ONE of Nigeria’s wealthiest entrepreneurs and Telecoms mogul, Mike Adenuga Jnr, has been voted the Pan-African Telecom Investor of the Year by the Nigerian Information Telecommunications Technology Awards (NITTA).
Adenuga whose company Globacom made a surprise bid to Telkom in August, proposing to create a pan-African telecoms giant by marrying Telkom’s 50% stake in Vodacom with Nigeria’s cellular operator Globacom was honored in Nigeria yesterday at a glittering ceremony.
Globacom, was named the Rural Access Phone Service Provider of the Year, GSM Operator of the Year and the National Telephone Operator of the Year; making Globacom the highest award winner at the event with five awards.
NITTA, which hosted the event said the businessman had made Globacom the first single telecoms firm in the region to test the 3G network, lay an under sea cable across West Africa to Europe and launch the first nationwide optic fibre transmission network.
Adenuga Jnr owns 100% of Globacom and has interests in real estate, the Equatorial Trust Bank and Conoil. Globacom serves 18-million subscribers, making it Nigeria’s largest operator after MTN. It also runs networks in Benin and Ghana.
The telecom mogul was also honoured by The Financial Times of London in June y featuring in their list of six Nigerians it rated as “Six of the best: Lords of the emerging private sector” stating that they constitute an elite club of business executives who have exploited Nigeria’s emerging private sector opportunities to become super rich in recent years.
On Adenuga, FT said he has traversed the world of oil, banking and now telecoms. “Quite literally, larger than life – at least to newly arrived visitors to Ghana, who face huge billboards carrying the likeness of the founder of Globacom, Mr. Adenuga’s expanding mobile network as they make their way into Accra,” it said.
The newspaper said Adenuga has shrugged off speculation that his wealth is built on relations he enjoyed with Nigeria’s military rulers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
By Samuel Mungadze
