70-gun salute to the Corporate Field Marshal

BY SULYMAN KOLAWOLE BELLO

For twelve solid years between the year 2008 and 2020, I was one of those few men who sat at some of the most strategic meetings of the Great Guru. Those meetings were as intellectual and as robust as any Multinational Corporation’s meeting could be. Some of them were life-shaping and clinical, while most of them were business-centric in dimension, even as some had elements of military orientation.  In all those engagements, The Great Guru was always very alert, witty, empathetic and with a commanding grasp of all the germane issues.

Most of us learnt the concept of conscious speed and/or hasty caution from one of those seminal encounters within the fortress of his residence, on Banana Island: The Bellissima on the Waterfront. It was a rainy day and a series of meetings were ongoing.

Soon, it was the turn of guys from the Sales Department, whereupon Dr. Mike Adenuga requested that some of those ‘jokers from Marcoms Department’ should please join the conference. Now to the meat of the matter, we who were called jokers from the Marketing Communications Department, sauntered into the expansive luxurious chambers and found a suave gentleman, standing beside a projector while making a digital presentation to the Boss of Bosses.

This particularly dapper gentleman kept talking about how he was going to ramp up sales figures in Globacom, by doing it slow and steady. He kept harping on that ‘slow and steady’ line, to the discomfiture of the more entrenched boys from across the Mike Adenuga Empire; local and offshore.

…and boom, the pronouncement from the throne came! Funnily, The Chairman even called the beleaguered gentleman ‘my brother’! It went thus:

“Calm down my brother. Please stop telling us slow and steady. That’s not how we came this far; who says you can’t have fast and steady? All you need to do is look out for all the risk factors and mitigate them appropriately. Please bros, let’s do it right. Okay? After this meeting, I beg of you go and take care of…”

My people, that was the day the ‘fast and steady’ school of thought was born oh!

Back to the benevolent Field Marshal, there is no denying the fact that The Almighty God has been superbly kind to this uncommon personality; perhaps institution.

In a country where life expectancy is 55.75 years, it is not a joke that anyone reaches the enviable age of 70 years. It gets even more dizzying when you throw in the fact that today’s cerebral celebrant is also a celebrity of sorts, who is a billionaire in dollars. He has been on the uber-rich list for more than 30 years, doing great exploits across the broad-spectrum of the nation. This is definitely big deal, if you look at the embarrassingly meagre per capita income statistics of our country.

Let no one misunderstand me, I am not saying My Chairman is a saint oh! No one is, most definitely. Like the rest of us he also has strengths and frailties; friends and enemies, as well as his own fair share of ‘frenemies’. English cleric, writer and collector, Charles Caleb Colton (1777 –1832) it was who did justice to the extant circumstances when he said: “The reason why great men meet with so little pity or attachment in adversity, would seem to be this: the friends of a great man were made by his fortune, his enemies by himself, and revenge is a much more punctual paymaster than gratitude.”

Happy 70th birthday, our own Dear Chairman. Like Yoruba people are wont to say on this kind of auspicious occasion, ‘igba odun odun kan’; which translates loosely to “may you live for 200 years, as equivalent of one year”. Without prejudice to what Baba wishes himself, I will not lend my voice to the request for 200 years.

My prayer for this phenomenal fisher and hardnosed shepherd of men is fashioned after the age-long invocation. Our pathfinder and navigator, the good Dr. Michael Adeniyi Adenuga, we wish you Happy Birthday, Long Life and Prosperity.

Amen.

A protégé of Dr. Mike Adenuga, Bello is the president of Lekki Estates Residents & Stakeholders Association.