Mike Adenuga is an extremely rich Nigerian businessman and entrepreneur who is considered to be one of the wealthiest persons in Africa.
Some charts put him in the second position on the wealthiest African people.
Aliko Dangote holds the throne as the richest man in Africa but Adenuga is getting closer to him with his net worth approximated at $9 billion.
He became rich through oil business and telecom operating but he also received negative publicity due to many accusations of money laundering, tax evasion and more.
His wealth is counted in billions of dollars and he is one of the most popular people of the worldwide scene as of currently.
Early years
He was born as Michael Adeniyi Agbolade Ishola Adenuga Jr, on April 29, 1953, in the capital city of Nigerian Oyo state called Ibadan.
He says that he will always keep his hometown in a special place in his heart since he feels like many people don’t think he is a proud Nigerian.
The story of her birth says that he was such a big baby at birth that he was nicknamed accordingly. This has never been confirmed by Michael, but some of his friends used to share this information.
He was brought up in an educated and successful family with his father Oloye Michael being a teacher in the school and his mother Omoba Juliana being a skilled businesswoman.
She was also of royal descent and got married at the age of 17. He says that he is very thankful for everything his parents provided for him, especially education.
He has an older brother named Demola. Their father later died in a car accident in 1993. After becoming rich he re-buried his father in 2005 and transferred his body to the most expensive coffin in the world.
He said that he wanted to honor him and everything he did for him as much as possible, but he wasn’t really able to do that before.
Mike and his brother Demola were both huge and this is something that they laugh at nowadays and they don’t feel bad when someone mentions that.
Michael went to Ibadan Grammar School, after which he enrolled in the Comprehensive High School, located in Aiyetoro, where he received his Higher School Certificate, more commonly referred to as HSC. He worked hard and his parents taught him the true values of life.
Although his parents weren’t poor they demanded that he works through his time in college. They wanted him to gain the discipline he needed to succeed later in life.
He worked and supported himself all through studying as a taxi driver until his graduation from the Northwestern Oklahoma State University and later on from the Pace University, located in New York. There he gained his Business Administration degrees.
His dream was to become a successful businessman and entrepreneur and to have one of the tallest and impressive buildings in Nigeria, similar to Cocoa House. He later built his Mike Adenuga Towers to fulfill the dream.
Career development
In 1989, Mike applied for an oil drilling license which he gained in 1990. This was his best movie ever and it made him a very rich man. He said that he could have never hoped to run into something like this.
He was very lucky because only one year later his company named Consolidated Oil found oil in the Southwestern Ondo State, and it was found in a very large amount.
He soon entered the world of banking and in 1989 he asked for a banking license. He founded his own merchant bank and his next project was to open his Commercial Bank. He was very interested in the economy and started to get into businesses.
He later sold them to a known Nigerian commercial bank. He said that it wasn’t the thing for him, after all, and that he decided it would be better if he let someone else take the wheel.
In 1999 he was given a conditional GSM license which was revoked but was later issued to him in 2003.
In 2000, he acquired a controlling stake in a petroleum company called NOLCHEM and was ready to improve his business status with even bigger portfolio.
The company was in a very poor state when he bought them and it was considered to be dysfunctional.
However, he turned it to a successful company in a few years. He was very happy when he saw the company spike quickly.
After receiving a lot of money he decided to invest in telecom and has founded his own telecom company which he named Globacom.
Globacom started spreading intensively and soon became a huge competitor of MTN Group telecom company which was the leading company in that field at that time.
Adenuga’s mobile phone network named Globacom currently holds the 3rd position on the list of the biggest Nigerian operators.
The network has over 40 million subscribers. He was very happy about this and said that he will always work on expanding his business.
From 2008 it started spreading through Benin, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire spreading even wider through Western Africa.
His success in telecommunication and the fact that his mobile phone business grew rapidly is in the fact that Adenuga offered his subscribers a cheap option for mobile phone calls.
He did not offer deals Per- minute but rather of Per- Second and although many experts claimed his business will fail it grew to one of the biggest companies in Nigeria.
But he did not stop there but he offered many new telecom services to the Nigerians and he was even called the pioneer of innovative services. He delivered services like Blackberry subscription and Vehicle Tracking which soon became very used.
Nigerians also like him and his company because it originates from Nigeria while most of the other telecom companies are foreign.
One of the biggest investments he made was worth $1 billion and took place in 2010. He invested in the project named Glo 1 Submarine Cable which is an undersea cable system going from Nigeria to Europe.
In 2007 he received a reward at the 1st African Telecoms Awards in the category African Entrepreneur of The Year.
In 2009, he was put under loop due to the accusations delivered by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission which claimed that Adenuga is laundering money.
He was forced to live the country (to avoid jail) so he relocated to London. He lived there until the regime changed and Umaru Musa Yar’Adua took the throne and pardoned him.
In 2015, Adenuga bought Comium Côte d’Ivoire telecom company for a huge amount of $600 million.
In the summer of 2016, the media revealed that Adenuga owes a lot of money to other oil companies such as Total, a big French oil company.
The debt rose to $150 million through two of his companies: his companies ConOil and Bellbop.
In 2012 he received a huge honor by getting an ordain of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger given to him by the Nigerian government.
Adenuga also owns a tribal chieftaincy of the Ijebu clan.
Not many people know that the money he invested in oil came through his first million he made when he was only 26 years old. He earned it by selling lace and drink distribution.
Adenuga is referred to and nicknamed as “The Bull”. Although he is born under the sign of the Taurus, his nickname is connected to his character.
His associates, business partners, employees, and admirers say that his main characteristic is his stubbornness and the fact that he never runs away from a good fight and that he also resolves problems as fast as he can.
He has launched his Mike Adenuga Foundation which is involved in matters of developing education, health care, and rural growth.
His foundation has a program named the Mike Adenuga Fellowship program which is used to award undergraduate with scholarships, researchers with funds and to give gifted Africans the chance to help develop their country to better.
His biography was written by Awoyinfa and Dimgba Igwe under the title “Mike Adenuga: African Business Guru” and is launched on Mike’s 60th birthday.
Personal life
It is known that Mike Adenuga is married to a woman named Titi Joyce and that they have many children together.
Titi is often called Tizzle Girl and is Adenugas second wife. He was previously married to a woman named Folake.
They have two children named Sade and Niyi but there are other children in the family: Tune, Eniola, Adetutu, Bella and Michael.
Titi comes of the Itsekiri tribe and has graduated from the Obafemi Awolowo University in the Osun State.
Titi and Michael live with his family at the Banana Island, located in the Lagos state of Nigeria. They have a good stabile marriage and they try to keep out there lives from the media.
He also owns a beautiful mansion in Ibadan and it is called ‘The Gold Digger’s Place’.
His son Eniola, who works with him at ConOil, was involved in a controversy in 2016. It was all over the media and it made Mike angry although he knew that he will support his son no matter what.
He was in a relationship with his girlfriend Ogun Maggie from 2013 but decided to end it although she was pregnant.
Eniola was not interested in marriage but he was more than willing to take financial care of her and their baby which he did.
He paid her prenatal care and her travel to London where she gave birth to their daughter. It means that he gave them all the oportunities to have a quality life.
After birth, Maggie forbade him to see his daughter and spend time with her. He continued the financial support hoping that it would change their mind but it only made them force him to marriage which he refused.
Although Eniola wasn’t granted with complete custody he was given the time for seeing his daughter every fortnight. It was a shocking rkuling for
Quick summary
Full name: Michael Adeniyi Agbolade Ishola Adenuga Jr.
Date of birth: April 29, 1953
Birthplace: Ibadan, Oyo, Nigeria, Africa
Age: 66
Profession: businessman
Height: NA
Weight: NA
Net Worth: $11 billion