Yesterday, we introduced the billionaire fertiliser baron Thomas Etuh and the story of his beginning in the then Benue State. He spoke of his humble start to life, including failing to go to the Aviation College in Zaria because his parents could not afford the fees of N14,000. Today we serve you the story of a man who never speaks to the media, and he speaks of how he sold TAK, the firm that brought him global recognition, and his foray into Notore. Interview by FRANK AIGBOGUN. Enjoy it.
How did you become the largest fertiliser baron in Nigeria?
It happened over time. First, the company I invested in which was owned by my dad’s friend was the foundation. The man at some point decided to go into partisan politics, and this was around 1998. You see, dad’s friend had never contested for a councillor position, but he wanted to contest for president. So, in 1998, he came out to contest for president. In 2004, I offered to buy him out, and that was how I took control of the fertiliser blending company, which was then owned by the man, myself, and some Indians. I paid off every other person. Soon, I owned three fertiliser-blending plants in Nigeria, located in Kaduna, Minna, and Okpella in Edo State. When Umaru Yar’adua became governor of Katsina, he privatised government businesses, including hotels and fertiliser-blending plants, because the government was failing to manage them properly. He did not see why the state would have companies that public funds had to be deployed to instead of using the money to pay salaries and provide social amenities to the people. I sent a bid for their fertiliser company in Funtua, and I won and took it over and began to grow my business. We used to produce the NPK for the NAFCON fertiliser plant in Rivers State. So I took over the company and its business, and in time I took it to another level by domesticating fertiliser production and hoping that the government would change their policy like they did with cement, but a lot of importation was still coming in with mostly Indians in the business, and then, thankfully, I was not borrowing from Nigerian banks. So, I was quite big on fertiliser. I was quite big in salt, but it was difficult for me on the salt side, so I came out of the salt business. I left rice importation and simply concentrated on fertiliser. I became the biggest importer of fertiliser and the biggest blender of fertiliser in Nigeria.
“The panel did its analysis and said 82 percent of the fertiliser that Nigeria required can be found in the warehouse of TAK. … I delivered 22,000 trailers of fertiliser to over 700 local governments in Nigeria.”
You stayed away from government jobs, but how and when did this change?
When President Yar’adua came to power after the election of 2007, we had a very bad fertiliser shortage, and the president sent people to look for me. He had reasoned that since I had done well acquiring the state blending plant and supplying fertiliser in the past, he thought I could help this time around. But you know the normal rent-seeking with the government. All manner of people had sent in bids to the federal government offering to supply fertiliser, but I did not bid. I was satisfied knowing that whoever won the bids would come and buy from me. So, the bids were processed, and 65 companies were given the job. It was brought to the Federal Executive Council, FEC, and when Yar’adua scrutinised the list of the 65 winners, he found they were mainly people he knew well and who did not have any prior knowledge of fertiliser distribution and supply. The president saw the thing and was angry because he knew these people and none of them had any experience. So, the president set up an audit panel led by his National Security Adviser, and the panel had others like the MD of the NPA, the Central Bank Governor Soludo, DG Customs, the IG of Police, etc. visit all the fertiliser companies in the country to audit their capacity in terms of volumes of their inventory and logistics network. Everyone of us was asked to send in forms showing what we had to ascertain our readiness to deliver. In the course of going around, the panel confirmed the worries of the president. People thought it was a joke and filled everything in their forms. The panel went to some locations and found that the addresses given were fake, and at other locations, the volumes declared could not be verified. President Yar Adua ordered NTA crews to follow the panel around the country, and the television sometimes provided live broadcasts from empty warehouses. The panel went around the country, and that is how a lot of people knew how big I was. The presidential panel found that the entire fertiliser the government needed, I had and could supply. Flour mills also had some fertiliser. They were the only other party apart from myself that had a blending plant. All the other blending plants were owned by the government, and they were all moribund. The panel did its analysis and told the president that 82 percent of the total fertiliser required could be found in the warehouse of TAK, my company. The government gave me the urea; they gave me the superphosphate fertiliser to supply. I bought the federal government fertiliser plant in Kaduna during the 2005 privatisation exercise. The fertiliser the government required came to a total of N65bn. Of this, I was given N52bn and Flour Mills was given N13bn. Only the two of us were given the contract. Then hell was let loose, and people began writing all sorts of petitions. I had never taken government contracts before, so this was an unpleasant experience for me, but this was only the beginning of my pain. People began saying the government wanted to commit suicide by giving me such a huge volume of business.
Despite all the threats and challenges, we delivered. When I was making the deliveries in 2008, we were publishing the details of each delivery made in five national newspapers. We will state the location from which the fertiliser was picked and the quantity and location of delivery, along with the names of the receiving officers, truck numbers, and names and phone numbers of the truck drivers. Everything we published. I delivered 22,000 trailers in 90 days to over 700 local governments in Nigeria.
Read also: Against all odds Thomas Etuhs triumph over adversity 1
“From that day, whether it is a state or federal government contract, I do not touch it because the government almost bankrupted me.”
You were close to the president. But after such a feat, why did the government fail to pay your money promptly and enter real debt?
The following year, the government gave me another fertiliser supply contract because I had successfully delivered the initial one. After all this, paying me my money became a real problem. You know, shortly after, President Yar Adua died. That was how I got into debt. That is how I became embroiled with AMCON. I did not get that money until after seven years, and they were paying me in bits. On one occasion, they even paid me N30m when they were owing me billions. By the time the money came, it was useless. President Jonathan came, but I made no progress. The only person who tried to help me was Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was a minister. God bless her. I borrowed 70 percent of that money from local and international banks. I was swallowed up in debt both locally and offshore for seven years. Finally, part of that money was paid by President Muhammadu Buhari. From that day, whether it is a state or federal government contract, I didn’t touch it because the government bankrupted me.
Take us into the push for NOTORE and the unexpected phone call from President Muhammadu Buhari.
First, what I am doing in Notore is without the involvement of Indorama, but I will tell you the whole story of Notore. In 2005, there was the federal government privatisation exercise of Notore and Superphosphate companies. I succeeded in acquiring the superphosphate company in Kaduna, but most people did not know that I was the reserve bidder for Notore 19 years ago. I tried to enter into a partnership with the group that won; I wanted to work together with them, but this did not work out. Eventually, they found people who funded them in the acquisition. I had the federal Superphosphate Company; I had a tractor assembly plant. Everything I considered was about the farmer because I realised that the farmers could not afford tractors. So I set up an assembly plant called TAK Tractors using parts from India. I introduced a cooperative scheme to make access to the tractors affordable for the farmers because if the farmers were able to cultivate more land, then I could sell more fertiliser to them. So it is the same thing with other things I do, like banking. I got into it by default. Insurance I got into by default. Pension company I got involved in by default. At all times, my consideration was for the farmers. If the farms are insured, if they have a bad harvest, they will go under or out of business, and I can no longer sell fertiliser to them. So it is about how I can improve a lot of the farmers or about bringing in more farmers because I had reached a point where I could no longer sell beyond a certain volume of fertiliser.
Out of the blues, a phone call from Aso Rock which was dismissed as 419
Let me go back to the period when I was literally bankrupt. I had to manage my debts and sell what I could to ease my debt because it became a reputation issue. So for seven years, I was fighting that battle silently. In October 2016, I had a strange call from Mallam Abba Kyari, the late Chief of Staff to President Buhari. He said to me, Please, the president wants to meet you urgently. I said stop this 419 appointment, just leave me alone. You know, sometimes people call you and lure you into these fraudulent schemes. So I said to the man on the phone bye and dropped the telephone. I did not know Mallam Abbas. I did not know President Buhari; I had never met him before. So why will anyone just come out of nowhere and say President Buhari wants to see me? Anyway, minutes later, the same person called back, and I said to him, “Look, you sound like an elderly person; let me give you fertiliser to go and farm with so you can help yourself and your family.” Then I dropped the telephone again. This time, one of my friends said he wanted to see the number that the man was using to call me. I was using a simple Nokia phone; I did not have a smartphone, and I was not on social media. So I called out the number, and using a Samsung phone and Truecaller, my friends were able to ascertain that the number was actually registered to an Abba Kyari. They said it was Mallam Abba Kyari; call him back now. But I said, Call him back for what? I did not want anything from the government. I was still bleeding from how the government treated me. But about an hour later, Mallam Abba called back, and this time I tried to apologise, but he said not to worry and quickly said the president wanted to see you, and from the data he has about me, I live in Kaduna and in Lagos. So, how soon can I come to meet with the president? Then I said, No, I was currently in Abuja, to which he replied with excitement, So you can come now then. I said no; I needed two hours. Then he asked me, Where do you live in Abuja? I said Aso Drive. And he said that’s close by, and you can make it here in maybe five minutes by Nigerian walk, and by British walk, it may be in two to three minutes. Then he said, You know what? I will give you one hour. He offered to send a car, which would wait for me at the security gate, and the car would drive behind me once I got there. How many of you are coming? He asked me, and I told him, and he said he would leave our names with the villa’s security people. I rushed out of the swimming pool, went to have my bath, and after changing my clothes, my friend drove me there. He actually sent the car, which followed us. I called my wife and told her where I was headed, just in case. After we were met by the car, we drove to the residence of the president as planned. On arrival, I was met by Mallam Abba and went inside for the meeting. I met the president sitting down. Very quickly, the president said to me, Well, he went to Equatorial Guinea, where the African leaders attended a conference on climate change, and he came back the day before. He said that while there he had met the president of the Niger Republic, who had asked for help in getting fertiliser from Nigeria. President Buhari said he told him, “I don’t have fertiliser.” But the head of state said to him, How can your country that has TAK say you do not have fertiliser? President Buhari said he asked, Who is TAK? President Buhari later found information about TAK from his minister, who gave him my details. He said the Niger leader said Obasanjo gave us fertiliser for free, Yar Adua gave us, Jonathan gave us. So how can you say you have no fertiliser to give my people? It was President Olusegun Obasanjo who introduced the fertiliser assistance program to stop the people from straying into Nigeria in their numbers. He helped them with many things. President Yar Adua continued this assistance programme. But President Buhari came, and initially, nothing happened. After one year, the Niger president had to cry out to President Buhari. So, President Buhari told him that Nigeria did not have fertiliser for our farmers. President Buhari asked me to tell him how Nigeria can solve our own fertiliser problem first before we can begin to think about other people. So I told him, sir, if you will have the guts to do what I want to tell you, your government can solve the fertiliser problem. Mallam Abba cut in and asked me, “How can you say if an army general had the guts?” President Buhari turned to me and asked what ideas I had to solve Nigeria’s fertiliser problem. After I had responded and it seemed they were both interested, Mallam Abba asked me to send my suggestion in not more than a page. I said two pages. So the next day, I emailed the document to him. By 8 pm, he called me and asked where I was, and he said come to the villa immediately. So I rushed to his office, from where he took me straight to President Buhari, who asked me to speak to the proposal. So, I told him how you make fertiliser—we have urea, which Indorama produces, and we have limestone deposits in the country. Urea makes up 36 percent, limestone is around 27 percent, but what we do not have is phosphate and potash to make up the balance. I told him we needed phosphate from Morocco and we needed potash from Russia or Belarus. I suggested that Nigeria and Morocco should enter into a government-to-government deal, and whatever savings we make, we must pass on to the farmer by way of vastly reduced prices. President Buhari asked me to set up a meeting. I had been buying my phosphate from there, so I knew I could leverage my contacts to set up a meeting between both leaders. So I quickly got to work on it, and this was achieved within a week. The King of Morocco said he would be expecting us but that he would not be in Rabbat but in Marrakech, where a conference was being held. Within a week, President Buhari was ready for the trip to Morocco. He was joined by three or so state governors and Chief Audu Ogbe, the minister of agriculture. We met the king in a tent for a one-day meeting, and the king said Morocco would start the phosphate relationship with Nigeria. The king even offered to visit Nigeria, and President Buhari accepted the offer of a state visit and promptly promised the king that he would meet with an elaborate welcome. The king then asked his people to come ahead to meet with us in Nigeria before his own arrival and that whatever we agreed on, the two leaders would sign. So we came back to Abuja, and two days later, the team from the king of Morocco arrived, and we began this meeting. The late Mallam Abba Kyari was there, as were the governor of Jigawa, Kemi Adeosun, the finance minister, Audu Ogbeh, the agriculture minister, and other senior aides. When we finished the strategy session, the president then asked me how much we needed. I said about N100bn to be able to do a million tonnes and flood the market in Nigeria with fertiliser. At this time, fertiliser was sold for about N10,000. In the end, Morocco gave us a 40 percent discount, Russia gave us a 10 percent discount, and I told the president that this discount should be transferred to the farmers. Mallam Abba said the Central Bank would give me N100bn, but I said no, not to me; I am bankrupt and my account cannot receive any money. I told him the government is owing me and has not paid me for the fertiliser supplied during Yar’adua’s time. Mallam Abba sought to appease me and promised to look into my matter but insisted that I should accept the offer of a payment of N100bn to be made to TAK. He asked me to report to the CBN governor. I met him, but I insisted to the governor that I would be unable to accept any money. So the governor of the CBN reported back to Mallam Abba and said the man would not take any money. And they called me back to the villa, and Mallam Abba said, This man, what is wrong with you? The government is giving you N100bn at 5 percent interest, and you say you won’t take it. I said even if it was at zero percent interest that I am not taking any money. Then he asked me, What do we do? I said to him, If you want this program to be sustainable, let us ask the NSIA to manage it, and that way it will carry on beyond any of us here. So Mallam Abba picked up his phone and called Uche Orji, who was MD of the NSIA. The next day, we all went to work. My office was the secretariat. We designed the program, and NSIA became the fund manager. You import the raw material, I produce for you, and I get paid for throughput. I insisted that the price had to be fixed, and I carved out the name Presidential Fertiliser Initiative, which was to be printed on the bag. With this, we were able to cut the price of a bag of fertiliser by half, from N10,000 to N5,000. It was sold to the farmer at N5,500 so the dealers could make a small margin. We got everybody, including Indorama, to cut the price of the input. NNPC got to reduce their gas price, and no one was making any margin because we wanted the farmers to benefit, and that also helped to catalyse the establishment of many fertiliser-blending plants across Nigeria. When we began, it was just my six blending plants with the one owned by Flour Mills, but we moved from seven blending plants to 74 as at the last time I counted. We created jobs, and farmers in Nigeria and even in neighbouring countries had an abundance of fertiliser at the right price. In 2017, we went back for a state visit to Morocco with President Buhari. It was a fantastic state visit, and the reception we received was simply royal.
To be continued tomorrow…
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