By Kingsley Osadolor
I did not meet Jide Ogundele until 1990, when I was recalled from Harare and became Deputy Editor of The Guardian (daily). Ogundele was on the Business Desk, and I found him very resourceful, hardworking, friendly, and not charmed by lucre, in spite of the circles he frequented in the line of duty. There were other equally hardworking Reporters on the Business beat, and these included Tony Nduilor, and the late Orezina Agbodo. On the Sunday paper, there was Nik Ogbulie.
The early 90s witnessed catalytic changes in the Nigerian economy. It was during this period that the second-generation banks (Zenith Bank, for instance) came on stream. The tectonic shift in the economy was anchored largely on the withdrawal of government from the ownership and management of business enterprises, which was intended to give wings to the private sector as the lead driver of economic growth and prosperity. One of the legal instruments for achieving this goal, under the Gen. Ibrahim Babangida military regime, was the creation (in 1988) of the Technical Committee on Privatization and Commercialization (TCPC) headed by Ahmed Zayyad. The TCPC later morphed into the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) whose corporate headquarters in Abuja is named after Ahmed Zayyad.
In the 90s, TCPC was mandated to offload Federal Government shares in a range of businesses, including banking, manufacturing, as well as oil and gas. The offloaded shares were available to Nigerians for purchase, although subsequent reviews highlighted information asymmetry and disproportionality in the allocation and purchase of the shares. Jide Ogundele and his colleagues on the Business Desk focused on these issues and more. The Desk was dependable for a steady flow of frontpage stories.
But Ogundele, in an act of unforgettable selflessness, brought to the newsroom at Rutam House share purchase forms for government businesses that were earmarked for divestment. I recall having a number of conversations with Ogundele, and we concluded that the era was the next big bang in the Nigerian economy, after the earlier season of Indigenization in 1972.
Jide Ogundele did not just drop the forms, he persuaded and guided staff on how to get into share ownership during the Privatization era. In every likelihood, some staff of The Guardian made their first stock purchases during this period. I remember buying shares of Unipetrol, First Bank, and Sokoto Cement Company, among others. It didn’t matter whether some were penny stocks, the key message by Ogundele was for the stockholder to also have an eye on capital appreciation of their holding. In later years, my mails were aplenty with dividend warrants and bonus issues. The capital market was deepening. Until, of course, through the wanton knavery and unrestrained recklessness of operatives, the market spiralled into catastrophic collapse in 2008, and its recovery and numbers only now appeal more to institutional investors, rather than the generality of the populace who took a severe battering nearly two decades ago.
It is sad to learn that Jide Ogundele, an otherwise gregarious fellow, has passed on, in the lonesome circumstances described in the various accounts of his death. We often joked about yams and potatoes, some lingo that he and I understood very well. I hadn’t seen him in years, but read his infrequent posts on a couple of platforms. Jide Ogundele was a jovial personality whose professionalism was truly admirable. I pray that the Almighty will grant him eternal rest, and comfort his family.
● Osadolor, a lawyer and journalist, sent this via WhatsApp.
