- Reveals New Ideas To Improve The Economy
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Dr. (Prince) Boluwasanmi Akin-Olugbade is so many things rolled into one. Call him a lawyer, you will be right. He has Phd in Law from Cambridge. Call him an Oil player you will be correct. He plays big in Oil. Call him an industrialist and you won’t be wide off the mark. But one thing he does not hide is the fact that he is stupendously rich. His house in Ilupeju, Lagos, is lesson in Class, Opulence and Splendour. The massive gates at the entrance let any first time visitor know that you just do not have free entry. As you are, luckily, ushered in, what inescapably strikes you are the 3 intimidating units of Rolls Royces limousines magnificently parked in the beautiful garage just by the back of the house but visible obvious enough to catch the attention of any first time visitor. They are specially numbered ‘Bolu 2’, ‘Bolu 7’ and ‘Bolu 9’. You just cannot miss them. And when you finally enter the living room, the ambience tells you that you are not just in the house of a comfortable man, but a rich one.
But Bolu is not all about wealth. He had his doctoral degree in Company Law at the Cambridge University and apart from that; he is the Aare Onakakanfo of Owu Kingdom, A Free Giver, Winner of The Most Outstanding Nigerian Philanthropist Award in 2011, and a lover of his fatherland. Bolu tells of his kids, the economy, the need for a socially acceptable deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry, why Nigeria must take her destiny into her own hands in the ownership of companies and expatriate quota and why he ensured that two of his three boys came back home from the USA so as not to marry Americans. Bolu, the man his friends call ‘Cash is King’, never allows for a dull moment. Kindly find out yourself…
Those who are in the same bracket with you in terms of economic wherewithal and income usually prefer to stay at Banana Island and Lekki, while others stay at the VGC. But here you are on the mainland in the midst of the people so to say. What informed that decision? I have been living here since 1994 and there are various reasons why I stay here. One is that my office is just down the road and I have another office at home. In other words, I work from home and some of my staff come to the house. So I prefer to stay here, Another reason is that I travel a lot and as such, it is easier for me to get to the airport from here; either I am traveling abroad or I am traveling to Abuja or to Abeokuta. I have properties on the island as well. I also have an office at Gerard Road, Ikoyi. My sons live in Banana Island and Lekki Phase 1. The people here like me and I like them and the police boss around here knows me as I am part of the Police/Community Relations Committee. There is a Rapid Response Squad stationed at the entrance of my street here and I also have OPC security around the house. I am very safe and comfortable. The type of house I have here, if I have it in Ikoyi, it will cost more than a billion naira. I have furnished it to my taste and it is quite comfortable. In those days when we had the seat of the federal government here in Lagos, may be one had to be in Ikoyi or Victoria Island. But everything is in Abuja now. The people in Ilupeju know me and they call this place Aso Rock of Ilupeju. I am happy here and I have constant water.
(Cuts in) Government water?
No. I have my own borehole here. Here, the water is good. I went forty metres deep and it is pure, natural water. And the borehole has been there since day one.
How long has this house been standing?
I have been living here since January 1994. I refurbished the house about two years ago. I made it to look like Otunba Subomi Balogun’s house in Ikoyi because I went to his house and I liked what I saw and I made my house look like his.
When growing up, we used to hear about your father, Chief Babatunde Akin-Olugbade. He seemed to loom large even after death. How much influence did he have on you?
My father was my mentor and was a man I idolised. I wanted to be like him in every way and I have succeeded to some extent. He was a very nice man and treated everyone nicely and very generous. He was a successful business man and a lawyer and I am following in his footsteps. He was the Balogun of Owu and I am now the Aare Onakakanfo and a crown prince of Owu Kingdom because our family belongs to the Otileta Ruling House in Owu. He was a very nice man and a disciplinarian and he helped me a lot. I made my first one million naira when I was just 21 years old and that was more than a million dollars then.
When did he die?
My father died in 1987 at the age of 74. He and late Chief Awolowo were contemporaries. In fact, he became the Leader of Opposition after Awolowo’s imprisonment.
We always heard of Chief Akin-Olugbade. What were his first names?
His names were Olu Babatunde Akin-Olugbade.
Let us discuss politics and business now. You wrote an article recently in this Magazine and Nigerian Newspapers concerning the management of oil subsidy and how its removal should be handled.
I wrote an article on how to do a socially acceptable deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil and gas industry. I felt that if they just deregulated, it would affect the poor people in Nigeria so I came up with a unique idea and which I gave to my friend, the Vice-President. We were classmates in school. I also gave it to the National Security Adviser, NSA, Major General Babagana Monguno. But I decided to publish the Article so that the people could make their comments. Perhaps, the president had gotten hold of the document because he now made a statement that he could not just remove subsidy like that because it would affect the poor people more and which was the thrust of my article. In those days, we used to have two-star and four-star petrol. Now, abroad, you have unleaded petrol. The cars most poor Nigerians buy are cars that are over ten years old. These cars use leaded petrol; it is cars made in the last ten years that use unleaded petrol. Abroad, you do not get leaded petrol anymore; so most of these old cars are being shipped to Nigeria and that is why they are cheap. The petrol that we are making in Nigeria, because the refineries are quite old, you can add lead to them and make it a different colour from the imported unleaded petrol.
You can now sell them at the current price of N87 per litre so that the poor people who use those cars older than ten years and motorcycles and tricycles and buses can continue to buy at the current cost while the rich people would be using the unleaded petrol that we import and you can sell it at N150 per litre. Now, anyone that can afford a car that is less than ten years old, by Nigerian standard, is rich or comfortable and can afford to buy petrol at N150. The present subsidy is actually for the rich; not the poor. Let the rich pay the appropriate price while the poor people pay N87 per litre. The rich do not want to damage their cars as they were made for unleaded petrol and they would voluntarily pay 150 naira per litre So if this is done, the social aspect would have been taken care of and you don’t need increase in salaries and allowances which the president is afraid of. The problem, however, is this: will the petrol stations sell at the designated prices? That one requires policing by the DPR and the petrol stations should differentiate prices using the different colour between leaded petrol and unleaded one. If you go abroad, no one checks what is being sold to them because no one cheats. Therefore, the people of Nigeria themselves should know that there is no point cheating. The production cost of the one being made in Nigeria is quite low, so they can still afford to make profit from whatever they are selling.
The second suggestion I made was about the indigenization of employment. You see, the way Nigeria is going there is going to be a social revolution within the next ten years. You see many private universities springing up and graduates are coming out of these universities. The businesses that should provide employment for them are suffering and people are not being paid. You find out that there is no employment for the large number of graduates that we are producing. If you have poor people who do not have intellect, they can manage. They can decide to go to the farm. But graduates that come out and cannot get jobs become frustrated and we will soon have sophisticated and intellectual armed robbers/kidnappers and this will be very dangerous. We must, therefore, provide employment for these people. I believe the Immigration Service is sabotaging the efforts of government in this country because so many expatriates are being employed in positions that Nigerians could occupy. You do not do that in the USA. You cannot go there and say you want to work without a work permit. A work permit is issued here also but the law states that before such expatriate can work, you have to get a Nigerian as an understudy of that expatriate. The maximum period that expatriates can work in most cases is ten years and that Nigerian understudy takes over. Expatriates just come here and work and even expatriates that set up businesses here also employ expatriates like themselves. Educated Nigerians are not being employed and not being given the experience in terms of employment. The type of Indigenization Decree that made a lot of foreigners sell companies to Nigerians should be reviewed in terms of Indigenization of Employment. We can have two schedules. Schedule One, which should be bigger than the old Schedule in the Indigenisation Decree, should have companies under it that cannot employ expatriates. Then we should have Schedule Two, which are companies that can employ expatriates and this must be for technologically advanced companies and not just for example, any car dealership company. A foreigner can invest in companies under Schedule One, but he can only be the chairman and cannot take an executive position. So if he really wants to invest his money, let him invest in companies in Schedule Two which are the companies we need to develop Nigeria; not companies that any Tom, Dick or Harry can run.
These are lofty ideas. How do we get them implemented? How do we get them across to those that matter?
I have already sent it to the people in authority.
Have they responded?
Well, I just did this in the last couple of weeks.
What of the political buttons? You know that the expatriates understand our system and they always try to undermine it.
You see, that is why I am glad that we have someone like Buhari at the helm. At his age, I do not think he wants to do a second term. So, he wants to leave a legacy and do things right. I do not think he is the kind of person that will allow expatriates to frustrate what he wants to do to improve the lives of Nigerians. So the government has to do something and can send it to the National Assembly to debate it. I have included companies that I feel should be in Schedule One and those that should be in Two. They can now put more in the two schedules or remove some from One and take it to Two. It depends on what the government feels are the needs of the nation but I feel that there are so many companies right now that we must stop from employing expatriates. There can be a transition period of about one year to put things in place. You can try to do this expatriates quota thing but it will still be abused. The people in Immigration take bribes from these expatriates and allow them to do what they like. You see some expatriates come here and he does not even know anything. It is Nigerians under him that do the work. It is just ridiculous. I have made these proposals because, though I come from a privileged background, I have a social conscience. In fact, I was given the most outstanding Nigerian philanthropist of the year award in 2011.
Back to the subsidy thing. I think the kerosene subsidy removal should be done immediately because it is not benefitting anybody. It is just for those people who are getting it from the government at a low price and selling it to people at very high prices. I know companies that make about a million dollars a month from the kerosene allocated to them by NNPC. The poor people are not benefitting. It is the oil mafia that benefits and they are influencing the Nigeria Labour Congress. They get the NUPENG and PENGASSAN people to say you cannot do this or that. It is just a ridiculous situation. Nigeria is bleeding and what some people are interested in is how they are going to make their own money from her despite the bleeding.
There is also the idea of Nigeria saying it is the giant of Africa. Our bigness is just an illusion as we do not have the financial wherewithal to back up what we are claiming. We have so many leakages in the West African region and we need to restrict the free movement within ECOWAS. Nigeria should close all its land borders. Anyone who wants to go out of Nigeria or come in should go either by air or by sea. By going through air or sea, we would develop our waterways and our domestic airlines, and also block the leakages through the land borders.
But this is not our decision alone but that of ECOWAS Charter which we signed to.
You did not get me. Before you could enter England, it had to be either by air or by sea, before they did the Euro tunnel. When it was not there, England developed but now that it is open, the British economy is going down because so many Europeans are coming in. We are the dominant power in West Africa. The manufacturing that we are doing here is not only for us, but the west African region. So there are so many leakages and we are using our scarce foreign exchange to manufacture and these things are being taken out. This is not acceptable. If to say we get money back, it is better. But this is just a black economy. A lot of the petrol that we are importing with our scarce foreign exchange is being sold in West African countries. This is ridiculous. What is going through our land borders does not have statistics. So we are losing so much. If everything is done by sea or air, it is documented and we can curb it, but on land, it is not.
What are your business concerns? I mean what are you into? I know you trained as a lawyer but you are into business. What are you into? And people think you are super rich.
I am involved in a company that is into oil service. I am the chairman of one of the biggest logistics company in Nigeria and I am also involved in a telecommunications company, I am also involved in properties outside Nigeria and now I have started in Nigeria. Further, I have an investment company. I am also managing partner of the law firm O. B. Akin-Olugbade and Partners and I am the Group Managing Director of my father’s group of companies. But wealth is relative. May be because of my life style, people think I am richer than I am but my contemporaries like Dangote, who is a year younger than I am, is fifty times richer than me. People call themselves billionaires today, but that is chicken feed. If you have $5 million today, you are a billionaire in naira. So the word billionaire is abused. What can you do with five million dollars in terms of wealth creation? I am not worth a billion dollars; I am not even near it. May be because I love Rolls Royce cars people think I am a dollar billionaire. No. I am just rich and comfortable. But the word billionaire is bastardised and abused. If you have a big house in Ikoyi, you are a billionaire even when you do not have cash. I believe in cash. I became a dollar cash millionaire at 21 and bought my first Rolls Royce at 25.
Most Nigerians, either directly or indirectly, made their money through government. How much of government patronage have you got?
I have not gotten a single contract from the federal government or any state government. I have always been in the private sector. I come from Ogun State and I have not gotten a single contract from the state since it’s creation in 1976. I partly live in Lagos and I have never done any contract for the state government here. Ironically, I did some crude oil business in Saudi Arabia in my younger days because one of my classmates when I was in school in Brighton, his father subsequently became the king in Saudi Arabia. So I was able to do 100,000 barrels a day of crude oil through a company that I introduced and was representing for many years. In Nigeria in the eighties and nineties, I was also through companies that I represented, into crude oil, petroleum products, military contracts, and police contracts. But I was very quiet with it.
Let us go to your family. How close are you to former President Obasanjo? Both of you are supposed to be family members.
Yes; we are. He is like a father to me. But I am not a sycophant and Baba likes sycophants. I lived with him for one year in London in the seventies and may be I would have been closer to him but I know that Baba respects you only when you keep your distance from him. If you are too close to him, you must be a yes man. Ironically, he does not respect such people. You might be going around with him but he would not respect you. Those who move around him as sycophants always end up falling out with him. I respect him and to me, Baba is the luckiest Nigerian, dead or alive.
Can you tell us about your immediate family? I mean your wife and kids.
I got married at 24 and my wife Ladunni, was 23 then. I have been married for over 34 years. We have a good marriage. I have three sons. The first is a lawyer and was based in Los Angeles. I had to convince him to come home and he is based in Nigeria now. My second son is an investment banker and he used to be an investment banker with Merryl Lynch in Los Angeles. Now he is the accounts officer with Reuters in Nigeria. I was afraid they would get married to American women and from my experience from Nigerians that got married to Americans, the marriage usually does not last. Those women just married them for their money. I had to convince my kids to come back home. I am tired of being chairman at so many weddings. I want my own kids to get married here too, so that I can become a grandfather. My last son started his own computer company in Los Angeles and he is doing well too.
The Aare Onakakanfo of Owu Kingdom is like the grand field marshal of the Owu army. What does the title require of you culturally, financially and spiritually?
My father was the first Aare Onakakanfo before becoming the Balogun and he combined both titles during his lifetime. In Owu, the Balogun is higher than Aare Onakakanfo while in Yoruba land, the reverse is the case. When I was to be installed, Obasanjo, who succeeded my father as Balogun, had to install me before taking me to the king to install me as Aare Onakakanfo. I perform whatever functions that is required of me but I am not really involved in the traditional functions. You know the Owu Kingdom is not only in Abeokuta; we have it in the six states all over Yorubaland. So when they first gave me the title, I refused but later postponed it for one year and I was made to write a letter of acceptance and I paid a fine for postponing the installation. That was how the title came about, but I do not get involved in traditional activities because I am a born-again Christian and the author of the book, The Spoken Words Of Jesus Christ, which has sold over two million copies on Amazon. In fact, my King is also a born again Christian and there are no traditional rites.
How rich are you?
I think I am worth about two hundred and fifty million dollars ($250 million) and half of that I hold in cash. Further, I do not owe any bank anywhere in the world. I have said this because most Nigerian billionaires are Debtor Naira Billionaires. In fact, Forbes Magazine only publishes the share value and not the liabilities of Nigerian Dollar Billionaires. In Nigeria, a company should be worth only ten times the annual dividend payment and a property should be worth only ten times the annual rental value. As far as I am concerned, the only billionaires in Nigeria are: Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, and Mrs. Folorunsho Alakija.
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