International Thief Thief: Was legendary Fela right about Moshood Kashimawo Abiola?

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was no secret that there was no love lost between the legendary Afrobeats originator, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and the late Nigerian presidential candidate and unparalleled philanthropist, late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola.

The details of their feud will be saved for another story on another day. For now, let’s focus on one outcome of the animosity between them.

Also read: Shocking £360,000 robbery of UK/Nigerian “Big Boy” reveals intricate inside job (Videos)

In 1979, Fela, a popular musician and activist, recorded “ITT” (International Thief Thief) as one of his songs, following the disbandment of Afrika 70, paving the way for Egypt 80.

The song starts with heavy instrumentals, characteristic of most of his compositions, along with a refrain:

Refrain: International Tif Tif! (3x)
Fela: I. T. T.!
Refrain: International Tif Tif!
Fela: International Thief!
Refrain: International Tif Tif!
Fela: Oh!
Refrain: International Tif Tif! (2x)
Fela: I. T. T.!
Refrain: International Tif Tif!
Fela: International Rogue!

And it continues for over 11 minutes with a heavy dose of interlude before Fela launches into scathing political lyrics.

A true Abami Eda, few musicians could pull off an 11-minute interlude and still captivate the audience until the end.

Undoubtedly, Fela’s ability to fuse activism into his music and make it both thought-provoking and enjoyable, then and now, is something worthy of academic study.

Thanks in part to him, Afrobeats was born and has gone on to influence numerous established and emerging artists worldwide.

On the other hand, Chief MKO Abiola was a highly regarded politician. His name was widely recognised across Nigeria, so much so that the federal government declared a public holiday in his honour for his role in the country’s return to democracy after 33 years of military rule.

Both Fela and Abiola hailed from the illustrious Yoruba tribe, and coincidentally, from the same Abeokuta in Ogun State.

In fact, before federal government recognition, it was former state governor Otunba Gbenga Daniel who first declared June 12, now recognised as Democracy Day, a work-free day as far back as 2004.

Many, of course, wonder why the two never saw eye to eye in their lifetimes. But as mentioned earlier, that discussion is best saved for another time.

Contrary to the negative connotations associated with the abbreviation “ITT”, thanks to Fela, the full name of the firm is International Telephone & Telegraph, established in 1920 by brothers Sosthenes and Hernand Behn with the goal of building the first worldwide system of interconnected telephone lines.

So, how does all this connect?

Well, Fela’s “ITT”, from the LP released in 1997, was a highly critical personal attack on his two biggest adversaries: former Nigerian military president General Olusegun Obasanjo, who also hails from Abeokuta and former chief executive of ITT Nigeria Limited, the late Chief Abiola.

Fela: Well, well. Na true I wan talk again o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: Na true I wan talk again o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: I dey lie, make XXX punish me o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: Make Ifa dey punish me o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: Edumare punish me o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: Make land punish me o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: I read am for book o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: I some myself o
Refrain: Well, well
Fela: Welli, welli o
Refrain & Fela: Well, well heeeeeee, well, well
Fela: Welli, welli o
Refrain & Fela: Well, well heeeeeee, well, well

Listen to the rest of the song below:

So, how accurate were Fela’s allegations of fraud against the late politician and philanthropist Chief MKO Abiola? Was his substantial wealth truly the result of fraud or mismanagement through ITT Nigeria Limited’s contracts with the Nigerian government?

Abiola married his first wife, the late Alhaja Simbiat Abiola, in Scotland, where they also had their first two children, Kola and Deji. These early family milestones marked the beginning of a journey that would see Abiola become one of Nigeria’s most influential figures.

Following his final examinations in Glasgow, Abiola returned to Nigeria in March 1966, a country on the brink of civil war.

Despite the turbulent political climate, he began his professional career with the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital.

Abiola’s career took a significant turn when he joined Pfizer, a major pharmaceutical company. His tenure at Pfizer allowed him to hone his skills in finance and management, setting the stage for the next pivotal chapter of his life.

In August 1968, Abiola joined the International Telephones and Telecommunications (ITT) as its Finance Controller. This decision was a turning point, propelling him into the international business arena and establishing his reputation as a formidable business leader. At ITT, Abiola’s financial acumen and leadership skills flourished, leading to his rapid rise within the company.

Abiola’s success at ITT not only elevated his professional standing but also had a profound impact on Nigeria’s telecommunications industry. His innovative approach and strategic vision were instrumental in expanding ITT’s operations, making significant contributions to Nigeria’s technological advancement.

Throughout his career, Abiola remained deeply committed to his roots, using his influence and resources to support various philanthropic initiatives. His dedication to improving the lives of Nigerians earned him widespread respect and admiration.

His status as a millionaire or billionaire was consistently associated with ITT, and Nigerians have long held him responsible for the poor state of telephone services at the time.

In his biography titled Legend of Our Time: The Thoughts of MKO Abiola, the late politician documented his journey to wealth. In fact, Abiola’s life seemed to be that of the most misunderstood individual to have graced our land. The 592 page book, published by Tanus Communications in 1993 with ISBN 9783182412, 9789783182417, was by Yemi Ogunbiyi and Chidi Amuta.

Please review his account of his life journey as published in Chapter 36 of the book with an open mind, and draw your own conclusions on whether Fela’s accusations against MKO Abiola were true or not.

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Now, the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) system has dual leadership: that is, the general manager and managing director on one hand and the controller on the other, both of whom have direct reporting channels to headquarters. We had in Nigeria at the time a general manager who did not quite understand what was going on and if he understood, he did not do much about it.

The general manager spent more time in Lagos Boat Club than in the office. He had no marketing leadership or any form of managerial leadership to give to his team and people under him. A long-standing debt of UK£3.5 million owed by the Army for three and a half years had been the subject of more than six volumes of inter-company memoranda between the headquarters in London and New York. A delegation from London consisting of twelve top brass of ITT in Africa and the Middle East had been scheduled to meet the Army Signals Inspector, Lt.-Col. Murtala Muhammed on April 4, 1969.

Naturally, I joined the delegation. Eleven of us waited in the Inspector of Signals’ waiting room from 7:30 in the morning till 3:30 in the afternoon when he left the office. The Inspector of Signals did not even say hello. We repeated the second and the third day with the same result.

The United Kingdom delegation went back in disarray and frustration. The issue of the debt with the Army became urgent because on April 9, 1969, the first cheque I signed as controller of ITT Nigeria Limited was returned unpaid with the inscription “refer to drawer.” It was for UK£500. Up till that stage in my life, I had never had to meet a bank manager to ask for an overdraft.

I took all the files on the Army transaction home and stayed up all night to get a proper handle on the situation. At 5:30 in the morning, I proceeded to the office of the Inspector of Signals. I arrived at seven o’clock on the dot. Lt. Col. Muhammed met me standing at his office at 7:29 am. He did not respond to my greeting but instead attempted to brush me aside. I refused to be brushed aside. The exchange of hot words ensued and continued for about half an hour during which time the Chief of Army Staff, then titled Chief of Staff, Army, Brigadier Hassan Usman Katsina, arrived at the scene.

He called the two of us into his office to question whether I knew who Lt. Col. Muhammed was and I answered by asking whether Lt. Col. Muhammed knew who I was.

That really infuriated Lt. Col. Muhammed. But I made it clear to the Chief of Army Staff that I would like to reserve all statements until the arrival of the then Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Alhaji Yusuf Gobir of blessed memory, who was quickly sent for by Brigadier Katsina. I then told the Chief of Staff, Army that Lt. Col. Muhammed had prevented the government from fulfilling government obligations to my company by wrongfully refusing to sign the voucher for more than three years.

Lt. Col. Muhammed’s reply was that my company, ITT Nigeria Limited, made a 20 percent profit on the transaction, to which I quickly replied that if it were only 20 percent ITT made on the supply of sophisticated army communication system, the Army still owed 11 percent of the amount on the invoice because the interest of 31.5 percent was being taken off the company by bankers. Alhaji Gobir admitted that the vouchers were unsettled for a long time, due to the refusal of the inspector of signals to authorize payment.

After a prolonged argument, it was decided that the money should be paid to us. And I collected the cheque before the close of business that day. But while waiting for the cheque, I had phoned to tell the general manager of the development. On getting back to the office, to my greatest surprise, I found all the staff in a merry-making mood.

I proceeded immediately to London with the cheque and to report the affairs in the office and I insisted I could only carry on in the company if I became the managing director and at the same time was given no less than 50 percent of the shareholding of the business. The managing director aspect of the request was granted immediately, but the shareholding part of it, I was told, required top policy consideration which would be resolved within six months.

I made it clear to ITT that to be able to give my best, I needed to work in an atmosphere and environment in which I would see myself as a landlord and not a tenant. I told them that the economic relationship that should exist between free peoples must not be like that of master and servant, but one based on mutual reliance and confidence. And that I saw no future in any business relationship I may establish with ITT if it did not guarantee the type of sense of belonging I was asking through partnership and control of the enterprise.

To those I spoke with in the headquarters, my sentiments were totally new ideas and, realistically, bearing in mind their own position in the organization, a position based on master and servant to the organization, there was great restriction on the amount of support I could expect from them. What I was asking from the corporation was a status that has not been given to anyone else in the half-century history of the organization.

The issue was of such a fundamental nature that it did not allow for the usual type of negotiation like the payment of extra bonus, commission, and so on. The bottom line, in fact, was that I was requesting that at the determination of the profit for any year, half of that profit should be left behind in recognition of my contributions to making the whole profit. No more, no less.

The whole approach was predicated on the fact that I had such a contribution to make to the success of the business that needed to be specially recognized and rewarded over and above the bread and butter issues of salaries, bonuses, and commissions. I gave an example with the difference between my approach to the collection of the UK£3.5 million from the Army and those previously adopted by both the headquarters and the Nigerian management of the corporation to the same issue and the degree of success I attained. Anyway, I agreed to leave the matters to them for decision within six months.

While I accepted to be the managing director of the company, I refused to take the big house that came along with it in the low-density area of Apapa. Instead, I preferred to stay in my Surulere residence at No. 7, Shofidiya Close.

There was a lot of anxiety by ITT that I should move to what they called a “respectable” area in order to facilitate my interaction with and entertainment of VIPs and to be near the company of those they believed would help the progress of the organization through membership of elite clubs and so on. Thus, when they thought deeply about my objection to the Apapa house, they offered alternatives also at Victoria Island and another at Ikoyi. But as far as I was concerned, the answer was the same. I saw no reason why the performance of a particular office should take me out of the house I had built for myself. The pressure to move was such that I finally had to tell them that my father, having never been to school, would have problems locating my residence in such low-density areas and that in his old age, I should not add additional aggravation to his state, especially since he had to see me on a regular basis being his first child. I emphasized that doing that would be frowned upon by the customs of our people and therefore it should never be done. In further analysis, I concluded, if after six months in considering the issue of partnership, I became such a failure in the management of the enterprise, the basis of the increased status would have fallen to pieces automatically.

If living in a particular location would have enhanced my chances of success, I would require no persuasion to move to it. So, most reluctantly, I was allowed to continue living in my house. My appointment as managing director was subsequently announced.

Within the six months, and by the grace of God, a lot of improvement was recorded in every aspect of the operations of the company. The staff strength went up to 72, and we moved into a bigger office. The finances of the company were very healthy, and our competitive position in the telecommunications industry improved beyond recognition.

At a meeting called at the headquarters at the expiration of the six months, every other issue was discussed except the issue of partnership. At the end of it, I offered my resignation as managing director of ITT, giving the normal three months’ notice. The whole request I had made was treated as a joke, which I did not find very funny.

I returned to plan my exit from ITT and formed Radio Communications (Nigeria) Limited (RCN). I got an initial contract through the tender process, of course, in the Ministry of Defence and through the encouragement of Col. Murtala Muhammed, who had become a close friend following the earlier misunderstanding.

It took two and a half months to finalize the first RCN contract, which came to about UK£3 million. But somehow, someone leaked the UK£3 million contract to ITT at UK£30 million and with only two days to go before the expiration of my resignation notice, ITT suddenly became interested in my new company and wanted a partnership with it. They reached out at the 11th hour to offer me the partnership I had asked for, provided, they said, I should consider giving them the same kind of partnership in RCN.

After some negotiation, therefore, ITT sold me 49 percent of the shares (42 percent for certain technical and corporate reasons) and retained 51 percent for purposes of “apparent control.”

Shortly after that, the negotiations for their coming into partnership in RCN broke down and for some reason, the negotiation was never reopened. RCN remained in 100 percent ownership of Chief MKO Abiola.

The growth of ITT, however, continued by leaps and bounds. So did the growth of RCN. We became the only telecommunications company controlled and run by Nigerians in Nigeria. We thus had greater access to the customer and greater understanding of their requirements.

My position in the two companies would become meaningless unless I encouraged other Nigerian men and women to join the running of the affairs of the organization. The value of the shares in the company increased astronomically as progress was made. I had the support of most Nigerians in both the civil service and the government, and in the services, and I ensured prompt deliveries and efficient after-sales services – the cornerstone of our success.

In early 1975, ITT had a breakthrough in the national telecommunications award to provide telephone exchanges in 38 locations in some parts of Nigeria. The Eastern part of the country was awarded to another company mainly for technical reasons. That was the period of port congestion, and to facilitate the entry of equipment, the Ministry of Communications got us the permission to fly in telecommunications equipment. It involved 120 flights to accomplish the task in the allocated time.

Simultaneously with the telephone exchange contract was the award of telephone exchange buildings contracts to local contractors. We were exclusively responsible for manufacturing and installing the equipment but were not party to the construction of telephone buildings. Apart from the fact that we made available the size of equipment room required, it was the duty of the architects, structural, and electrical consultants of the Posts and Telecommunications and local contractors to make the buildings available. It is sad to say that ten of those buildings are not yet ready for the installation of equipment as of this morning that I am talking to you.

So many reasons have been adduced, depending on whom you talk to. The P&T have different reasons from those given by consultants. And the contractors have an entirely different set of reasons. As an informed observer, what I think has happened is not that the P&T failed to award those contracts to the right caliber of contractors or that it was due to bad consultants. The failure to construct those telephone buildings was due to the non-availability of land on which to start the buildings at all. For example, in Sokoto, the contractor was chased out on three occasions by irate landowners or occupiers. The inadequacy of the land space made available in some places to the P&T was another factor, as in Akure where the contractor struck a huge pool of water two feet from the surface.

We knew all along that piecemeal awards always lead to delay and waste. Some operational problems encountered by the contractors included, but were not limited to, the irregularity of payments as they fell due. This would have been avoided if a turnkey approach had been adopted “ab initio.” A much more responsible company would have been saddled with the responsibility of total performance in each case.

The reason, of course, why that was not done was the fact that the critical importance of contractors involved in the installation of the telephone exchanges was very badly underplayed.

There was also the Nigerian attitude which, unfortunately, is still prevalent, that if you make a contract a turnkey contract, you would end up putting more money in the pockets of a few people. That, of course, is nonsense since the authority to award the turnkey contracts also confers authority to appoint the contractors, leaving the turnkey contractors to run the coordination for which they would naturally be paid. What is now realized too late, is that the system of achieving the same level of coordination through consultants is a lot more costly and very indecisive. It is costly in the sense that you have to pay a series of expatriate consultants exorbitant fees totally disproportionate to the various works they are “consulting” on. It is indecisive also in the sense that for their own reasons, those contractors disagree among themselves and another set of consultants have to be employed to iron out these differences.

To make matters worse, the turnkey switching contracts of 1976, which followed, still excluded construction from the telephone exchange installations, with the result that the buildings which were 60 in number and were supposed to be completed in 1977 are still to commence today, June 12, 1983.

Not only does this lead to a colossal increase in the cost of installation (it is inconceivable that the cost of installation in 1973 could be applicable for 1983/84 installation), it exposes the equipment to long storage in circumstances in which deterioration automatically sets in. There was no plan at the beginning to put the equipment in warehouses for seven years, a period for which some of them have been there. The revenue loss caused by the delay in completing the exchanges to the P&T on top of the additional cost of long-term warehouse charges and insurance is more than 200 million naira so far.

The cost to the economy of the loss of project realization must be a multiple of that sum. I regret to say that as far as the provision of telephone services is concerned, not much progress has been made since 1976.

The issue of the oil glut is an all-embracing reason being advanced for most of these things. Relative to our level of development, however, all I can say is that a dialogue with the telecommunications companies would have presented a solution. It is a general saying in our industry that a company has nothing to be proud of until the exchanges are functioning and providing funds for the P & T.

We would wish that more telephone exchanges would be bought and installed to provide service to customers everywhere, and vital social, political, economic links made with every community in the country and the world community as a whole.

These were problems in Nigeria caused by the delay in our telecommunications development, which has robbed us of the pride we deserve and are entitled to by efforts we have put into training more than 1,500 Nigerians in the four training schools we set up for that purpose, and the efforts we have made in the establishment of first-class maintenance facilities. It is a great pity indeed. An even greater pity was the fact that what looked like a profitable business at the beginning has turned out into an embarrassing loss because of our inability to complete the job on schedule, even years behind schedule, due to factors beyond our control.

It need not be emphasized that no contractor knows where he stands until he has successfully completed the job and handed it over to the customer. We are suffering the same type of delay, hopefully not to the same extent, on the transmission contract which was negotiated in the last days of the military administration and awarded in the present administration. We expect all impediments to be removed and delays limited to around two years.

Enough has been said to indicate that all is not well with ITT, but the gravest disappointment that I have is the fact that having persuaded ITT to establish a factory here as far back as 1978 and having done the feasibility study and having got those studies approved by the Federal Ministry of Information, and having acquired a large plot of land from the Ogun State government on the Lagos-Abeokuta Road, and having committed ITT to 63 million naira initial investment for 2,400 people in two shifts in employment, and having secured the approval of the Minister of Communications that the factory should be built, we were still held up for five years because P&T could not tell us what type of equipment to make or commit themselves to the volume they would buy over the initial five-year period.

Since the P&T is the sole purchaser of telecommunications equipment by law (others purchase under license from them), it would be foolhardy for anyone to start manufacturing without proper assurance of patronage and acceptance of the products by the P&T.

What pains true Nigerians is that those things we import can be made here in Nigeria in manners that would suit our environment and at the same time generate employment for our technicians, technologists, and engineers without the headache of the importation of raw materials we hear so much about these days. That would have saved a lot of foreign exchange and provided a profitable avenue for the utilization of local resources.

On a personal note, it would enable me to attain my ultimate objective of forging a partnership through the highly technological factory with the ITT corporation, for I believe that once a factory has started, it makes it difficult for any company to pull out of the country.

With the long, rather interminable delay in the realization of the factory project, I had to bring about the second phase of the partnership agreement by which I made sure that ten percent of the shares of ITT donated by myself were divided among the generality of the staff in a formula that takes into account the length of service and the level of individual personnel. There is a program to increase the number of shares in the trust fund. But the principle behind it all is the establishment of a sense of belonging among all levels of staff in the company.

At the height of growth of ITT, we had 3,000 staff in late 1979. Owing to the long delay in completing buildings and other infrastructure for the commencement of installation and recent problems in the payment of bills by the P&T, we had to cut back severely to about half that number. But ITT still remains the largest telecommunications company in Nigeria. I am proud to say that my personal shareholding in the company is higher than that of ITT. That aspect means so much to people. In the present circumstance, the shares are not worth much, but by the grace of God, better times are ahead.

In addition to just giving employment, ITT has provided free medical services since 1974 to all employees and their immediate relations, as well as generous housing and transport allowances long before the government provided the same. All this is in addition to accident and retirement insurance. We give study leave with pay without introducing any bond with the staff. We run a virile football club that came second in division one in the Lagos state football league. We are involved in various areas—handball, cricket, athletics. We take part in seminars and present papers in our field, and give a lot of advice in the field of telecommunications, much of which is turned down, but which we will continue to give, and generally play a leadership role in the telecommunications industry in this part of the world.

In my many years of association with ITT, within which I grew to become the executive vice-president of the corporation for Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, the most difficult part of my career was getting ITT to leave South Africa in 1975. Although a most painful decision because the South African market is four times the size of the market of the rest of black Africa, I was able to persuade ITT to abandon the telecommunications market in South Africa.

Most of my colleagues did not feel strongly about the issue of South Africa. So it became my duty to point out the implications of ITT’s continued trading with South Africa and my country, and I was pleased it was dealt with in only one meeting: the discussion lasted less than two hours, within which I was able to get ITT to understand that the future lies not in South Africa. That is the only contribution I claim to have made in the determination of ITT policy in the world.

May I take the opportunity to touch on the international interference of ITT in the affairs of other countries. While it is natural for some of our colleagues who have problems to discuss them in their various countries, it has never been my experience to adopt a confrontational attitude towards any authority. We put forward our own point of view usually to the P&T or the Ministry of Communications. It is only in the most exceptional circumstances that ITT ever sought to bring its relationship with the P&T to powers higher than the Ministry of Communications at any time.

To my knowledge and belief, most of what has been written about ITT has been unduly sensationalized, thereby giving the corporation an incorrect image. I must say here that those of us in the corporation have not seen adverse consequences from the publicity we have received over the last ten years. On the contrary, sales have been ongoing, and so have incomes despite the pressure. This is due to the fact that ITT operates in so many countries—93 in all—and sells 7,013 types of products grouped in many product groups all over the world. Our success is that depression does not affect everything and everyone at the same time and in the same way. So, we end up doing a little better than all the adversities put together.

Rtn. Victor Ojelabi

Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.