Special Announcement Notable Civil Rights Activist, Femi Falana will speak to Nigerians in the city of Chicago, US regarding the state of the nation-Nigeria. Date: Friday, May 5th, 2006 Time: 6.00PM Venue: International Conference Center 4750 North Sheridan Rd, Chicago, Illinois Sheridan and Lawrence by the Lake For more information, please contact Kayode Opeifa 312-208-8033 [email protected] Kayode Oladele 313-717-5393 [email protected] Akin Ogunlola 773-764-4515 [email protected] Pete Sofiyea 773-895-0299 [email protected]
TAYO ODUNLAMI
Festus Odimegwu, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Breweries plc, pulls no punches whenever he fields questions from the media, especially at media briefings presaging the company’s Annual General Meetings. A first class Chemistry graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, he spares no opportunity to exhibit his articulation, in flaunting the achievements of Nigeria Breweries plc, appreciating the exquisite features of the female anatomy, or lately, extolling what he perceives as the indispensable qualities of President Olusegun Obasanjo. On this last score, Odimegwu, it appears, has been opening his mouth too wide.
At NB plc’s last pre-AGM media briefing on Tuesday 18 April 2006 at Eko Hotel, Lagos, it was not unexpected that a question on Obasanjo’s third term project would be thrown at Odimegwu. The chief brewer has never hidden his admiration for, and closeness to the president, and indeed, support for elongation of his (Obasanjo’s) tenure. To a reporter’s question on the burning issue at the briefing, Odimegwu did not disappoint in his response. Obasanjo, he fired back, has been an accomplished administrator, especially with his economic reforms, which, the brewer posited, mainly contributed to the good health that the reporter who asked the question radiated. Odimegwu disclosed that he is a member of 25 presidential committees, which constitute the President’s policy direction, and was, in fact, in Ota, Obasanjo’s farm home, the previous week to meet minds with the president, as he and many other associates of the president often do.
Indeed, Festus Odimegwu spares no opportunity to heap praises on the President. At one forum, he said those saying the Nigerian economy had not recorded considerable improvement under the regime of President Obasanjo were talking nonsense. “I have a graph in my office with which I have been monitoring the economy. And the graph has been going up since Baba took over,” Odimegwu enthused.
Odimegwu’s affection for President Obasanjo is becoming so irritating, as he engages in vain praising of the Nigerian leader even when it is absolutely unnecessary. During the final of Star Quest, a talent hunt organised by his company, he pointed at a tall member of the winning band, D’Accord and said: ‘‘can you see this tall guy; he must have been born during ‘Baba’s presidency. He must have been drinking milk because Obasanjo has made Nigeria a better place.” Of course the audience was not impressed.
To the NB plc boss, Obasanjo has done so well he deserves another term, and it can only be enemies of the country who would scoff at such idea.
As it is turning out, this could well be famous last word. Since Odimegwu’s gaffe, there has been a whirl of developments. A group of some private sector players has been sponsoring advertisements in national newspapers calling on Nigerians to support Obasanjo’s third term project. Both THISDAY and Vanguard newspapers bore conspicuous wrap-arounds screaming, “Vote for Greatness, Vote for Tenure Extension” on their Thursday 20 April and Sunday 23 April editions. The advert was placed by a faceless group which calls itself the Private Sector Supporters for Good and Transparent Governance, PSSGTG. To THISDAY, the group paid a huge sum of N25 million for the insertion, while Vanguard reportedly bagged N10 million. To THE PUNCH newspaper where the advertisers later headed to place yet another wrap-around of the same hue, they met a brick wall. THE PUNCH editors firmly slammed their door against the tenure elongation promoters, in conformity with the paper’s principled opposition against the third term project. In their desperation to see the advert through, the advertisers offered to pay up the N40 million which they initially offered THE PUNCH for the wrap-around, but the newspaper stood its ground.
Just as the real identities of members of the PSSGTG are yet to be unraveled, editors of THISDAY, Vanguard and even THE PUNCH have not disclosed the name of the agency which came with the wrap-arounds. Director-General of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Dr. (Mrs.) Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, in an interview with TheNEWS last Tuesday where she denied any involvement with the third term idea, challenged the editors to unfurl the name of the agency that is handling the wrap-around campaign and further investigate and reveal identities of the characters that make up the PSSGTG.
As the Third Term project gets messier and key players in the private sector believed to be close to Obasanjo are spiritedly denying any link with it, the head of Odimegwu, an apostle of the idea who has publicly made no bones about it, is on the chopping block. His “satanic verses,” this magazine learnt, have thrown the NB plc into a spin and are making its owners, Heineken B.V. of Holland, and the board, headed by Felix Ohiwerei, who was Odimegwu’s immediate predecessor as MD/CEO, very uncomfortable. A source within the company confided in this magazine that Odimegwu has been summoned to Holland by Heineken’s bigwigs to explain what all those comments and activities on Third Term are all about. It is not clear what the outcome of the query would be, but as the tenure elongation mess gets more convoluted, a loss of a most plush job cannot be disregarded, according to the company’s source.
Odimegwu appears to have recklessly engaged his Third Term gear on overdrive. From admiration, it has become an obsession. Last year, on 5 March, when Odimegwu headed a “Lagos Group” to organize Obasanjo’s 68th birthday bash at Dodan Barracks, Lagos, it was taken to be a mere appreciation of what the NB plc CEO, who gave the toast at the event, described as Obasanjo’s “single-handed re-integration of Nigeria.” As acknowledged by Obasanjo, the birthday bash was put together by friends of Nigeria “and I must single out Festus Odimegwu.”
Besides Odimegwu, private sector operators who graced the birthday party included Alhaji Aliko Dangote, chairman of the vast Dangote Group; Dr. Mike Adenuga, Chairman of Globacom, Equitorial Trust Bank and Conoil; Chief Michael Ibru, billionaire patriarch of the influential Ibru family; Dr. Cecilia Ibru, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Oceanic Bank plc; Femi Otedola, owner of Zenon Oil; Tayo Aderinokun, Chief Executive Officer of Guaranty Trust Bank plc; Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke; Oba Otudeko, chairman of the Honeywell Group; Erastus Akingbola, Chief Executive Officer of Intercontinental Bank plc and Mr. Jacob Ajekigbe, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of First Bank plc.
Odimegwu’s lionisation of the Obasanjo personae was etched sharply by the fact that only the colours of NB plc’s products and ushers adorned the birthday bash at Dodan Barracks. No other beverage from other companies was served. It could not be ascertained, though, whether the organising committee paid for the drinks and the service personnel or the entire expenditure was underwritten by Odimegwu and the giant brewing firm.
But it was the recently replaced President of Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, Engineer Charles Ugwuh, who first gave an indication that some powerful businessmen favor tenure extension for the president. Speaking at MAN’s 34th Annual General Meeting, AGM on 5 November last year, Ugwuh noted that the various economic reforms initiated by the president since 1999 “are being gradually entrenched, and it would be a pity as a result of the need to ensure formal compliance with constitutional provision, if we allow a reversal of these positive developments.”
The industrialist proceeded to dress the president in a garb of indispensability: “President Obasanjo, as a leader has recorded quite considerable and indeed, spectacular achievements. In the process, he has risen to the status of major African president and leader of considerable international clout, respect and repute. The on-going debate should also focus and contemplate what Nigeria should do with such experienced, mature human resource in Africa where there are few reputable statesmen with personal discipline and integrity.” Many Nigerians interpreted Ugwuh’s speech as a call on the president to violate the maximum constitutional provision of two terms. It was not a surprise that many branches of MAN across the states as well as the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI promptly disowned Ugwuh.
The private sector players now rooting for another term for Obasanjo are believed to be operating under the canopy of Corporate Nigeria, a collection of some influential private sector operators. As, however, dispelled by Okereke-Onyiuke, chairman of its board of trustees, last week, this would be giving a dog a bad name to slaughter it. Corporate Nigeria, she explained, is a non-governmental organization established in 1993, in aping the Corporate America initiative in the United States of America, where major business people have come together on one platform to influence somehow the economic policies of government. Corporate Nigeria, she maintained, is purely a non-political organization with no interest in the affairs of any political party at any time, or the political ambition of any individual. The body, she said, restricts itself to organizing luncheons for candidates to afford them the opportunity to present and explain their economic programs to the public
.
In 1993, Corporate Nigeria actively backed Chief Moshood Abiola, presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party whose victory was controversially annulled by his friend, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who was then the military president. Corporate Nigeria actually organized a luncheon for the telecommunications magnate-turned-politician, who later died in 1998 in the struggle to actualize his mandate. Okereke-Onyiuke explained that their decision to support a particular candidate is always taken after a party’s candidate has emerged from its primaries. In 1993, Abiola naturally emerged Corporate Nigeria’s favourite son by virtue of his acceptance across the country, a leading light in the business community and significantly, a former chairman of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which Okereke-Onyiuke now heads.
The NSE director-general recalled that after the annulment of Abiola’s election, Corporate Nigeria, in the absence of a democratic dispensation in which it could play out its objectives, focused on philanthropic activities and organization of seminars. In 1999, the body returned to its original turf after Obasanjo emerged presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party. As the NSE boss posited, Corporate Nigeria “evaluated the political spectrum and found no alternative to the ticket of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.”
Four years later, in March 2003, the body again threw its weight behind the re-election campaign of President Obasanjo because of, as Okereke-Onyiuke said, “The performance of the administration in the last four years and the need for continuity in the Nigerian polity.” Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Industrial and General Insurance, IGI, Mr. Remi Olowude, asserted the group’s decision to stick to Obasanjo was informed by “the objectives of the organisation, the strength of our conviction and most importantly, our objective assessment of the first term performance of the Obasanjo presidency.”
Membership of the group remains shadowy, although it is widely believed there is hardly an oil magnate or a bank CEO in the country, especially from the South, that is not in its line-up. When asked to confirm the membership of some key corporate chieftains, Okereke-Onyiuke replied that membership of Corporate Nigeria is an open affair into which any private sector operator can walk. She was also emphatic that the body is in no way involved in the support for tenure elongation for Obasanjo. Also asked to clarify the linkage between Corporate Nigeria and Transnational Corporation, a new but huge local private sector concern, the NSE director-general stated there is no correlation whatsoever between the two.
Transcorp, as Transnational Corporation is widely known, is the brainchild of President Obasanjo, as Okereke-Onyiuke admitted. He, however, sold the vision to some 32 Nigerian business people. The objective, as professed by its promoters, is to build a wholly-owned Nigerian corporation “into a global conglomerate with a view to rebuilding and repositioning Nigeria at the forefront of the comity of nations and as a clear leader in Africa’s economic renaissance.” Through Transcorp, the private sector, it is hoped, would be “galvanized into an investment vehicle and instrument of change and reform to expand the frontiers of Nigeria’s skills to different corners of the world.”
The corporation was launched on 21 July 2005 by President Obasanjo himself at Aso Villa, Abuja. Its board of directors comprises Okereke-Onyiuke, who is the chairman; Fola Adeola, former Managing Director of Guarantee Trust Bank plc, who is Transcorp’s Group Managing Director; NB plc’s Odimegwu; Aliko Dangote; First Bank’s Ajekigbe; Tony Elumelu, Managing Director of UBA plc; Jim Ovia, Managing Director of Zenith Bank plc; Femi Otedola, the Zenon Oil chairman; Tony Ezenma, chairman of Orange Drugs Ltd; Funsho Lawal; Adegboyega Olulade, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of AdonaiNet and Nicholas Okoye, the corporation’s Technical Secretary and Business Strategy Adviser. Atedo Peterside, Managing Director of IBTC, is also involved.
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