About Alake of Egba’s Fairy Tale 75th Birthday
That the respected monarch, Oba Michael Adedotun Aremu Gbadebo, the Alake of Egba, knows how to throw a party to recall and review many years after, is akin to saying a deer went for a salt lick, or a goat stubbornly goes up a hill. It is innate. And he never misses the slightest opportunity to grandly fete people. The 75th birthday party of the chairman of Oando Group, recently, provided another auspicious occasion to spend a fraction, yet humongous, of his mammoth dosh. Expectedly, it had all the trappings of a high society party where good money was harnessed for the joy of the celebrant. Even as a king, Alake, still doesn’t compromise his accustomed life of patrician comfort. However, in the presence of friends, family and select associates, Alake made a grand entry into the Septuagenarian club. He didn’t enter alone, literally. He ensured that all his children and grandchildren and their spouses were ferried from across the world to celebrate his 75th birthday with him. Indeed, it is not every day that septuagenarians like him look around and see all their fruits joyfully gathered in one place to celebrate. There were guests from all walks of life to celebrate with the monarch. Everything was in effusive supply. And the souvenirs were equally top-notch. We have been regaled and left wide-eyed with the surfeit of choice cognacs and champagnes which remnants alone would conveniently form a puddle and the number of colourful guests that made it a momentous and memorable day for the unassuming birthday boy. Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey, a living legend was on the bandstand. His artistry has not lost all its original brightness, nor does it appear less than the genius of his major rival and friend in youth, King Sunny Ade, KSA. Obey, like KSA, radiates inexplicable talent even in his twilight. This is why the glory of his genius and musical talent may never obscure. Prior to his coronation as the Alake of Egba Land in 2005, HRM had a successful career in the Nigerian Army culminating in his appointment as the Principal Staff Officer to the Chief of Staff,
For the second time in his illustrious career as a businessman and boardroom guru, Hakeem Belo-Osagie, was forced to resign his chairmanship of a company he helped grow into a formidable institution worth its weight in gold. It was supposed to be a routine resignation without the attendant media blitz, the norm in a traditional company. However, Hakeem Belo-Osagie’s resignation as chairman of the board of beleaguered telecommunications company, Etisalat, was a different ball game. Etisalat had been in trouble over a loan of $1.2 billion gotten from a consortium of 13 Nigerian banks which went bad. Several attempts by the banks to renegotiate and rollover the payment failed spectacularly. By mid-June, when the banks had decided on a foreclosure, Etisalat’s major shareholder, Emirates Telecommunications Group, with 40 per cent stake, pulled out Supreme Headquarters from January 1984 to September 1985. He was also awarded military honours such as the Forces Service Star and the Defence Service Medal. His Highness obtained
of the deal: first cataclysmic sign of doom. A flurry of activity followed, placing the company on the frontburner of major national news item and all eyes on its Nigerian face, Keem as he is popularly known. The end didn’t look too far away again. Then came the clincher; Bello-Osagie, whose Emerging Markets Telecommunications Services controlled 15 percent of the company, announced his resignation, saying the decision followed “the approval of a restructuring plan for the telecommunications firm.” An air of eerie déjà vu still pervades Keem’s resignation as the last surviving shareholder in the embattled mobile operator because it had happened before.
Fresh from the United Kingdom where he had schooled at the University of Cambridge, bagging a law degree; a master’s in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from the Harvard Business School, Keem returned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1969. He graduated from the Staff College of the Nigerian Armed Forces in 1979 and has served on the Boards of several
home ready to take on the world. Those were the good days when a graduate could have a pick of any employment that suited their fantasies and aspirations. Coupled with the fact that he was trained abroad, has two master’s degrees including the almighty MBA from the Ivy League institution, Harvard University and he is the son of a renowned professor of gynaecology, Keem had the world at his feet.
By 1986, he felt sufficiently acquitted to leave the comfort zone of government job and he set up CTIC, which became a leading energy consulting firm. Business boomed and he began to spread his tentacles to other sectors of the economy. A few businesses tanked, he got his fingers burnt but he learnt invaluable lessons that would come in handy in the years ahead. In 1998, Keem was appointed chairman of the board of directors of the United Bank for Africa. His aggressive growth of UBA helped to create companies including Ocean and Oil Services Limited. He currently serves on the Boards of Global Haulage Resources Limited and Dolphin Travels Limited.
a financial powerhouse that also became one of Africa’s most respected banks. Keem was the quintessential banker schooled in a capitalist society where risk-taking is seen as a necessary part of business and is not actually illegal to run a bank, or any other company, to the ground. No wonder, in March 2004, he was steamrolled out of office in the wake of allegations made by the Central Bank of Nigeria that the UBA had been involved in unlicenced foreign exchange trading. As a result, he was blacklisted by the CBN but no criminal charges were filed against him. That effectively ended his banking career. He was removed from the blacklist in 2010. It took a while but he bounced back. Keem would resurface as the promoter of Etisalat in Nigeria in 2008. Etisalat commenced operations with about two million subscribers. By 2011, in spite of the