What have Africa’s business guru Dr. Mike Adenuga and Africa’s first ever Nobel Prize in Literature winner in common with the beautiful game of football? A lot. Come on and let’s connect the dots, starting with Adenuga’s early years as a football-loving kid.
As a kid, Mike’s sister Otunba Yetunde Adegbola remembers her immediate junior brother as “a very good footballer” who was nicknamed “Goalkeeper” because he was good in the post. In those days, Mama Juliana Oyindamola Adenuga groomed her children in business by making them sell goat feeds after school. She used to supply ogi (pap) to St. Luke’s School in Ibadan which explains why she made her children to hawk goat feeds, a by-product of pap. Mrs. Adegbola explains: “When you sieve pap, there is this remnant or waste from the corn that is usually used in feeding goats. Our mother made us to hawk this chaff after school. I would go and hawk mine, Mike would be playing football. After selling mine, I would come and take his and help him to sell.”
So good a goalkeeper was Mike that he was even keeping goal for his Olubadan House (also called Blue House) at Ibadan Grammar School. Apart from soccer, Mike also loved swimming and another game called “Walk and Hit.” In this game, once you score, then you will be the goalkeeper. He loved scoring so that he would go back as goalkeeper, so said a classmate of his.
Back from America in the late ’70s and venturing into importation of fast-moving products, Adenuga had lost interest in football and couldn’t understand why Nigerians are so passionate and even ready to die for football. One man who exemplifies that passion, that soccermania, is Adenuga’s close friend and his No.1 clearing and forwarding agent Rafiu Ladipo, the legendary President of the Nigerian Football Supporters’ Club. Ladipo was a witness to Adenuga’s early years as a young, fast-rising businessman and a big-time importer. One day in the ’90s, Adenuga seriously asked Ladipo: “Can you leave football? I am giving you a Jeep plus N10 million if you can leave football and face your business.” Ten million naira in those days was a fortune. Something inside him was urging him to take the money and the SUV and forget football but Ladipo courageously told Adenuga: “No, Oga, let me stay with football.” Even though Adenuga was angry, deep down, Ladipo won his respect as a man of conviction, who will not give up his faith for money. From that point on, Adenuga was inspired to become committed to the development of football which he saw as the great passion of Nigerians. Ladipo says of Adenuga: “He is putting billions into running football because he believes in Nigeria. He has seen for himself that here is something Nigerians love, here is something that can unite Nigerians, something that makes Nigerians happy. ‘So, let me put my money there.’ He has seen football as something that can lift the youths from the poverty level to a celebrated level.”
This is where Soyinka comes into the story. Not much is known about football and Soyinka’s childhood. But in an interview available on YouTube, Soyinka disclosed that as a student in Leeds University, UK, soccer used to be his favorite sports until one day when he gave it up in the bleak midwinter. “I was actually in the third eleven of Leeds University,” Soyinka narrates. “It was in winter and we were on the field. I used to play on the left. And on this particular day, the ball simply didn’t come my way. So I was freezing.”
He had a jalopy he used in transporting the whole team to the field of play. “Maybe that was why they allowed me to be on the team,” he continues. “On that day the ball wasn’t sent to me. Maybe I wasn’t playing well. At half-time, I went to the locker room and I looked out on the field and it was still cold. I just abandoned everybody and drove the car to the dormitory.”
Ever since, his love affair with soccer had ended. Soccer was no longer a game he enjoyed. What he hated most was that soccer had turned into an individualistic, selfish game. “It was like every player was waiting for the moment to score a goal, then do an honour lap, and do a dance routine, and do a somersault and beat themselves on the chest…The dance routine became more interesting than the soccer itself. So I stopped going to football matches.”
On becoming Adenuga’s friend two decades ago, Soyinka once told his rich friend Adenuga how he wished he could spend more on the arts than he is spending on football. “I have sat him down once to say: ‘Listen, you have the money and the enthusiasm, but we have the ideas. Let’s sit down and work together. And let’s do more for the arts.’”
Soyinka later told me: “How I wish he would do more for the arts. I feel envious about the amount Globacom is committing to sports. I wish I could get his attention sufficiently to do even half for the arts.”
On his part, Adenuga proved that he is a friend that listens. In response to Soyinka’s appeal, Adenuga through his company Glo has been investing money in the literary arts. Just as he has done for music, theatre and sports, making musicians, actors/actresses, comedians and sportsmen Glo Ambassadors and paying them. Just as he sponsors annually traditional festivals like Ojude Oba, Ofala Festival and others. Just as he sponsors events like “An Evening with Wole Soyinka” in both Ghana and Nigeria. Just as he sponsors the biennial Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature which rewards the winning author with $20,000. Just as the Glo-sponsored CNN’s “African Voices Changemakers” programme featured Wole Soyinka recently in a 30 minutes interview as he turned 90.
In such literary fora, renowned authors, poets, novelist and literary scholars from around Africa and the world at large, engaged in thought-provoking discussions and readings. For emerging writers, it’s an opportunity to showcase their talents and connect with established literary figures. Through these initiatives, Adenuga and Glo have not only demonstrated their commitment to the arts but have also played a crucial role in shaping the future of Nigerian and African literature. By fostering a love of reading and writing, they are inspiring a new generation of literary talents.
Let me end this piece with Mike Adenuga’s tribute to his 90-year-old famous friend Wole Soyinka in one of the Glo-sponsored literary forums: “Like the Colossus that he is, Professor Wole Soyinka has towered above the global cultural and literary milieu to emerge as the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is not only one of the world’s greatest writers of all times, he is also Africa’s most credible advocate of culture, due process, democracy and social justice.”
They may not be playing or watching football anymore, but in their respective fields, Soyinka and Adenuga are two great men having a ball in life, one as an extraordinary writer, the other as entrepreneur extraordinaire.
