₦airaland Forum

Anambralstson:
Those with interest of Anambra at hearts should take their time and read this, the case between two brothers, Ubah and Cosharis, only a sycophantic Otondo will campaigning for somebody like Ifeanyi Ubah to govern Anambra State

Uba and I, by Maduka

During the (former President Olusegun) Obasanjo administration you received some major waivers. As a result, speculation arose that you played the role of financier for political activities from the background?

People are entitled to their opinions. The truth is that an industrialist like me cannot be completely neglected in the economy. You can get your voice to count by the things you do. Mother Teresa was not the greatest business woman in the world but she influenced politics. Nelson Mandela is not the richest man but he is an icon because of the things he has contributed to humanity.
I play my own role as an industrialist and philanthropist. It is my own way of running a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

There was this controversy that generated a lot of news on the relationship between Ifeanyi Uba and you. Cases of fraud and political manipulations were cited. What really happened?

The case of Capital Oil and Coscharis is a very painful one that frankly, I do not like to discuss. It is like talking about having children with a woman that is barren. People from my area do apprenticeship and build from there; it is part of our social welfare, almost like slavery. We have always been our brother’s keeper and profit is usually not the driving motive.

So this kid brother of mine (Uba) approached me in 2011. I was sitting in my office when my phone rang, and he told me about how some people were trying to take over his business. He said things that were related to me and invited me to see his structures. Of course, I could not turn him down. I went there and I was impressed with what I saw.

Many of the boys from my state mismatch funds. They take short-term funds and put in a long term project by borrowing heavily. That is a way to commit suicide because interest rates can kill you. This was what Uba did and the first advice I gave him was to sell his facility to pay down his loan so that he can start all over again. I took him to different banks trying to get support for him because I could not let his business go down. If you go to Capital Oil’s jetty, you will not believe it is a structure created by a Nigerian but he had borrowed so much. In the process, I got what I did not expect because he did not keep to the commitment that he made to me. I think he (Uba) has a problem and only he knows what led him to do what he did. My concern is that he let me down and messed things up between me and my bankers. We are still on the matter. Talks are going on and he made a public apology at the Senate hearing. We are negotiating with AMCON to take over his business so that he can pay the money back to me.

All the youthful exuberance he displayed were bad ideas people gave to him and he realised later that it was not the right thing to do because you do not hurt people who go beyond reasoning to help you. It creates pain in my heart but the matter will hopefully be resolved. What is important is that I have learnt my lesson.

He has been saying that your motives are politically related such that you seek to stop his political ambition, what is your stance on this?

Ifeanyi as a person is a boy with too many ideas and I think he needs somebody like me to play a role in his life in order to remodel him. Most of the things he does are not obtainable. He has some very weird and crazy ideas and I have told him to his face. We have an adage in Igbo that literally means that if you have not been able to cultivate the small portion of land in front of your house, you cannot be called ‘the king everyone is afraid of’. It will be wrong for anybody to advice Ifeanyi to go into politics with so much debt hanging over his head. He is a brilliant boy that started a business but he has mismanaged his funds. He needs to sort that out first and foremost. He has political connections and I do not care about that. Can you say that because you have political connections, you no longer owe a person you borrowed from? Will any law court say you do not owe when there is “clear evidence that you did not pay? It is not sustainable.

Somebody needs to talk to you directly and say, ‘hey guy, clean your mouth, it is smelling’, and it is only the person who loves you that will say that to you. All the other people will see you carrying shit on your cloth and be calling you a king and saying that you are looking good. That is how some people deceived one king in the Bible and he started dancing naked.

When Ifeanyi told me he wanted to enter politics, I asked him why he would want to do such a thing. I have no ambition whatsoever of going into politics. I am a businessman with no interest in it at all. In fact, you will never see me in any political gathering. I want to be known as a businessman and stay focused there. I want to be respected as an entrepreneur who is much focused. One thing I have always feared is distraction and I do not have a television in my house.

Has there been any move by leaders and village elders to reconcile you both and is there some progress in this direction?

The village elders tried initially but Ifeanyi was not interested because as far as he is concerned, does the village chief know what N10 billion is all about? It is something they cannot conceptualise. The idea is that he is going to pay, that is what he has always said. We talk and his position is that he will keep his promise and that is all.

Coscharis as a conglomerate is not a quoted company on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, what is the reason for the hesitation?

It is all a matter of choice by the owners of the business. It is a model we have chosen to adopt. If you go to the United States of America, I can show you many family businesses that are not publicly quoted. The owners of the business may decide to hold their stock and get family members to manage the business.

Of course, the right thing to do would be to go to the stock market and invite other Nigerians to share from the wealth you have created by buying into the company. We thought about it four years ago and by the time we were preparing to go to the market, it crashed. And we felt it was not appropriate to go at that time because we did not want to throw away the value we have created for nothing.

There are many things that drive people to go to the stock market. The first is security. You can run a business where you think that there will be some political risk for you to run the company and hold the stock on a private equity basis. If you get the company quoted, it becomes Nigeria’s company and if your political opponent or whoever decides to destroy the company, he will be undoing the country. That is why people like us stay away from politics due to the enmity it causes.

The other thing that can drive you to go public is to safeguard your equity because sometimes you need additional money to expand your business. Coscharis has no such problem and we are not desperate. We saw a lot of people packaging emptiness, companies with no history and just speculations to sell on the stock market between 2008 and 2009 and they ripped people off.

A lot of people lost a lot of money and confidence in the Nigerian stock market. So we think it is not the right time to go but ultimately that is what we are going to do. When it will happen is something we do not know yet. Sometimes it is also good to manage things the way we do in a very conservative manner. When you go public, it gives a sense of confidence but sometimes you may have professionals who may not view things the way an owner would.

You cited Coscharis as being a strong company, how are you able to source for funds to run such a large organisation without public input?

We retain a lot of our earnings in the business and looking at our antecedent, we have been able to build unprecedented credit rating within the banking industry. I do not think there are many organisations on our scale that borrows internationally and locally under a negative pledge like we do. No bank led to asks us for collateral to us. Shumitomo Bank of Japan, for example, funds us with $40 to $50 million without collateral.

We are an owner-driven business that retains a lot of our profit and we pay our bills. For us, these are areas we pride ourselves in and because we have unlimited credit, it does not make us crazy enough to spend money like a child in a candy shop.

So, frankly, liquidity is not a problem for us, our challenge is finding profitable businesses that we can nurture. We believe in slow and steady growth and we are not in a hurry to impress any man. We want to play in the first five of any area of business you find us in.

As a pioneer in the automobile industry, why have you not pushed for the local manufacturing of cars?

Locally manufacturing a car is a concept people have but they do not understand what it entails. It is a policy that should be driven by the state. The government must be prepared to industrialise Nigeria by providing power. God, when He decided to create this world, started by saying ‘Let there be light.’ Everything we need to empower this country is available but we need energy because it is an indispensible element of success.

But with major players like you in this sector, can you not push government to promote industrialisation?

Yes, we are approaching them and we have been singing this music. I am not involved in politics, so the leaders of this country must provide the enabling environment for industrial development and growth. Eighteen years ago, we went into Ghana to make investments and till today I have never bought a generator there. Their government did not push us to do it but we saw an opportunity, a service gap and as an entrepreneur, I chose to fill the gap. Money follows service.

In Nigeria today, we have a 160 million workforce that do not have good jobs. In other words, there is a clear competitive economic labour cost. If they provide power, many companies that are running factories in other countries would want to come and take advantage of the competitive manpower so that they can beat their opponent in other climes. This is something we are not taking advantage of.

Lagos State today asks us to provide capital contribution as what they call ‘thirty percent for infrastructural development’. Sometimes, it could be as much as N400 million. I just built an office in Lekki and we paid over N120 million to Lagos for ‘infrastructural development but I am putting the road in that place today. Lagos did not build any road there and we have sunk boreholes.

If you want to do business in Nigeria today, you would have spent 40 percent of your capital that should have gone into production in providing infrastructure. These are hurdles that make businesses not to thrive.

Why should we be focusing on building automobiles and airplane when we have climatic conditions that make farming profitable? We have very fertile ground that we are not developing. Calculate the amount of money we have spent importing rice and wheat. Why can we not grow these things here when nature and everything is in our favour and we have the competitive advantage?

Go to Abuja and you will see banana that is imported from Cameroun. That is madness! The leaders do not see clearly what they need to do. They have mismatched priorities and we need to stop this idea of calling for the manufacture of cars. Let’s manufacture food first.

I set up a motorcycle-roller-chain manufacturing industry in Maza-Maza that we shut down because I had to import power and import the diesel that would run the generator. When we finished, a guys who is going to buy this product is getting it from an importer at 40 percent cheaper than your cost price.

Manufacturing is not a status symbol, it is an economic advantage. My machines are still there and they are not running anymore. I would have gone down to the village if I had continued with that manufacturing. You do not do things to make people happy and we are saying we should start automobile industry.

With your constant reference to the food industry, are you planning to get involved in agriculture?

Yes, we just acquired about 2,700 hectares of land in Anambra State. We plan to cultivate raw materials for the factory we want to set up. It is an agro-allied industry that should create about 3000 jobs when carried out successfully.

People are importing palm oil in this country and it is a shame. Malaysia came to us to take the seedling for palm kernel and today contributes over 25 percent of their gross domestic earnings. In Nigeria, all of us are wearing white shirt and coming to Lagos to look for car manufacturing industry. We are not serious-minded people.

Your business relationship with the Japanese is well, known but we have noticed your recent affinity for the Chinese, why the shift?

I saw clearly that China is a sleeping giant that has woken up. I was a kid when the Japanese started their economic revolution and we used to laugh at them.

I saw the Honda Civic for the first time and we used to mock it because it looked like a box but today they have taken the world by storm. However, the Japanese could not find their confidence as they would produce something and write ‘Made in England’ on their label. Over time, they have become known as the original while Taiwan serve as the fake version of the product, the same thing with China. But give China another 10 years and you will be amazed. China saw an advantage in Africa very early and the next world economic miracle is going to happen in Africa obviously.

The West has reached their climax and their economy is not growing by anything more than two percent but the African economy is growing at about seven percent. Imagine this happening for the next ten years. Everybody is having Africa’s strategic programme in mind.

If Nigeria’s economy keeps growing the way it is, by 2020 our economy will be bigger than South Africa and by 2050, if we maintain the same growth, we would have the twelfth richest country in the world.

Once electric power is put in place, you will see unprecedented economic revolution taking place in this country. Look at what happened in the telecommunications sector. The capacity is there. Other countries are not giving birth to children the way we are. Africa is still producing babies like dogs.

If we fix this country, people like me would be multi-billionaires because I have sachet water to sell to 300 million people. Even if I sell at N10, multiply it by 300 million people and you will know what I am sitting on. This is a goldmine, the Chinese know this and are planning for it.

It will happen in your generation. I am sixty-four and in another six years, I will be seventy. If I am asking for 100 years that would be like asking for third-term but people like you can still get to benefit from it in your sixties or seventies.

We have seen the gradual dominance of China in the African economic space, are they better allies than the United States and Europe?

It all depends. You cannot say they are better allies because the biggest minus the Chinese have is the one of trust. No matter how big you are, you cannot access credit from China. They believe in cash transactions. As at today, whenever you want to do business with them, the Chinese want you to pay a deposit before the product is produced after which they will demand a cash balance. It is a policy that over a period of time, they will mature and change.

Their government can give you some lease with stiff conditions but fellow business partners will not. China’s government may grant you some concession as long as you allow their citizen to come and work on the project. That is not even wrong because they are struggling to provide jobs for more than one billion people and these are things we do not do in Nigeria. We are busy trying to be our neighbours’ big brother.

We are fighting up and down for Rwanda, Botswana and South Africa and we will never ask for anything in return. It is not how to live! Our leaders have not done well in those areas. We should not reach out without having a foothold in those economies because we help to liberate them and we spend our taxpayers’ money and sacrifice our lives for ‘good brother thing’ and come back. This is wrong and the Americans will tell you that there is no free lunch because they have interests to protect.

You just talked about our issue with security; do you think Boko Haram should be granted amnesty?

Their actions are illegal. Why are they asking for amnesty? If they drop their guns and stop killing people, government will stop going after them. Their leaders who are doing these things should leave the country because they have not done well. If you kill people with impunity, you should be brought to justice.

Boko Haram is a man-made problem that is not different from the former militants in the Niger Delta. It is a political tool for some people. It is a problem for politicians and they will solve it because they are destroying the northern economy.

https://thenationonlineng.net/uba-and-i-by-maduka/

XANDERBOY85:
WTF can’t they landscape that premises for crying out loud! It looks so local and unappealing the way it is!

ANSMEDIA:
More updates from the national police games in Anambra

Anambralstson:
All is set for the 12th Biennial Nigeria Police Games opening ceremony.

Dignitaries are arriving, Podium filled to the brim.

Stay tuned for updates.

#Anambra2020

Lalasticlala

XANDERBOY85:
You're missing the point! I don't think the issue of their morality or views on race is the question here....rather what Ansmedia is trying to say is that Anambra state is relatively peaceful enough and has the business opportunities and environment to be able to attract foreigners to work and live! The state has to start somewhere! It's the Chinese today....tomorrow, the Americans and Europeans!

GerogeI:
Foreigners arriving your domain means there is a good business atmosphere and potentials are being actualised.
This is a very good thing.

Stop seeing the world through the eyes of colour and racisim.

There is no successful city in the world today that is not multicultural, even including the LGBTs. Close your door to some people and you close it to some demand and supply.

igbobabe02:
The people posting aren’t even Igbo. Ignore them! They just want to create animosity within our tribe.

Rocksvibes234:
Wow Anambra State now have court of appeal

Anambra State Court Of Appeal, Awka Divisions

ANSMEDIA:
Random pictures of DMGS Onitsha