Eniola Olatunji
Thomas Etuh, the Nigerian fertiliser billionaire, a silent operator who has conquered all despite his rather humble beginnings, told his lifelong story in a recent three-part interview with BusinessDay.
Here are 10 of the most outstanding things to know about Thomas Etuh from the interview:
Pilot dreams dashed
Etuh’s sojourn into commodity trading was because his parents couldn’t afford the N14,000 tuition, or get a scholarship like his friends from the north, to attend Aviation College, Zaria to pursue his dream of being a pilot
Thomas who saw “pepper”
Etuh made several attempts to export pepper to London in the early 90s and wasn’t till his 12th attempt did he succeed, making £5000.
The pepper from his first eight shot at export arrived London rotten. He then learnt to source the commodity directly from farms across Sokoto, Plateau, and Bornu, get proper packaging and changed his method of cleaning them.
On the twelfth attempt, the waybill needed to reach London before the plane’s arrival. This involved multiple attempts at faxing from various NITEL offices in northern Nigeria, including Kano, Zaria, and Kaduna. He eventually succeeded.
Meanwhile, he almost went bankrupt. He had to sell everything he owned, including his wife’s car. Apart from pepper, he sold other commodities such as salt, and cement.
Becoming a fertiliser magnate
His journey as Nigeria’s fertiliser baron started in 1988, when he bought a 10 percent stake in his fathers friend’s fertiliser plant.
By 2004, he bought out all the stakeholders including that of his father’s friend to gain sole ownership of the company.
Etuh expanded the business to three fertiliser plants and became the biggest importer of fertiliser and the biggest blender of fertiliser in Nigeria, named TAK.
Doomsday government contract
In 2008, he delivered 22,000 trailers of fertilisers in 90 days to over 700 local governments in Nigeria as the major supplier of President Yar’adua fertiliser project worth N52 billion.
He fell into debt after the government failed to pay the N52 billion, 70 percent of which he had borrowed.
Losing majority shareholder of TAK to Indorama
This led to him selling 51 percent stake of his first company TAK, to Indorama to settle his debt.
Notore
In 2005, he secured a spot as the reserve bidder for Notore, leading fertiliser and agro-allied companies in Africa.
In June 2024, in partnership with Theophilus Danjuma’s TY Holdings, acquired Notore Chemical Industries Plc in Onne, Rivers State for $150 million, With plans to revamp the firm by doing a thorough turn around maintenance.
Etuh the silent operator
He was such a silent operator that President Buhari didn’t know who he was until he learnt of him from the president of Niger during an African leaders conference.
Etuh was consulted in 2016 by the president to come up with a solution to Nigeria’s fertiliser problem. His solution which involved partnership with Russia and Morocco cut down the price of a bag of fertiliser by half, from N10,000 from N5,000.
This took the number of fertiliser blending plants in the country to over 74 from just 7 at the beginning of the programme.
9Mobile: Project Lazarus
His first dabble into the communications industry was with Mafab for which he raised $273.6 million in 72 hours to get a 5G licence, investing $100 million of his personal money. He was later bought out of the deal.
In May 2023, he and other business partners bought 9Mobile to revive it from the about $800 million debt it’s buried in.
Farmers and fertilisers at the heart of his forays
Over the years he ventured into other businesses such as banking (Unity bank), pension, insurance, Tractor assembly plant to improve the lot of the farmers or about bringing in more farmers.
“ 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,” Etuh said in his interview.
He resigned as Unity’s bank chair to take care of his dying wife, whom he later lost to cancer in 2020, after years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him while the business was being built. They bore four sons together.
(Business Day)
