NIGERIA: Ten Billion Dollars Worth of Common Sense..and more!

On the 31st of January, 2012 GE Chairman and CEO- Jeffrey Immelt visited Lagos and sat with a group of Nigerian Business leaders to outline GE's ambitious plans for Nigeria. I was fortunate to get a front row seat. I sat right next to/ adjacent to Tony Elumelu- Chairman UBA and Founder of Heirs Holdings and watched as the man took copious notes. At a point during the presentation, while the erstwhile Director General of the NESG (Nigeria Economic Summit Group) spoke I noticed Tony Elumelu pass some notes to Jeffrey Immelt (requesting further discussions on potential areas of mutual interest i suppose). Suffice it to say that a few months down the line Tony Elumelu got his Power Sector deal (GE is now upgrading Ughelli Power Plant by 1,000MW). Now this brings me to the main idea: to visionary business leadership Nigeria is worth Ten Billion Dollars of Common Sense and much more...!

What with a population of over 160 million, a population demographic that is 75% below the age of 25 years, an average annual GDP growth rate of 6% appx, an estimated 38/40 billion barrels of Oil reserves, over 180 trillion cubic feet of Gas reserves, a reinvigorated Federal Government (newly elected party), a fresh leader, notwithstanding the short-term economic impacts of the Oil price crash Nigeria is primed to get better.....and this makes sense!!!

Three years down the line, GE is keeping to its promise and has recently (in June 2015) restated an action plan for investing in the Nigerian economy over the foreseeable future. There is however a misalignment on the actual committed amounts by GE said to be anywhere within the region of $1 to upwards of $10 billion. However, for a country which targets 10 Gigawatts of electricity over the next decade $10 billion looks like a reasonable expectation.

Visionary business leadership can seize opportunities by the scruff of the neck, even with just a tiny whiff of opportunity. I will suspect that GE has done its homework and analyze the Nigerian situation carefully; commercial considerations subject to investment, risk and return thresholds. Also Jeffrey Immelt will have staked the Strategic imperatives for investing in Nigeria on expectations that these will yield desired results for the overall GE group and its competitive advantage globally- given certain assumptions. Same goes for Tony Elumelu. As a local corporate Transcorp (Tony Elumelu) has tapped into a route to competitive advantage through visionary business leadership by Tony Elumelu. How will he not wax stronger with the Ughelli Power Plant and the financial industry goodwill to fuel further acquisitions and projects?

My key observation is that visionary business leadership goes beyond having a 'hunch' or 'charisma to close a deal'. Visionary business leadership embraces strategic thinking; a deep-rooted appreciation and understanding of key strategic imperatives, backed by solid data and a mastery of alternative scenarios and outcomes that drives decision-making. Business decision-making based on - 'this is Naija (Nigeria)', 'this is how we have always done it', 'stop wasting your time quoting theory' and other such fallacies will certainly yield less than desirable results. Business leaders should study Nigeria a little bit more and develop the enabling skills for visionary business leadership; it is my view that closer study will reveal that, all things being equal, investing in Nigeria is worth ten billion dollars of common sense..and much more.