BY FUNSHO AROGUNDADE
Energy tycoon, Jubril Adewale Tinubu, affects the candour of a General and the passion of a poet as he leads a revolutionary phase of Nigeria’s upstream evolution.
Tinubu —described as ‘The King of African Oil’ by Forbes magazine and one of the top ten CEOs in the world by AskMen— is a name that requires no introduction.
For the consummate hard-working Group Chief Executive, Oando Plc, he is building a billion-dollar company in Africa, delivering on the tough things, diversifying and leading his company into a new era of success and sustainability.
As Oando has evolved, so too has the landscape in which it operates. With the headwinds of international oil politics, home-grown challenges like crude theft with the attendant negative effect on the revenue accruable to the nation coupled with most of the five IOCs operating in the country are divesting in some of the upstream assets, there is a bright ray of hope emerged on the mottled landscape of the Nigerian economy. And it is visible to all.
Gradually, Tinubu —who has turned dynamism and a boots-on-the-ground leadership style into an art form— is restoring hopes in the Nigerian upstream petroleum sector with his concatenation of innovative intervention and ingenuity in promoting vibrancy and capacity utilisation in the industry.
Tinubu and Oando’s growth has been nothing but organic. Oando is like a huge book with many chapters and Tinubu feels incredibly grateful to play a significant part in the story. Before he turned 30, he had already built for himself a reputation as a market leader in Nigeria’s emerging oil and gas sector at the time.
In 1994, Tinubu co-founded Ocean and Oil Services Limited —he teamed up with Omamofe Boyo and Onajite Okoloko— originally as a trading company with extensive operations exporting Nigerian petroleum products.
As the head honcho of the company, the trained Corporate Lawyer has turned that small oil trading company into Africa’s leading indigenous energy solutions provider listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the first African company to have a cross-border inward listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
“Where we started from, the first opportunity we had was delivering fuel to companies who were going offshore to drill as offshore drilling had just started in Nigeria then. The only asset we had was an old 1945 World War II tanker–The Carolina, which was really slow, doing five miles and if the tide was against it, it would go backwards. But we got things delivered on time in an environment where things were always late. Being able to display first-world perspectives on certain delivery techniques got us a lot of clients,” Tinubu once told Forbes.
From that humble beginning, Tinubu has gone to carve for himself an enviable position as one of Nigeria’s most venerable dealmakers and inserted himself atop the pecking order in the league of major Nigeria’s oil industry. Evidence abounds.
In 2000, the Company’s evolution began during the Federal Government’s privatization exercise as Tinubu led Ocean and Oil’s successful bid for a stake in Unipetrol Plc. Two years later, he led the largest-ever acquisition of a quoted Nigerian company, with Unipetrol’s purchase of Agip Nigeria. The company was rebranded to Oando Plc in 2003.
In 2019, Oando completes full divestment of its residual interest in OVH Energy (owner and operator of the Oando branded retail stations).
In 2022, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) acquired OVH Energy’s downstream assets leading to the evolution of Oando branded retail stations to the NNPC brand.
The highflying tycoon’s magnum opus is the latest ENI/AGIP acquisition: the deal —valued at a whopping $783 million.
The acquisition of 100% of the shareholding interest in the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) from the Italian energy company, ENI, was incubated last year September and the deal was successfully hatched last August.
Thus, many industry analysts and admirers consider it ludicrous to typify the oil tycoon as a favoured nephew of Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu. To his inner circle, they will not hesitate to tell you about Tinubu’s prodigious traits. His Uncle might be the leader of the country but there is no iota of evidence that the Oando boss is receiving special favours.
For the younger Tinubu, he has been very bullish in diversifying Oando’s operations as he establishes footprints along the value chain. He prioritizes every investment opportunity. He loves to dream big and follow it till he actualises it. His astute enterprise acumen have allowed him to navigate the complexities of the Nigerian, nay African energy market and foster collaborations with leading international companies.
That small oil trading company he built then is about to celebrate three decades of business and now looking at a future into the 2020s and beyond.
Successfully making it to 30 years in the volatile energy sector is a huge achievement, and one that honors the legacy of Tinubu—and his buddies: Boyo and Okoloko.