Encomium
Another riveting episode has surfaced from Making It Big, the long awaited business memoir of stylish man of means Femi Otedola.
The fresh excerpts detailed the encounter of the then owner of Zenon Petroleum and Nigeria’s two-term civilian President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004.
At the time, tales of diesel scarcity was spread afield by saboteurs in Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) who were feeding fat on subsidy. They wanted the fraudulent subsidy regime to continue and stop the government from deregulating the product.
Otedola had persuaded the president to deregulate the market, assuring him that the product would be readily available.
In the business memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business, set for release on Monday, August 18, Otedola wrote:
“When President Obasanjo deregulated diesel in 2004, Zenon took an unassailable lead in the market. My opponents’ reaction was to tell the president that we’d turned the market upside down [and that the] economy was about to be brought down because there was no diesel, and Obasanjo was mad at me because he’d sought and received assurances from us that NNPC’s exit from diesel importation wouldn’t affect supply. My critics then fanned the flames by telling him there was no diesel in the country, that trucks couldn’t move and that industries were shutting down.
“The President… called me at 2am, shouting through the phone. ‘You’re a stupid boy! God will punish you! You persuaded me to deregulate diesel, and now there’s no diesel in the country!’ He was livid. I flew to Abuja the following day. As soon as Obasanjo saw me, he flew into a rage again. ‘What kind of rubbish is this? What kind of nonsense is this?’ He was right in my face, screaming at the top of his lungs. I allowed him to cool down, and when he stopped talking, I tried to explain the situation. ‘Baba, they’re lying to you. It’s all lies. I have six ships waiting to discharge big supplies of diesel.’”
Otedola then told Obasanjo that there was diesel all over the country and showed him letters of credit for all the cargoes.
“I was even paying demurrage. I told the president that I was the victim of competitors’ backbiting,” he wrote, saying he asked Obasanjo to “see what they come up with next… You’ll see that it’s me who’s telling you the truth.”
To address the ‘tales-by-moonlight’, Otedola said he told Obasanjo he would start advertising the availability and price of diesel on the front page of the newspapers, addressing any concerns about fair and consistent pricing.
“I knew it was people in NNPC – the state monopoly, in their now – teetering positions of power, who were against deregulation – who’d been telling him these lies. They wanted to continue to import, and rake in the subsidy money.
“Obasanjo was a determined and robust president. Jealous people did not easily sway him. Once he made up his mind that someone was trustworthy and genuine, as he seemed to do about me that day, he stopped listening to the naysayers.”
Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business is Otedola’s first book (and it took about seven years to package). Praised by business leaders and economists as one-of-a-kind, the book is expected to surpass expectations.
From Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Prince Samuel Adedoyin to Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Akinwumi Adesina and Arunma Oteh, all have superlative testimonials about the book.
Making It Big is available for preorder on www.makingitbigbook.com.
