Otunba Mike Adenuga, the founder of Globacom, a wholly and truly Nigerian player in the African telecom space, remains an enigma and mystery too surreal to understand. An unpretentious recluse, the chubby face septuagenarian (by the way, he turns 72 this Tuesday, April 29) is still a sealed book to many journalists including those who ought to know him beyond the pages of newspapers, magazines and now on social media.
Obviously, he loves it like that. He cherishes his privacy. A rare mystique for a successful tycoon with interests spanning oil and gas, telecom, banking, real estate, construction and other things in-between.
As an ICT journalist in the late 90s and early 2000, I had the privilege of interacting with top players in the nation’s Infotech and telecom sector. It’s a long running relationship I have kept with some of the players till this day. The ICT ecosystem was driven by a small crowd of Nigerians who had strong partnerships with foreign companies. The crowd of CEOs was a mix of witty patriots, smart denizens and silent achievers. recluses.
In telecom, state-owned NITEL was the only telecom company of note and it was nothing but a nest of corruption and a graveyard of worn out copper cables, jaded furniture and everything that tells the Nigerian story of rot, ethnic bigotry and crass incompetence. NITEL services, though analogue, were expensive. Infrastructure was analogue but erecting a single mast at that time was more expensive than the mast and its appurtenances because contracts costs were bloated, and in some cases, awarded to persons and companies without capacity, technical and financial.
Telecom services (largely voice service) at that time were expensive and unavailable. The key factors of availability, accessibility and affordability were missing. Pain and trauma defined the services of NITEL. And many Nigerians thought that by organising a digital mobile auction and subsequent roll out of digital mobile services by the early birds MTN (South Africa) and Econet Wireless (Zimbabwe) in August 2021 the telecom service pain inflicted on Nigerians would ease. Well, it did ease the pain but at great cost to consumers. Telecom consumers were made to pay for airtime per minute, a curious billing configuration where even a second into a conversation before it terminates is counted as one minute. It was pure extortion and it more than regulated the legendary culture of Nigerians to talk and talk.
But all that changed in 2003 when Adenuga’s Glo hit the scene with a carefully thought-out disruptive strategy. The disruptor-in-chief went to work, introducing per-second billing scheme which had been sold to Nigerians as ‘impossible’. By that masterstroke, Glo clawed deep into the mobile market and in no time, became the preferred among consumers on account of its pocket-friendly services.
By January 2025, mobile subscription in Nigeria climbed to 169,318,076. Glo, a late entrant into the market commands over 20 million subscribers to place a respectable third position, overtaking those which took off ahead of it. Glo’s recorded growth in the telecom sector is a testament to Adenuga’s vintage entrepreneurial qualities: Resolute, visionary, determination.
Being resolute in the pursuit of a goal is one attribute that runs through the veins of successful entrepreneurs. Adenuga has it in good measure. Obstinate and unflinching, he pursues his vision with bullish determination. When his company, CIL, lost the GSM licence in 2001 in controversial circumstances, not many gave him a chance to play in the telecom market having lost a goodly $20 million deposit in the process. But Adenuga dug deep into his inner resolve to pitch for an even bigger stake in Nigeria telecom. He would later win the slot as Nigeria’s second national carrier. Whereas other entrepreneurs would have sulked away from a deal gone awry, not Adenuga! The Bull got more bullish, abandoning the shallow waters to fish in the deeper ocean. His catch? Something bigger than GSM, indeed, the ultimate prize in any country’s telecom market – national carrier status.
Innovation is thinking out of the routine, changing the convention and shifting the paradigm. When Globacom arrived the telecom scene, so much had happened. The early birds had taken over the cream of the market, but it is never too late for an innovator. Adenuga’s innovative mind configured a marketing formula that got Globacom not only a huge chunk of the market but sent the competitors back to their strategy rooms to be able to contain the Glo tsunami that was about to swallow them up.
At that time, the theory from service providers was that per second billing was impossible. Nigerians were haemorrhaging under the N50 per minute billing system but Glo bucked the criminally exploitative trend by introducing the per second billing regime. With this innovative marketing, it clawed its way into the hearts of Nigerian telecom consumers to rank as one of the top two GSM service providers. Add to this Glo’s fibre optic network and what you get is a giant telco out of Africa. Today, thanks to Adenuga, Nigerian telecom consumers enjoy per second billing and it has become the standard in the marketplace.
