● While Kings Gathered In Lekki, Glo Czar Fraternised With Ghanaian President
● Nigeria Celebrated Its Tycoons As Ghana Hosted The Bull To a Dance Of Enduring Influence
By Bidemi Adeniran
Eyes fixed eastward may have missed the rustle of greatness travelling west. As the quartet of Femi Otedola, Jim Ovia, Aliko Dangote, and Abdulsamad Rabiu circled President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Lagos like satellites of affluence and policy, another titan traced his own arc of relevance across West African skies. Mike Adenuga, Chairman of Globacom and Africa’s inscrutable lion, was not in Lagos. His footsteps echoed through Accra, not as a withdrawal, but as a declaration, a visit to his longstanding friend, Ghanaian President John Mahama.
While many mused at his absence from the national gathering of moguls, conjecturing decline or political estrangement, digital trails told a different tale. Images from social media showed Adenuga in Accra, exchanging warmth with Ghana’s first citizen. The visit, informal in tone but powerful in symbolism, was testament to enduring transcontinental ties and a quiet rebuke to every whisper that sought to place Adenuga outside the frame of influence.
Adenuga’s journey to Ghana was no diversion. It was alignment. In every age, power finds its own axis, and for Africa’s silent billionaire, that axis ran westward. The occasion was not swaddled in press releases or adorned with choreographed fanfare. It unfolded with the elegance of old friendships and the diplomacy of private empire.
There he was, the man who built a telecommunications behemoth on the spine of indigenous innovation, standing beside Mahama, two statesmen of their spheres. One held the reins of a nation; the other, the reins of transcontinental enterprise. Their communion was more than optics. It spoke of influence that exceeds borders, of reputation that bends not to trends but time.
In Lagos, the Lekki Deep Sea Port ceremony shimmered with the charisma of capital. President Tinubu stood flanked by business giants whose names reverberate through Africa’s economic corridors. Their presence marked a communion of power, ambition, and national projection. Yet, for all its symbolism, the gathering lacked one voice, Adenuga’s. And his absence thundered louder than any speech.
To presume exclusion is to misunderstand Adenuga’s rhythm. His greatness does not gather where the spotlight shines brightest. It moves by instinct, not calendar. While his peers exchanged gestures of fraternity on Nigeria’s southern coast, he chose Ghana’s diplomatic embrace. This choice was not retreat but rotation, the pivot of a man whose influence has never been confined to one nation, one room, or one spectacle.
Indeed, Adenuga is not one for public ceremony. He is the architect of an empire whose blueprints were drawn in solitude, whose foundations were laid in silence. Globacom did not rise with applause but with audacity. His oil interests, telecommunications triumphs, and philanthropic reach echo across Africa like silent thunder.
Where others host press conferences, he makes moves. Where others publish headlines, he becomes one. This is the Adenuga way: presence without parade. So, when Lagos pulsed and he journeyed instead to Accra, it was not an absence of duty but the enactment of goodwill. He reaffirmed, with every step on Ghanaian soil, that influence is not a matter of appearances but of alignment and he was exactly where he needed to be.
Ghana has long shared a fraternal bond with Nigeria, and for Adenuga, it is a landscape of familiarity. President John Mahama is not a mere diplomatic acquaintance but a personal friend. Their relationship is rooted in mutual respect and shared vision, two men who have walked the arduous path of leadership, one through politics, the other through enterprise.
Their meeting in Accra was neither ceremonial nor transactional. It was brotherhood, a reaffirmation of regional cooperation and cross-border camaraderie. Adenuga’s visit subtly reinforced a pan-African vision, one that transcends borders and positions enterprise as a bridge between governments. No press briefing was necessary. The images said it all: two statesmen in quiet dialogue, crafting futures away from cameras and microphones.
For every observer who interpreted Adenuga’s Lagos absence as exclusion, the truth rises with regal simplicity: he was not missing; he was merely elsewhere. And that elsewhere was Accra. The whispers of relegation, of political sidelining or social frost, collapse under the weight of fact. His journey to Ghana, documented subtly across social media, was no covert maneuver. It was public enough for those with eyes wide enough to see.
The digital footprints were light but deliberate. Photographs of his meeting with Akufo-Addo made their way into the internet bloodstream—not viral, not ostentatious, but evident. They told a story that needs no validation: the lion does not need to roar to be felt.
Interestingly, power is not linear. It arcs. It rotates. It refracts through unexpected mirrors. While Tinubu conferred the mantle of national pride on four industrial giants, Adenuga affirmed his continental presence. His silence, like the stillness before a monsoon, held its own power. It reminded Africa that the geometry of influence includes those who move in silence, whose absence is presence, whose stillness is strength.
Globacom continues to sprawl across West Africa, a telecommunication nerve line stretching through nations and into millions of lives. His Conoil empire fuels economies. His philanthropy flows without proclamations. And so, his Ghana visit was not deviation, but continuation, of a legacy that listens more than it speaks, that walks more than it waves.
While the world turns its gaze to the loudest voices and the brightest rooms, Mike Adenuga builds legacies in the corridors of shadows. His Ghanaian visit is another stone in the mosaic of a life marked by vision without vanity. He does not orbit power. He creates it. Not by volume, but by value.
Adenuga’s name remains written in the quiet ink of enduring relevance. As others posture in ceremonial robes, he tailors destiny in the quiet halls of cross-border diplomacy. His relationship with President Akufo-Addo stands as testament to a man who understands that true legacy transcends titles, regions, and even recognition.
In every sense, Mike Adenuga is not a Nigerian figurehead alone. He is an African currency—valuable, versatile, and enduring. His brand, both as a businessman and statesman of industry, is spent in Lagos and Accra, in Lome and Monrovia, across the continent like a trusted tender of development.
His visit to Ghana signals no retreat from national prominence but a rise into continental stewardship. His movements remain grounded in meaning. He does not seek the podium because his actions echo louder than applause.
While Lagos hummed with ceremony and the air glittered with the fragrance of capital, the Lion of Nigeria walked through Accra with the quiet grace of one who has nothing left to prove. Mike Adenuga, absent from one gathering, present in another, reminded Africa that relevance is not anchored in a place but in purpose.
While he missed the Lagos event, he marked a moment in private pleasure. From the Lekki shoreline to the Accra breeze, the continent was alive with the movement of its titans. And while some stood in photographs beside the president of Nigeria, one stood with the president of Ghana—sovereign and smiling.
– Adeniran writes from Abuja
