We barely ate or slept for three consecutive days. Yet, we were neither tired nor hungry.
In those days, it wasn’t drink or drugs but Red Bull which kept us high: on energy, excitement and hope.
More than 10 years ago, in June 2004, a corporate strategy session was to change my life irrevocably. And for the better. June in the sleepy town of Ogere, Ogun State. Picture a bunch of middle and executive managers sweaty and bothered, having survived the rush-hour traffic from Lagos. Thankful for the oasis of the Training and Conference Centre (‘TCC’), one of Nigeria’s foremost resorts for residential training.
I was empowered by the fact that I was the only stranger in the room. The only person who nobody knew.
I felt like a special agent, flown in that morning from London, at short notice. But it was not for me the corporate executives who gathered were waiting.
It was the legendary Elumelu. My friend Funmi Afonja had disturbed my beauty sleep a few weeks earlier to tell me about the opportunity and to inform me Tony Elumelu had requested to meet me. ‘Tony who?’,
‘Standard Who?’ I asked. At the time, Elumelu had yet to become the global African entrepreneur he is today, courted and feted by world leaders, celebrities and Fortune 500 companies. So I could be forgiven for not knowing who he was.
I was unemployed, having quit my job at the beverage firm Diageo to pursue the – as yet undefined - ‘African dream’.
I snapped at Funmi: ‘Nigerian and banking?! I am so not interested! Thank you!’.
You see the problem at the time was one shared by many Ghanaians. That was the misconception that we couldn’t trust our Nigerian brothers and sisters in financial matters, especially given how ‘fast’ they were. The spectacular collapse of Pyram – although not a bank, but a fraudulent pyramid scheme – did not help.
To shut Funmi up, I agreed on this ‘blind date’. Love at first sight It was love at first sight – for me at least, when I met Elumelu.
My homework had shown me that Elumelu’s achievements even then were highly impressive.
In 1997, at 33, he led a small group of investors to acquire Crystal Bank, a distressed operation, which he nursed to financial health and profitability. By the time of the Ogere retreat, he had grown it into Nigeria’s fourth largest bank with no less than 86 branches!
At Ogere, I was inspired even more as Elumelu detailed his dream for Standard Trust, including plans for international expansion, the first Nigerian bank to do so.
He was open in his presentation and welcomed suggestions, constructive criticism and debate in a way I had never seen with any ‘Oga at the top’.
He took his time to paint each stroke of the canvas with the dreams he had for the bank - and for us.
His style reminded me of an article written by legendary Southwest Airlines Chief Executive Officer Herb Kelleher in which he states: ‘The important thing is to take the bricklayer and make him understand that he’s building a home, not just laying bricks. So we take the building-a-home approach: this is what you are doing not just for yourself, but for society’
Ogere dream An entrepreneur must first dream for himself and then for - and with – his team.
But this can only be done with the building-a-home approach. It is the entrepreneur’s responsibility to bring the dream alive in a way that infects and excites the team. Members must then become co-dreamers, willing to own and build upon the original dream.
Of course, not all dreams are equal. As TE Lawrence said, ‘All men dream, but not equally’ Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible’.
In Elumelu’s case, thanks to the Ogere dream, Standard Trust went on to merge with the United Bank for Africa, a much bigger proposition, which has expanded across Africa and into the United Kingdom and the Cayman Islands.
In the process, he created a financial services behemoth with a US$2 billion market capitalisation, US$12b assets, 10,000 employees and seven million customers. By 2010, he was forced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to step down under a retrospective directive that limited the tenure of bank chieftains to 10 years.
His soft spot Now back at the UBA as Chairman, Elumelu remains firmly in the dreams business. He infects, nurtures and inspires. His soft spot is bright young Africans with ideas that will power their continent’s prosperity.
His dreams are even bigger than before - and a lot more audacious. In December, he launched an entrepreneurship programme that will devote US$100 million over a decade to identifying and helping to grow 10,000 African start-ups and young businesses.
The scheme aims to help find and grow businesses that will contribute US$10bn in revenue across Africa to 2025.
His investment company, Heirs Holdings, has pledged US$2.5billion towards President Obama’s ‘Power Africa Initiative’ - a whopping 36 per cent of the total US7billion pledged.
He continues to invest in a range of industries, from hospitality to real estate and oil and gas.
Nkurmah's kind of man
it can also be said he has also become an evangelist of sorts, espousing a philosophy of Africans, taking charge of value-adding sectors and ensuring that value-added processes happen ‘because there is a generation of private sector entrepreneurs who have the vision, the tools and the opportunity to shape the destiny of the continent’.
What a vision indeed. And what a man. Elumelu is precisely the breed of entrepreneur that Nkrumah ad in mind when he said during his independence speech that: ‘We have awakened,We will not sleep any more… There is a new African in the world’.
Africa needs more Elumelu’s. Less talk and rhetoric. Less sleep and food. More dreams and action. GB