The moment Chief Dr Ifeanyi Ubah died last July, I knew I had to tell Nigerians about the real Ifeanyi Patrick Ubah – the uncommon businessman and politician, as distinct from the drab garb media hype politics and misunderstanding had forced on him.
Yes, many who never knew Ubah or anything about him preached about his character and business morals. Their justification? Oh, Nigerian politicians and businessmen and women have little honour, and because Ubah was both a politician and a businessman, he was twice guilty. What about the lessons the youths could learn from this primary school teacher’s son, who was rightly convinced that his pathway through life laid in the market place… and so delivered on that singular promise that became a billionaire before he hit his 25th birthday? What about the inspirations to be drawn from the life of Ifeanyi Ubah, a much-moneyed man who after becoming a billionaire returned to school and passed his secondary school certificate examination, then contested elections and became a Senator of the Federal Republic? And somewhere along the line, he detoured to the Faculty of Law of an Abuja University to study for a degree in Law? Yes, he did!
Is there nothing wholesome to be copied from the life of this Ifeanyi Ubah who, though rich and influential enough to walk with kings, also remained an unchanged ordinary old time pal to his friends from long ago and from more modest circumstances and eras?
Talk about honour and Ifeanyi Ubah would tell you that the letter “h” in his version of Ubah, stood for honour. So, why the controversies? I asked him point blank during his altercation with an auto dealer of national renown, and he told me that he would not play dead, lie prostrate on the floor for anyone to use him for a foot mat. He said he had immense respect for those who extended the hand of friendship to him along the way of life, just as he had extended the same to others, but that he would not be bullied by anyone. He knew who he was and if he could not stand up for himself, who would?
Ifeanyi Ubah blazed into the Nigerian public space in 2011 when an unprecedented media splash celebrated his 40th birthday. Yet, how many of the people who tagged him narcissistic knew that Ifeanyi Ubah did not plan that media outing but his friends did – just to celebrate a friend that had touched their lives? He was not even in Nigeria then but overseas. When he returned, he was convinced to say a big thank you by throwing a party to thank those friends; he did throw that party, but he also threw the doors open so that anybody but anybody could attend.
Yes, that party was almost unprecedented in sumptuousness but if there was any trait that could have been tied to Ubah, it was that he did all of his things to the highest level. Would he build a house? Oh, it must stand out. Ifeanyi was innovative; he did things in new but astonishing ways.
Ifeanyi Patrick Ubah would have been 53 on September 3rd this year. Many knew him as the Oil Man who owned Capital Oil, but Ubah had notched up huge successes in various business fields and in various countries that he was truly legendary. To put this in true perspective, bear in mind that he was born in 1971. By age 20 in 1991, he was already a topflight international businessman with verifiable track records in many countries as he was already flying out tires from Nigeria to Mali and Ghana, for instance. The real spirit of Ifeanyi Ubah, the one that made him different, showed this early in his life; he would often identify ways to do things differently. While other major players in the tire sector were fighting for local turf, Ubah identified markets overseas. By 1991, when the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) was sapping life out of Nigeria, the 18-year old Ubah had a business relationship with tire manufacturers across the globe. From there he ventured into auto spare parts sales. It was after he had deeply rooted his business that he bought his first car. Yet, when he died many wrote that he was showy.
Ifeanyi Ubah
From Ghana Ubah moved to DR Congo in 1991, became the President of the Nigerian Community in DR Congo the same year, a post he held till 2002. I met Ubah in Kinshasa, DR Congo capital city by the year 2000. Prof Sylvester Monye and I, travelling with late Ambassador Raph Uwechue, President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Minister for Conflict Resolution in Africa, was on a peace mission there, and a solicitous Ubah remained close to meet our needs.
At 21, Ubah had built his first house at Nnewi, got married the same year, and was doing business across Europe and USA. In 1993, he attended the Las Vegas (USA) Auto Show at Las Vegas Convention Centre to learn a few things about the car industry – as he had a big dream for the Nigerian auto industry. But Innoson Motors beat him to it. He frequented the biggest Auto Mechanical workshop in Frankfurt, Germany, the globe’s biggest automotive to arm himself for his entry into the auto-manufacturing business. That dream died with him.
From 1993, Ubah invested in South Africa, partnering with the Anglo America Corporation and acquired his first house there at the age of 24 or 25. That same time, he had opened a Dubai office. From Congo the restless Ubah made business forays into and Luanda, Angola’s Capital city, was buying fish from Windhoek, Namibia, can beer from South Africa Brewery and freighted them by chartered flight to Congo and from Congo to Agola’s twin cities of Lunda and Luanda. He played the same game in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, crossing from Lubumbashi in Congo, to Tanzania. Ubah had Mining concessions in the diamond and gold rich Kisangani province of Congo.
He returned to Nigeria in 2001 after Congo’s President Laurent Kabilla was assassinated and dreamt up the Capital Oil idea. By 2015 Capital Oil was relevant enough to unilaterally break an embargo on petrol sales the Independent Oil Marketers had ordered against President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. Barr Afam Iluno and I drafted that proposal to Ifeanyi; to break the protests if he had the means, and ordinary Nigerians would love him. He had the seventh biggest petrol storage tank farm in Nigeria – in Lagos, Kano, Suleija, near Abuja (he once gave me a tour of the Lagos tank farm, built on reclaimed marshy land) and perhaps in Nnewi and owned hundreds of petrol tankers. Instead of the 30, 000 litres tankers that Ifeanyi met, his tankers carried 60,000 litres of petrol Ubah was an innovator. He used novel and creative means to do things differently.
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Thank you, Mr. Daniel Elombah for strengthening the bond between Ubah and I. Elombah had recommended me to head Ubah’s media team in his failed 2014 Anambra state governorship election bid. I turned it down because I was (and still remain) Chief James Onanefe Ibori’s spokesman – but I aided his efforts from the sidelines. Through Barr Afam Iluno (now US-based) Ubah offered me the Managing Director post of his newspaper, The Authority; I turned it down for the same reason. So, Ubah engaged the team I had supplied him of Madu Onuoha, late Joe Nwankwo and Chuks Akwuna), through Iluno again, to remain close for political relevance, after his failed governorship bid – to manage the newspaper. When Ubah was birthing his NGO, Transformation Ambassadors Of Nigeria (TAM) I sat through all the meetings with the likes of his lawyer, Mazi Afam Osigwe, now the Nigerian Bar Association President. When I wanted to avoid the final meeting, he postponed it that Sunday from 2pm to 8pm.
When the DSS detained him, Ubah sent a message; that I should use the things he sent me to write and sensitize the world that he was being persecuted unjustly. I did but refused to sign it because I couldn’t be Media Assistants to him and Ibori at the same time or the speculation could spread that I had abandoned Ibori – and Ibori was in London by then.
Yet, one day, Ubah addressed over 20 persons, saying, “I want to be very clear. I never met any of you before, except Tony Eluemunor – who is a member of my family”. He accepted my stand and respected the boundaries of our friendship.
Please, forget his two private jets, the ten or more crude oil freighter ships he owned, his stately mansions, his Rolls Royce and Maserati cars, when Ubah died, Nigeria lost an incredible son, a sports enthusiast, a man of vision, of boundless energy (who knew neither day nor night but would place his head on a table or a seat’s arm rest when tired and simply dose off for 10 or 20 minutes while holding meetings in his office and then wake up and continue the meeting), an inspired innovator. The ex-Super Eagles stars and Nollywood lost a pillar of support, the common people lost a listening ear and helping hand (his house was always thickly parked with common folks like Nkwo Nnewi (Nnewi’s major market), yes, Ubah loved to be with the people, often just sitting and discussing with his drivers, photographers, tailors, about past experiences, eating with his recent acquaintances and old friends. Let a wrist watch or phone seller come in then and everyone present would receive a gift. But against powerful enemies, he was a formidable adversary.
I had still not found the right moment to write about Ubah when within the week, a former governor and South- South leader, sent me a link to an internet discussion thread; it was about Peter Obi and the Obidients. That was when I saw the light; the late Senator Ifenayi Patrick Ubah actually blazed the trail for grassroots political movement of a different kind in Nigeria with TAN.
TAN, Transformation Ambassadors was conceived in the heart of one; Dr. Ifeanyi Ubah. TAN embraced strategic media marketing and political advocacy like nothing before it in Nigeria, re-writing the rules of engagement and furthering the limits of what was thought feasible. In the Electronic Media, it aired over 170 television jingles over 123,000 times. Over 68 Radio jingles (including in Igbo, Yoruba, Pidgin and Hausa).
TAN went into a working relationship with key Television houses in the country: NTA, AIT, Channels and Silverbird, as well as signing an MOU with National Orientation Agency (NOA). It had about 75 critical interventions in the print media in terms of interviews, feature pieces and opinion editorial pieces. TAN attracted over 5,000 news stories-ranging from sports to other critical national issues.
Yet, where TAN stood out is in the pro-Jonathan rallies it organized in the six geo-political zones, with a grande finale in Abuja. The defining outcome of each rally was the presentation of signatures of real flesh and blood Nigerian citizens calling on President Jonathan to contest the 2015 presidential poll. In the end, it garnered some 12 million signatures of real Nigerians, backed by real addresses, who were urging President Jonathan to make himself available as a presidential candidate in 2015.
That was where TAN helped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) the most. Unlike the other pro-Jonathan groups numbering about 800 that have mushroomed across the country, waiting to be husbanded into action by the PDP, TAN actually showed the PDP the way to follow – to come right behind TAN, which like a bull elephant, beat out a path in the woods and thereby left a trail for the PDP to follow. What TAN did was as audacious as it was novel.
The Obidients and other political support groups have a lot to learn from Ubah’s TAN. So, too, do Nigerians.
Ubah’s life was eclipsed 27 July 2024, a total eclipse. I lost a friend. Nnewi lost a great son whose petrol stations sold petrol at Nnewi at reduced price. Nigerian lost an uncommon innovator with the Midas touch and is unfortunately not about to learn uplifting lessons from his life. That is sad.
