In 2010, you left your position as the GMD/CEO of UBA and then ventured into serial entrepreneurship. Today, you run Heirs Holdings, Transcorp, you are into oil and gas, the Tony Elumelu Foundation and many more. How do you manage to juggle all of these and what are the challenges you face in terms of managing all your businesses?In 2010, when I left the United Bank for Africa , I founded Heirs Holdings which is a family investment company that invests in key sectors of the African economy.
For us to be able to generate more, we need to have gas, and this is why our group invested in oil and gas. Investing in oil and gas as a group isn’t necessarily because of oil, it is more because of gas. We want to be able to ensure that we have gas from our oil and gas production to convert it to electricity. With the acquisition we did recently, I’m happy to say it is already supplying gas to our Trans-Afam power plant; but we also need to make sure we stabilise our transmission lines.
If I generate electricity, I should be able to get money so that I can service my obligations as well as make sure that all the parts in particular are serviced to ensure the generating plants keep running. It is a critical sector, we need to invest in it, and the stakeholders need to make sure that it works. If it works, the country’s economic development becomes more real, if it doesn’t work, it’s going to be a problem.
Business as usual
Too late...