Awo made me, says Jimoh Ibrahim - Why Yar’Adua succeeded in taking over NICON

By Bankole Makinde and Jackson Udom - 13.01.2008

CHAIRMAN of Global Fleet, Barrister Jimoh Ibrahim, yesterday reminiscenced on his life and thanked the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, for his success so far in life.

The billionaire businessman, while delivering a lecture at this year’s National Conference of the African Newspapers of Nigeria (ANN) Plc in Ibadan praised Awolowo for offering him free education which has now catapulted him to the pinnacle of the financial sector in Nigeria.

At the conference, which held at the prestigious Jogor Centre, Liberty Road, Oke-Ado, Ibadan, Barrister Jimoh said he would have been a bricklayer in life had Chief Awolowo not introduced the free education programme.

The Igbotako, Ondo State-born Group Managing Director of NICON Group of Companies said he was one of the first set of pupils who benefitted from Awolowo’s free education adding that he left secondary school in 1984.

He reasoned that if the remaining policies of President Umaru Yar’Adua centre on free and qualitative education, there would be so many Bill Gates in Nigeria.

Speaking on his face-off with the Federal Government over the forceful takeover of NICON in spite of court ruling to the contrary, Barrister Jimoh said, he more than anyone else, has to blame for the blunder.

According to him, he said he made a grave management technical error by not allowing the employees acquire some of the shares of the company.

“If the workers had been co-shareholders of the NICON, they would have resisted the attempt of the Federal Government to forcefully take it over in spite of court judgement to the contrary,” he disclosed.

The business guru vowed that he would soon rejuvenate all his other companies in such a way that workers would hold shares in them and so see them as their own

He said in such a setting, it was always very rare to see employees stealing from the company as they see it as their own. Barrister Ibrahim promised that he was already working towards that direction.

Still on education, the learned man explained that in a fast developing emerging market economy such as Nigeria, the entrepreneurial class must be made of extremely well educated, fast thinking young men and women.

He posited further that credibility of organisational leadership and loyalty of its workers were germane to the progress of any organisation.

In his own paper titled: ‘Managing Yourself for Maximum Results,’ the Business Improvement Adviser of Shell, Mr. Collins Edebiri pointed out that self management was crucial to whatever one achieved in life.

He said: “If you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage time and without effective time management, you cannot achieve anything tangible in life.

“You need to have a goal and follow it with a plan. Discipline is important for you to follow your plan through and you have to know yourself, know what you want and control your direction, or else, others would control your life.”

Edebiri added that self awareness was equally crucial to maximising results because “whatever you think is usually what you are.”

At the epoch making conference, the Vice Chairman/Publisher of the Tribune titles, Prince Oluwole Awolowo delivered the opening address.