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Ken Olisa: The most powerful black man in Britain

He's the Queen’s escort in London who locked horns with John Bercow and has a library named after him at Cambridge - not bad for a boy who grew up without a loo in Nottingham


Ken Olisa, the Queen's Lord Lieutenant of London, has officially been named the most powerful black person in Britain. Photo: Heathcliff O'Malley


Bryony Gordon
By Bryony Gordon

12:01AM GMT 23 Nov 2015


Today Ken Olisa is officially named as the most powerful black person in Britain, not that any of the commuters on the 8.10am from Hampton Wick would know it.



Unassuming and usually dressed in the commuter’s favoured uniform of suit and raincoat, the only thing that hints at his influence is his trademark bow tie – he owns more than 100.


Otherwise, there is little to suggest that Mr Olisa is, according to the annual Powerlist – which names the most influential black people in Britain, more important than Sir Lenny Henry or Mo Farah or the Oscar-winning film director Steve McQueen. How could anyone know that this quiet man from Nottingham wields more power than Lewis Hamilton or Baroness Lawrence?


But wield power Ken Olisa does. The 63-year old was the first British born black man to serve on the board of a public company (Reuters), has his own merchant bank (Restoration Partners), and a library named after him at his Cambridge alma mater (Fitzwilliam).


He is a keen philanthropist (the library came after a £2 million donation), a former governor of the Peabody Trust, a chair of not one but two charities (Thames Reach, which deals with the homeless, and Shaw Trust, which helps the disabled), and is on the board of the Institute of Directors.



And as if all of that weren’t enough, in April, he was made Lord Lieutenant of London, appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. The title gives him an office in Whitehall, a staff of 90, and puts him in charge of all visits made by the royal family within the city – with him even standing in for them on occasion.

So he escorted the Queen to the Home Office last week, and had the miserable task of accompanying the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to the Spectre premiere last month, along with Prince Harry. The next morning he was up early to spend yet more time with the Duchess – this time, on a charity visit to Islington Town Hall.

“I do a lot of calming down in the moments before their arrival,” he explains. “People tend to get very wound up and stressed.” Not so Olisa, who is as cool as the proverbial cucumber, even when wearing the heavy military-style uniform of the Lord Lieutenant.



"He hates the idea of quotas, thinks that they humiliate the people that they are intended to help"


All of this is a very long way indeed from his humble beginnings in Nottingham, where he was brought up in straitened circumstances by his single mother (he never knew his father, who left them to return to Nigeria when he was young).

The loo was outside, and the bath tub too. 'I was probably one of the very few black people in the entire district, one of the very few black people that anyone had ever seen for that matter.” How did that feel?

“Well it just felt like being a seven year old boy, really. There were trees to be climbed and dams to be built. I remember someone asking me how I went to the toilet, but I suspect a lot of people get asked those questions irrespective of what they look like.”

He always refused to be defined by the colour of his skin. At school his headmaster taught him that everyone was equal, once handing all the children caviar on biscuits while playing Mozart in the background – it was this kind of upbringing that taught him the only limits were in his own head.

He got a scholarship to Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences and fell in love with fellow student Julia, whom he has been married to for 40 years and with whom he has two daughters and six grandchildren.

Julia is white but when I ask if they have ever experienced any prejudice his answer is a simple 'no’. “It was Cambridge, quite enlightened. But we lived in America as well [he went on to work for IBM there] and to the best of my knowledge we didn’t experience much there either.”


"He thinks we have always been a multicultural society - from the 25,000 Caribbean soldiers who volunteered to fight for us during the Second World War to the Polish pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain"


He hates the idea of quotas, thinks that they humiliate the people that they are intended to help. “Because what happens is, a black man walks in to a meeting and everyone thinks he got his job because he’s a black man, and not because he is any good.” Has he encountered that attitude? “Oh yes, because we all tend to stereotype. When a black bloke comes in people make assumptions, and he either does or doesn’t challenge those assumptions.”

Olisa chose to challenge those assumptions – assumptions that I would call racist but Olisa wouldn’t because he point blank refuses to play the victim. “I’ve met with lots of prejudice over time, but it’s mild prejudice, not the Klu Klux Klan. I got into a lift at Fortnum and Mason a couple of years ago, and I am looking like this,” he says, pointing at his suit.

“I probably had a raincoat on, was carrying a briefcase, and she stepped back and tucked her handbag towards her. I just thought 'oh dear, poor lady. What on earth is going through this woman’s mind? What a sad life she must live!’ So the answer is yes, [I have encountered prejudice] but one mustn’t over play that, one mustn’t behave like a victim. But I’ll spare you that rant this morning.”



Please don’t, I say. Does he think we live in a culture of victimhood?

“Well I think it’s in the interests of a lot of people to get others to feel downtrodden, so that they can claim to come and raise them back up again.” Disaffected minorities seem now to be a majority, but Olisa sees no reason for why this should be.

“This Powerlist, it shows that black people can do everything. There can no longer be an argument that if you can’t get on because you are black. There are lots of other reasons you can’t get on – you’re incompetent, you can’t speak properly, you can’t spell, you don’t get to work on time. But it’s not because you are black.”

Yet he detests unfairness, something that became apparent after a clash with the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, back in 2011. Olisa had been appointed to the board of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the MPs watchdog, after the expenses scandal.

The only time Ken Olisa has felt victimised was on the board of IPSA, where he conflicted with John Bercow, then Speaker of the House of Commons.

This, he says, is the only time he has felt victimised. “They [the MPs] appeared to hate us [the board] viscerally. We were shouted at from the very first meeting. It was absolutely dreadful. It didn’t matter what we proposed, because there was very little interest in rational argument. MPs were saying that they suddenly had to do things like sleep in their offices, which was just nonsense.”

He stepped down when Bercow announced that the board had to reapply for their jobs, with the Speaker being accused of rigging the appointments in revenge for the crackdown on what MPs could claim.

“I only met him [Bercow] at the end and he said 'I think you have done a creditable job under very difficult circumstances, not helped, if I may say so Mr Olisa, by some of the remarks you have made in the newspapers which demonstrate your lack of understanding of parliamentary process’. I have to say I was uncharacteristically speechless, as all I’d done was to say that they didn’t have to sleep in their offices.”

He pauses and starts to laugh. “But none of this was to do with me being black, so that’s the good news.”

Does he think we will ever have a black prime minister? Or a black member of the royal family?

“There is no reason why there shouldn’t be. There’s a Lord Lieutenant who isn’t white now.” But he thinks we have always been a multicultural society - from the 25,000 Caribbean soldiers who volunteered to fight for us during the Second World War to the Polish pilots who took part in the Battle of Britain - and he says we would do well to remember that – especially in light of the Paris attacks and the recent furore over refugees.

Adjusting his bow tie, the most British of symbols on the most British of men, he says: “We are a philanthropic nation, and we are lucky to be one, lucky that people from overseas have given their lives for us. We squander that at our peril.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/12008327/Meet-Ken-Olisa-The-most-powerful-black-man-in-Britain.html

VirginFinder:
@raumdeuter
Wailers cannot be the ones telling us who is Yoruba and who is not.
Saraki stopped Gbaja from emerging as Speaker since he is Yoruba.
Should Yorubas now lose both Senate Presidency and Speakership?

I hope you greedy bastards lose both. Not surprised you are happy to think of having both positions. Selfish oloriburukus.

ibedun:
Madam puff puff face is nothing but a criminal. She has contributed in no small measure to the poverty our land.

But she just landed 2 new high profile jobs simultaneously while your sorry broke ass is still holed up in ijebu ijesha licking the arse of APC.

^^^^^
Photo is of an ongoing cement road work in Aba rural area

Home / Headlines / Abia completes first road work with cement technology
Abia completes first road work with cement technology
By Daily Post Staff on September 20, 2015@dailypostngr

The Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu, has successfully completed a road construction work using cement technology, which is also known as rigid pavement technology in road construction.

The governor is experimenting with the technology on three roads and has recorded a feat with the completion of the 400 metres, ENUC Road, off Udeagbala in Aba.

Governor Ikpeazu is pioneering this technology in Nigeria in road construction with the construction of three roads in Aba – ENUC Road, Omeni Drive, by Aba Owerri Road and Owerri Road, off Okigwe Road – and says the technology is more durable and more sustainable and will be extended to other roads in Abia in the days ahead.

He said the construction engineers were currently using a mixture of crush rock-based materials and other items to achieve a thickness fill and compaction to the level of 300mm and then cast with concrete reinforcement with 8mm to 10mm high tensil ( mash of wires), reinforcement bars over the stabilized base course before treatment with prime coat and asphaltic concrete.

The governor disclosed that though the cost of this technology is higher than the conventional construction methods, he had chosen the experiment as a measure to strengthen the load bearing capacity of some roads in Abia and boost the strength and quality of the finished work, adding that roads constructed with this technology had a sustainability guarantee of ten to twenty years.

The Governor further stated that the cement technology will address the challenges raised by the soil examination conducted on the three roads, noting that the process involves soil stabilization which is a process of introducing materials that have properties which the routine construction materials or naturally occurring materials lack to further strengthen pavement and improve the load bearing capacity of the roads.

While disclosing that the cement technology is used in the construction of airport run-ways, tarmac and places that carry high load bearing capacity machines and equipment, the Governor said it was a good solution for achieving sustainable roads in Nigeria, as it was better and of a higher value than the convention method of using only asphalt.

http://dailypost.ng/2015/09/20/abia-completes-first-road-work-with-cement-technology/

Hahaha! I just have to give it to Yoruba when it comes to killing people, using their flesh for rituals and eating them as meat. They are the 21st century cannibals of Africa.
Similarly, Igbos take the crown for international drug trafficking that is perpetrated by Nigerians
While northern Muslims (especially Fulani and Hausa and Kanuri) take the crown for regional, national and international terrorism concerning Nigeria

The rest of the crimes are shared equally by all 250 ethnic groups, dependent on their population dynamics.

The good news is that when it comes to making Nigeria proud globally, only the Igbo and Yoruba are in reckoning. The rest 248 ethnic groups are lost in transit.

The good news is that when it comes to making Nigeria proud globally, only the Igbo and Yoruba are in reckoning. The rest 248 ethnic groups are lost in transit.

Hahaha! I have to give it to Yoruba when it comes to killing people, using their flesh for rituals and eating them as meat. They are the 21st century cannibals of Africa.
Similarly, Igbos take the crown for international drug trafficking that is perpetrated by Nigerians
While northern Muslims (especially Fulani and Hausa and Kanuri) take the crown for regional, national and international terrorism concerning Nigeria

The rest of the crimes are shared equally by all 250 ethnic groups, dependent on their population dynamics.

Mogidi:
Didn't know anything about him previously, this is quite an eye opener.

Yes, the man is a bit reclusive, at least to the media

pet4ril:
Dats also includes pet4ril family too. They started from somewhere and am also somewhere now starting my own.. thank u Lord

Dream it, work it, achieve it. Nothing is impossible

Mogidi:
Good to know the husband is himself an intellectual.

Lol. What kind of husband did you think she would be married to? He is a surgeon. It's just that her area, Economics, made her world-popular, while the man is holed up in the hospital dissecting people

Mogidi:
Her intelligence rubbed off on her kids, family of professors.

In part, yes. But her husband is a well-known American surgeon. So they both genetically (so to say) contributed to the family's academic success.

This is a reason I support like-marrying-like. It may result in a lot of argument (imagine 2 lawyers as couples ) but pays off in the end.

This is a very incisive rebuttal of the jaundiced Yoruba press. Thanks, OP.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had all her degrees from Ivy League universities. Similarly, all her kids have their first, second or third degrees from Ivy League universities. They all came out among the top 10% in their classes.

Please see list of ivy league colleges here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League

See how much US Ivy League university first degree graduates can earn, compared to graduates of other US universities.

A few other non-Ivy, but nonetheless strong unis are Stanford and Caltech

So how much does a Nigerian from the best Nigerian university earn over ten years? Let's remove stealing and corruption from the equation.

Ilekeh:
Body looks good for her age

Fat and durty Ilekeh admiring another fat and (probably durty) Yoruba sista

Shofisticated red rusty roof zone with shofisticated abobaku

WIZGUY69:


if these are all iboe youths can boast of as the most innovative (my ass) tribe in the world.
then they must be all mr.IBU

Mr Red roof zone. Ba wo ni?

Some asked you what you are doing trolling in an Igbo thread. Abi you dey vex say people wey you starve and gave only 20 pounds regardless of how much they had in their bank accounts have now overtaken you?

Xpaz:
heheheehe.
at the bolded.
my brother.
I will advice you to run away from this thread before you suffocate yourself to death in here.

Lol. This is a stinger

Wow! Everyday the rump of the chicken (SW) keeps being blown open by the wind

BuddahMonk:
Even BAT is located in Ibadan making Yorubas smoke like Chimney


Ogun State is home to the highest number of ritual killers and missiing persons in Nigeria

Aresa aka Babapupa of old is a complete dunce

This is the truth

Igbos control 90% of the companies in Igboland
Yorubas control 20% of the companies in Yorubaland
The rest 80% are controlled by Igbos (30%), non-Igbo Nigerians (20%) and foreigners (30%)

DikeOha882:
.

Yoruba are too ugly abeg. They all should be give plastic surgery or cross bred with the much finer Igbos

Ayekotoo:
Multinationals companies are present in all the regions of Nigeria inform of depots or distribution centres but not factories. Most of their factories in nigeria operate from Lagos, Ibadan or Ogun

Most also have factories in either Aba or Onitsha or Enugu. Google will help you

Ayekotoo:
May and baker has no factory in aba but depot.

But May and Baker is a multinational yes? Do they have a depot on Oshogbo or Ogbomosho?

aresa:
Their HQ in Nigeria are all in Lagos. We're not talking about their village liaison offices.

You can say anything meaningful only if the hqs are in Oshogbo, Ondo, Ekiti, Oyo, Abeokuta and Ife. Lagos is no mans land populated and owned by Igbos up to 50%

Ayekotoo:
Didn't you read what I typed? Leyland automobile manufacturing has its Nigerian headquarters stationed in Ibadan. More so, May and Baker has her depots in Aba not factory

Which one is the issue now? That there is no multinational presence in SE or that the hqs of multinationals are not in SE?

Who did not understand the other person in this argument? Please be sincere

NB is not a multinational and there's nothing special about selling beer and getting you and your people drunk...

Aresa (Yoruba)

You are a proper agutan. NB PLc is hq-ed in Lagos. I hope they make you drunk too

Environer (Igbo)

Where is NB HQed? In iboland or dutchland?


Unintelligent village rat. Get lost abeg...

Aresa (Yoruba)

See this mumu. You said NB is making us drunk in the East. Then I reminded you that the same NB Has its hq in Lagos. Does that make you drunk? You are a complete tabula rasa.

Environer (Igbo)


https://www.nairaland.com/2569276/why-re-multinational-companys-avoiding/3
https://www.nairaland.com/2569276/why-re-multinational-companys-avoiding/4

aresa:



Where is NB HQed? In iboland or dutchland?


Unintelligent village rat. Get lost abeg...

See this mumu. You said NB is making us drunk in the East. Then I reminded you that the same NB Has its hq in Lagos. Does that make you drunk? You are a complete tabula rasa.