Q:. And the money was not bad, but only the title…

The money was not bad. I took the offer to work in Mobil because I was tired of the discrimination I suffered overseas and had made up my mind that I would not work for any other company but an American company. I was encouraged to join their team and I met Oladunni, Pius Akinyelure, all of them. The white man told me to just come over and prove myself and that I would “get there”. He had been the supervisor of the guy blocking me overseas. And when the white man came to Nigeria, they did not give him the title, too. He said: ‘Here, I am financial adviser; I don’t care what title they give me, I am getting my salary and I have my responsibilities to New York. Don’t worry.”

Q:. Apart from this initial discrimination that you confronted, what other challenges did you face?

The system was poor. I met a very disorganized work environment here. I really did a lot to prove myself. I faced a lot of challenges, but my training and my background from the United States helped my career. I wrote so many audit queries and reports.

Q:. We learnt that you wrote one that caused an earthquake!

There were so many of them. I wrote one on Bob Eriksson, who was the Chairman/Managing Director. He was weak in his corporate control of the finances of Mobil and I boldly wrote the report based on that. And here was the Chairman/Managing Director, who was affected by the report. Everybody raised an eyebrow. But I emphasized that I was an independent auditor. I said: ‘This is my report, this is my resignation letter.’ I sent a copy of the report to the head office in New York. I wanted to strengthen my independence and professionalism.
The third day, a signal came from New York. The managing director was to be recalled and the corporate audit manager was on his way to check the report. When he came, I had my audit file. All the findings in the report and my recommendations were accepted. They recalled the MD/Chairman and he was demoted. The company rejected my letter of resignation and promoted me general auditor.

Q:. How long did it take you to become general auditor?

It was less than two years. I don’t want to brag about these things, but I ended up bossing the man who interviewed me. The man they brought in to block me was sent to Houston. Luckily, I was doing very well. We were at the Bookshop House on Broad Street then. My career was blossoming.
I wrote another audit report, Financial Management and the Treasury Activities. I think Ibrahim Babangida was in power then. Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, was on then and things were very difficult. I wrote and explained what we should do to strenghten the financial base and treasury activities of the company. It was a 28-page report. Akinyelure is still alive to attest to what I am saying.
They brought in another Managing Director, called Mr. Bob Parker. Parker arrived Nigeria to replace Erickson. Parker walked into my office one day and said: ‘Bola, Mr. Auditor, I am not here to fight you, but to work. Please let me know whatever you find about the corporation.’
The most significant part of that episode was the 28-page report of the financial situation, the weaknesses and what I believed should be done. They looked at the report and there was another earthquake. For one week, they were going back and forth. The treasury people and the treasurer and everyone else that mattered called me to the boardroom. They said they had looked at the audit report and the recommendations therein, and that they could not find anyone else within the establishment to implement the report except me. They said they were moving me from auditor to the post of treasurer, so that I could implement the report. They said they could not but accept the recommendations.
I asked for 48 hours to review the report and get back to them. I went to Bob Parker and Akinyelure, and I asked that I should be given a free hand to implement whatever I felt would be right with the corporation’s personnel and audit. They granted my request. They sent in a corporate auditor from London, who looked at the report and encouraged me to implement it in my new capacity as the treasurer. I started work on the report and sacked everybody in the Treasury department, except the stenographer. I brought in new hands, from the audit department – people who had worked with me. I brought in a brilliant guy called Adigun from Columbia University and others I felt I could work with.
That was how I started running the treasury of Mobil, which then was located at the CMS Bookshop House on Broad Street.
The Bookshop House was degenerating and was no longer suitable for our operations. So, Akinyelure and I collaborated to do financial redeployment for the purpose of having a new office complex. I began work on the financial restructuring in Mobil, so as to accommodate the new challenges of SAP. There was a BCCI (Bank of Credit, Commerce and Industry) then – the bank that went under – and I was the only treasurer that didn’t lose money. I was a whiz-kid and I am proud of that.
Mobil usually depended on rent, but I was determined that Mobil must have an asset fixed in Nigeria. And that was the beginning of the revolution of real estate in Lagos. Capital Merchant Bank was there then. I retooled the Mobil balance sheet, working with Akinyelure, who was a good guy to work with – he is accommodating and he understands the financials. Mobil didn’t want to sink so much money into it and we had to put our creativity into what I was doing. Ahmed Abubakar was the permanent secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance. We were so much together to ensure that the present Mobil House was built. Gbolahan Mudashiru was the governor [of Lagos State] then. He gave us the approval. It was like using a pair of pliers to remove your own tooth to get the NNPC to go along with us.
The interesting thing about the project was that devaluation was coming and it was going to affect the budget for the building. We took the bill of quantities and gave the best financial projection that was possible, pre-purchased all the items that were needed to build. Nearly 40 per cent of that building was financed when the exchange rate was one Naira to one Dollar. We purchased additional materials, including steel and cement. Whatever I tell you was in the bill of quantities. It started at N4 to $1, if you looked at foreign exchange then. It would not have been possible. Then, at the next fortnightly bidding, the exchange rate shot up to N6 to $1 and that could have adversely affected the project. In fact, if we did not pre-purchase the building materials, it would not have been possible. The NNPC building got stagnated. We finished the building on time without as much as two per cent variation, and that was how we got so much credit for financial engineering.

Q:. Since you were having a good time in Mobil, why did you leave all that to join politics?

It was when I was arranging these finances. There were a lot of things that I don’t need to talk about now that got me in contact with Ahmadu Abubakar and Ibrahim Babangida. Such things got my name around socially. Then, my cousin, Alhaji Kola Oseni, and Dapo Sarumi, who was US-trained, told me their group wanted to contest for governorship. They had started their politics, but I didn’t participate. I was only raising funds for them. They said they wanted quality service delivery for Lagos State. I saw the Lagos State governorship as a department that needed a good manager. We were looking at civilization, quality control. If you went to some housing estates then, they were like this, like that. There must be good quality, standard. And the person who must fix these things must be civilized.
We decided to support Dapo Sarumi.
Gradually, I moved from raising funds to getting involved. I brought some money to Nigeria out of my dividend. I was comfortable because my investments in America and London were already yielding dividends. Then came the crisis leading to the ban of Professor Femi Agbalajobi and Chief Dapo Sarumi. I threw my weight behind Yomi Edu. He lost the election and our group was devastated. I went to Ahmadu Abubakar and IBB. I wrote a report and I was strongly against the Structural Adjustment Programme introduced by the military government. The idea of the new generation banks came from those reports. Abubakar, from being a permanent secretary, became Minister of Finance.

IBB saw the significance of the advice as well as the short, medium and long term vision that was in the report. That man was a good listener. You could think with him. He is still alive. This probe of NNPC dates back to those periods. You can give the NNPC a bank draft for 120 days and you will still be using that money!
They started touting the idea that intelligent, brilliant and dynamic people like me should be in the Senate and must change Nigeria. The idea gradually started coming into my head. People like Kola Oseni, Alhaji Hamzat, Busurat Alebiosu, Demola Adeniji-Adele, Prince Olusi, who were members of the Primrose Group at that time, started persuading me to go to the Senate. The Primrose Group was piling so much pressure on Alhaji Kola Oseni to persuade me.
The MD of Mobil, Bob Parker, thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted to join politics. I also told the Finance Director, Akinyelure, that I wanted to join politics and use my brain for my country and that I couldn’t continue to be an armchair critic. The two of them could not believe what I said. They said, given my career path in Mobil, if there was any chance of anybody becoming something there, then I would be the one. I stood my ground and said I would give it a try.
I told them that people do it in America and Bob Parker agreed. They said they would give me a leave of absence for four years, during which they would not fill my position. They later said that they would not stop me because it would rub off positively on them if I became successful in politics. They told me to come back and take my position if I found it uninteresting and unchallenging.
So I contested the Lagos West Senatorial district election.

Q:. Why not Lagos Central?

Lagos West was where our weakness was apparent. The political leaders in the Social Democratic Party just assigned Lagos West, which was the most challenging district, to me and said I had the money, personality and the wherewithal. Lagos Central was preparing for me and they wanted me.
In our group, we wanted to help Wahab Dosunmu to stay in Central, so I went to the West. It was a big battle, but I won the nomination for Lagos West. Wahab Dosunmu got nomination for Lagos Central, but they got him disqualified. The battle was then left to Shitta-Bey, Towry-Coker and Bucknor-Akerele. Whatever happened in the primaries is history. It was a crude primary election, but a most transparent one. That was how I got into politics, which nonetheless was an adventure for me.

Q:. What role did you play in the emergence of Michael Otedola of NRC?

I didn’t play any role. I was politically naïve, though a strategist in my own right. Those at the forefront weren’t paying attention and there were a lot of intrigues, which I had never seen before. We could have been flexible and compromised when Sarumi and the late Femi Agbalajobi were disqualified, leaving Yomi Edu. There were two groups then. Baba Kekere (Alhaji Lateef Jakande) would call them “Ase”. I recommended that we should have given them the deputy governorship slot. Democracy is about conflict and conflict resolution. Otedola would not have emerged if each side had yielded. We found out later that some people who didn’t mean well didn’t want Yomi Edu to get there. If they wanted, they would have allowed flexibility and compromise.
The late Prince Adeniyi tried so hard to resolve the impasse up till the night before the election. The impasse was unresolved and the party ended up giving Otedola a chance. I learnt a lot from that experience.