Ejiofor Alike
he Chairman of Aiteo Group, Benedict Peters, is not new to awards and recognition. He has won several awards, including the Marquee Award for Global Business Excellence at the AfricaUS Leadership Awards dinner hosted by the African Energy Association in 2014; and the Leadership Newspaper’s ‘CEO of the Year 2014’ award for championing Nigerian content and bolstering the capacity of Nigerians to manage the country’s oil and gas assets.
Peters has also won the prestigious Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Awards in Washington, DC, in 2015, for driving “Economic Empowerment” in Nigeria. However, since 2015 after his company’s audacious acquisition of the Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29, reputedly Shell’s biggest onshore producing asset in Africa following an open and competitive world-class bid, the company’s success in the management and operatorship of the plum asset has attracted negative narratives designed to diminish the achievements of Peters and his company.
But Peters and Aiteo have remained undaunted and within one year, the company grew the production of OML 29 from 23,000 barrels per day (bpd) to a record 90,000 bpd, to the chagrin of naysayers, who could not come to terms with the fact that a Nigerian company py could develop p sufficient technical capacitypy capacity and financial capabilitypy capability to operatep operate and manageg manage such bigg big acreage,g acreage, which was ppreviouslyy previously under the operatorship of a global oil ggiant,giant, Shell.
Apartp Apart from his accomplishmentsp accomplishments in business, spanningpg spanning about three decades, Peters’ pphilanthropypy philanthropy is said to be legendarygy legendary as manifested in Aiteo’s unparalleledp unparalleled Corporate Social Responsibilitypy Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
Aiteo Groupp Group has added value to its host communities in the areas of pprovidingg providing social amenities and local capacitypy capacity development,pdevelopment, and a largeg large chunk of the over 10,000 direct and indirect jjobs jobs created byy by the ggroupp group ggoing going to the host communities. The jjobs jobs were created byy by the company’spy company’s subsidiaries, includingg including Aiteo Explorationp Exploration and Production, Aiteo Gas, Aiteo Power, Aiteo Tradingg Trading and Aiteo Marketing.
Peters also founded the Josephp Joseph Agrog Agro Foundation in Julyy July 2014 to improvep improve the lives of rural farmers by pprovidingg providing the tools that can ensure their economic success. The foundation boosts employmentpy employment initiatives to improvep improve Nigeria’sg Nigeria’s school system.y system. It also pprovides provides a number of awareness pprogrammesg programmes to ppromote promote responsible water consumption by farmers.
As a de-tribalised Nigerian, his company also views the entire country as its host community and this informed the generous donations to the Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency to help tackle the challenges facing the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
His interest in Nigerian and African soccer manifested recently with Aiteo’s adoption of football sponsorship with the signing of a five-year partnership agreement with the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) worth an estimated N2.5bn in April 2017. By the terms of the partnership, Aiteo emerged as the NFF’s official Optimum Partner that funds the salaries of the coaches of the Super Eagles.
Sports analysts believe this singular gesture led to Nigeria’s emergence as the first African nation to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in Russia because the gesture helped to stabilise Nigerian football through prompt payment of salaries of expatriate coaches.
Before Aiteo’s intervention, the issue of nonpayment of salaries of coaches was hampering the progress of Nigerian football. As the sports industry was celebrating this feat, Aiteo signed a fresh sponsorship deal worth N2.5bn in June 2017 to underwrite the cost of the Federation Cup, now renamed Aiteo Cup.
In October 2017, Aiteo’s CSR initiatives went beyond the shores of Nigeria, when the company sealed a partnership agreement with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to sponsorp sponsor the Annual CAF