treasury Building” by the former British colonialists, got its name after it’s similarly- designed building in Accra, Ghana, also from the British, while they controlled the public affairs of Ghana, before her Independence in 1957.
I followed Captain Bola Sadiq (now late) the Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to the Military Governor, who had been sent to deliver His Excellency’s order to me in my office, on the same floor as that of our boss, and his.
On getting to Governor Popoola, he instructed that the ADC and I, take a gentleman seated in front of him, to the Government House, Agodi, the official residence of Premiers/Governors/Administrators who had, and still, rule the governments of the former Western Region, Western State, old Oyo State to the present Oyo State. The male visitor seated opposite our boss, Governor Popoola, was Dr (then Mr) Mike Adenuga.
After a brief introduction by the Military Governor, the three of us, the ADC, Mr Adenuga and my humble self departed, in our three different cars, for the Government House, Agodi, some 7 minutes drive from the Governor’s Office, Agodi.
On getting down from our cars, and on the grounds of the Government House, another formal self, but closer Introductions were made. It was then that I knew the reason for the summon by my boss, Governor Popoola, to join the duo of Captain Sadiq and the visitor, Mr. Adenuga.
He, the visitor, had come from Lagos, with an introductory letter from the then military president of Nigeria, retired General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, to inspect the Government House, Agodi for “renovation”, particularly changing the old colonial-times roofing design to the modern day’s golden glass model.
As should be expected, there were personal exchanges of words, telephone numbers, etc between Mr Adenuga and I.
And that was all to it. In our years in the civil service, no government official MUST ever be seen getting familiar with contractors.
The re-design/upgrading of the Government House, Ibadan and some other government structures were done/completed with very, very limited personal contacts between Mr Adenuga and I.
The two occasions that we exchanged words were when I told Mr. Adenuga that his primary school/class bench mate, at the ICC Practising Primary School Oke Ado, Ibadan, Mrs Tokunbo Alabi (nee Laditan from Ilaro) was my wife. He glowed with excitement as he recalled his bench mate’s finicky neatness, besides other normal primary school children’s pranks when they were both in school.
Till date, my wife receives seasonal, corporate gifts of calendars and diaries from Dr Adenuga’s Glo Group.
Fast forward time, after serving four Governors of old Oyo State as the Press Secretary, I wrote Nigeria’s first book on press secretaryship, “SPEAKING FOR GOVERNORS”, which was launched at the Banquet Hall of Premier Hotel, Mokola Hill, Ibadan, on 30th March 1990.
I invited Dr Mike Adenuga, who regrettably couldn’t attend the ceremony, but, out of courtesy, sent me his letter of apology (reprinted in this post).
From the old Oyo State Government Service, I was appointed the pioneer Public Affairs Manager(PAM)of the Yoruba economic conglomerate, the ODU’A INVESTMENT COMPANY LIMITED (OICL) in August 1989.
On the day of my scheduled courtesy visit to, the then Colonel Raji Rasaki, the Military Governor of Lagos State, where majority of OICL’s Subsidiaries and Associated companies were/are located, I again met Dr Adenuga, who was on his way out of the Military Governor’s “Roundabout” Office, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos State, that day. We exchanged pleasantries but I was, pleasantly, put off balance, when Dr Adenuga asked after my wife, and added: “Mr Alabi, I still owe you a debt. Am yet to honour your kind IV to your book launch in Ibadan in 1990.”
The 2015 OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL
My younger brother, Lanre Alabi, is the Chief Executive Officer of KINGSIZE PROMOTION COMPANY LIMITED, a leading events marketing and promotion company, based in Ibadan, our beloved hometown. He is also the appointed marketer of the OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL, since 1997. In 2015, Lanre ran into a storm with some people, actually competitors, who wanted him out of the organisation and marketing of the OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL, but to which the traditional keepers of the Festival, the Aboke Family of Beere Area, Ibadan, were not a party to, because since the Aboke Family officially appointed Lanre’s company, as the Festival’s sole marketing agent, Lanre had never disappointed them.
When the unfair opposition to his long business relationship with the Aboke Family/OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL became unbearable to Lanre and the Aboke Family, they approached me for cover, as it were.
In my investigation, I discovered that neither Lanre nor the Aboke Family had breached any corporate or traditional law regarding the planning, organisation and celebration of the time-honoured Ibadan’s most prominent cultural festival.
I took charge of the threatening situation.
First, I wrote a personal letter of appeal to Dr. Adenuga, whose company, Globacom, had rejected an earlier request for the sponsorship of the 2015 OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL, on the ground that the Festival was a “fetish”. In my letter of defense, as it were, to Globacom, through her Chairman, Dr. Adenuga, I likened the OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL to the American THANKSGIVING DAY, the British’s St.GEORGE’S DAY, the German FESTIVAL, etc.
I stated in my letter that Lagelu, the Founder of the present-day Ibadan, was a prince and war general from Ile Ife, who on being divinely summoned by Olodumare (God), had made a covenant with God to offer thanksgiving annually for His protection over him, his family and followers, the earlier Ibadan Indigenes.
On receiving my letter, Dr. Adenuga directed that Globacom’s earlier rejection of the sponsorship of the OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL be reversed and a fresh process of the company’s policy of sponsorship consideration be started.
Due to Dr. Adenuga‘s kind approval, Globacom and a combined team of my humble self, as an adviser, KINGSIZE/Aboke Family negotiated, entered and signed a 2-year, in the first instance, Memorandum of Understanding( MOU), with which we celebrated that year’s OKE’BADAN FESTIVAL.
The colourful and multiphased celebration, in which the OYSG, the National Tourism Board, Kabiyesi the Olubadan and his Advisory Council took an active part, was not only unprecedented but was well-received.
It took God’s divine intervention, my unyielding pressure, Glo’s head of PR, Bode Opeseitan‘s guts to get Dr Adenuga‘s formal go-ahead nod in the dawn of the day we held the OKE’BADAN pre-sponsorship press conference at the OYS NUJ PRESS CENTRE Iyaganku GRA, Ibadan.
The awful thought of the possible loss, starring us in the face, of my personal money already expended in the preparations for the press conference, mattered little to me, compared to the thought of where to hide my face, had Dr Adenuga not given his last-minute approval for the Management and Staff of Glo to move from Lagos to Ibadan for the public display of Glo’s corporate banners, hosting/media coverage that day.
Until the Glo Team surfaced at the NUJ PRESS CENTRE, Iyaganku GRA, Ibadan, it was a feeling of near-death for me, Lanre and the advanced team of Glo staff based in Ibadan. I don’t pray for a repeat of that moment of anxiety. The representative of the late Kabiyesi Olubadan, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade 1, High Chief Eddy Oyewole Foko, today the Osi Olubadan of Ibadanland, who was already seated, was kept out of the dicey situation. The bileful question we felt hard to imagine and swallow was: “What if Dr. Adenuga didn’t approve his representatives leaving Lagos for the press briefing in Ibadan?
“The comment of the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali, “It was next to death” when the bell sounded at the end of his second world heavyweight boxing match against his closest rival, Joe Frazier, kept ringing in my ears!
In 2014,Dr. Adenuga came to commiserate with the Arisekola-Alao Family at Basorun Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, on the death of its patriarch, Alhaji AbdulAziz Arisekola Alao, CON,the first Aare of Musulumi of Yorubaland and Vice-President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs,(NSCIA), who passed on in his sleep in his London, UK home on Wednesday,18th June 2014 and was buried in his Oluwo Nla, Bashorun Area, Ibadan home on Friday, 20th June 2014. May Aare’s kind soul continue to rest in perfect peace. Amen.
I was one of the four-member team delegated by the Arisekola-Alao Family to receive Dr Adenuga, when he paid a highly-guarded condolence visit to Aare Villa.
Despite the solemn mood during his visit, Dr. Adenuga still asked after his primary schoolmate, my wife.
He further shocked me when he said that whenever he received his supply of the weekly soft-sell magazine “CITY PEOPLE”, my column was his first read in the magazine,”because, Chief Alabi, you bring back the nostalgic times of the old Western Region, Nigeria and the world.”I thanked him for his compliments.
Mr. Paul Getty, Jnr
I am bringing in the case of the late American oil business magnate, billionaire Mr Paul Getty 11, because he shared some characteristic traits with the celebrant – and that is evasiveness.
Dr Adenuga avoids, like a plaque, public appearances.
A fellow member in the Ibadanland Traditional Chieftaincy Line, who shared his childhood years intimately with Dr.Adenuga, recently invited me to join what he described as a plan by him to write a “no-holds-barred”book of their growing-up years in Ibadan, in the early 1950’s.
The chief told me about how Dr Adenuga came about his oldest nickname, acquired in their secondary school in Ibadan, how they raised, individually, their airfares to travel to the United States of America (USA) , who did what odd jobs in the USA, etc. The third person in the old Grammar school days was my late cousin, Alhaji Kunle Usman, of blessed memory.
May I conclude this short 70th birthday tribute to Dr Mike Adenuga by thanking him for his last-minute intervention in the suit instituted by Lanre, when Globacom failed to abide by the major clause of the MOU it signed with KINGSIZE PROMOTION COMPANY LIMITED.
May you celebrate many happy seasons in joy.
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