I have made up my mind that Nigerians who have a lot of stake in this country are those who will take the lead in the development of our country. Those of us who are fortunate to have enormous resources must take a lead in restoring the pride and dignity of our country”. (Dr. Mike Adenuga Jnr., 2001)

He seemed like an athlete who was entering a 500 metres race when fellow competitors had already turned the corner into their own 300th metre of the race, but the man who had been known for many years as the ‘Bull’ was one never to be discouraged by such disadvantaged beginnings.

MTN had just celebrated its achievement of a 1.5million subscriber base while ECONET (now Bharti Airtel) had clinched second position with a 1million subscriber base. The man, Michael Adeniyi Isola Adenuga, who has today become a case study in tenacity, industry and doggedness, was just putting machinery in the works to open shop to Nigerians under the Globacom banner which was then just a name in print.

That was however not the first disadvantaged beginning for him. In 2001, in the wake of the decentralization of the telecommunications sector, Adenuga had entered the bid for a telecommunications licence and had lost the whopping $20 million non-refundable deposit made to the Federal government through his Communications Investment Limited (CIL). To the lily-livered, that single loss would have signalled an end of the ambition.

Reacting to the loss, Adenuga declared, “I contemplated taking my money outside Nigeria to live in pleasure for the rest of my life. But I know that I have made up my mind that Nigerians who have a lot of stake in this country are those who will take the lead in the development of our country. Those of us who are fortunate to have enormous resources must take a lead in restoring the pride and dignity of our country”. This disclosure from the “Gold Digger” himself explains his mission in the business interests that he nurtures.

Like the bull which never backs out of a fight however fierce, Adenuga girded his loins and recharged to face the challenge once again. His determination to forge ahead was borne out of his desire to touch Nigerians in a special way as well as contribute his quota to the development of his country of birth. While smarting from the initial loss, the opportunity came up to bid for a National Operator licence which included a GSM licence, a Fixed Wireless licence, a Gateway licence and an Online licence. It was a whole bouquet which would confer on his company the status of the second national carrier after NITEL. This time, he won the licence and Globacom was born.

By the end of 2004, when Glo was just one year old, National Oil which had incurred losses for five consecutive years. Within a year of Adenuga’s purchase of the company, the fortunes of National Oil not only improved, the shares became so valued that it was mopped up by investors. The Nigerian oil sector had been stupefied in the late 90s when Adenuga’s Consolidated Oil prospected and struck oil in commercial quantity. The discovery went down in history as the first case of an indigenous company to have struck oil in commercial quantity.

Similarly, when the Federal Government divested its hold in the three petroleum product marketing companies, African Petroleum, Unipetrol and National Oil and Marketing Company (NOLCHEM), Adenuga parted with N7.4billion in exchange for the ownership of NOLCHEM gaining control over three factory sites of the company in Apapa, Lagos; the aerosol plant in Kachia, Kaduna as well as the bitumen plant in Port Harcourt.

These two success stories have been replicated several times in all of the business ventures that Adenuga has been involved. He once owned two banks namely; Devcom Bank and the Equitorial Trust Bank both of which were merged in the wake of the consolidation process initiated by the Central Bank of Nigeria in the bid to sanitise the banking sector. He is also into estate acquisition in major cities of the world.

With Globacom, Adenuga’s vision is “to securely position Globacom as the largest, most successful telecommunications, entertainment and information solutions provider both in Nigeria and Africa as a whole”. The vision therefore goes beyond communicating with the rest of the world, but making possible through the network’s world class connectivity, the opportunity for Nigerians to further educate and entertain themselves and others in ways no one thought achievable on the African continent.

The Adenuga vision encapsulated in the Globacom concept is geared towards unlocking the true potentials of the nation and its people. That Adenuga believes very passionately in Nigeria is stating the obvious as his companies can today boast of at least 15,000 employees.

The landing of Glo 1 attracted great enthusiasm in Nigeria and neighbouring African countries. The 2.5 terabits bandwidth submarine cable system is built to deliver transmission capacity that will radically change Nigeria and Africa's economic landscape by providing unprecedented high speed internet services thereby making telecom services much faster, more reliable and cheaper for consumers. With Glo 1, Globacom is now ready to provide customised end-to-end solutions to customers as the company already has in place 10,000 kilometres of optic fibre cable that traverses the length and breadth of the country to make this possible.

The plethora of commendations which trailed Globacom’s birth of Glo 1 was not unconnected with the successes that the telecoms market had witnessed in Nigeria since Globacom began operations seven years ago.

Adenuga has since etched himself in the public psyche as an intellectual leader whose ideas and values transcends his immediate practical needs, but rather focuses on change and transformation of his social milieu. With the Globacom network, Adenuga has successfully transformed the society by raising social consciousness that Nigeria was capable of providing affordable, world-class telecommunications services similar to what is available in more developed economies.