The Public School Teacher Who Became CEO of NLNG: The Inspiring Story of Babs Omotowa

By Jarus

Editor JarusHub

As an oil and gas industry enthusiast (and professional, actually) and self-appointed executive profiler, there was no way the name Babs Omotowa was going to be new to me in 2020. Well, I didn’t know him before 2015, I must admit. I came across his name around that time. One of the many oil and gas executives I have come across – in industry (and general) news.

I didn’t know much about him other than being a Shell executive (NLNG is an incorporated JV between NNPC, Shell, Agip and Total – and the MD usually comes from Shell). I also knew he finished from Unilorin because I was reading some argument online few years ago and one Unilorin graduate was boasting that the CEO of NLNG was a product of their school.

So when I chanced into his name on LinkedIn few days ago, I seized the opportunity to read his full profile. I found something very interesting about his profile – he had his primary education, secondary education, first degree and second degree in Ilorin!

As a Kwara-bred myself ( I moved out after secondary school, anyway), that was interesting. How did this man go ahead to become a top Shell executive and MD of NLNG? The career blogger (and networker!) in me got activated.

I used my LinkedIn premium inmail (that allows me to send message to anybody whether a connection or not) to send message to him with the subject “Ilorin!”. Worst case, this oil and gas executive will ignore this bloody career blogger. Let me shoot my shot:

Ilorin!

Good evening sir.

I’m a younger professional in the oil and gas industry and I get motivated reading profiles of industry veterans like you.

I found your profile quite interesting because you had your primary school, secondary school, first degree, second degree and even first job (teaching) in Ilorin.

What a unique profile sir!

If you don’t mind sir, I will like to interview you for my career blog, JarusHub.com which we use to mentor Nigerian youths. I could send the questions to your email and your response will be published. It’s basically going to be about educational and career journey.

By the way, are you from Kwara state sir?

With exchange of few more messages spanning seven days, largely needing to prove to him that our blog has enough standing/following among the demographic that will benefit from his story (understandable because executive time is very precious and it will be a waste of time spending it on interview with a Mickey Mouse website), this top oil executive graciously accepted to be interviewed by us.

The Kogi-born Omotowa’s story is very interesting. Son of a farmer, grew up in a place with limited exposure, finished from the university and got job as teacher in a public secondary school, teaching there for two years while still staying with parents. Then the move to Lagos, walking around, looking for where vacancies were pasted on gates, submitting over a hundred applications, being discouraged by friends that he cannot get a good job without connections (so this pervasive defeatist mindset has been around for that long. God help those who still spread this today). Then landing job in the most sought after company in Nigeria – Shell.

And just 18 years later, becoming the CEO of the multi-billion dollar company – NLNG. And after that, returning to Shell, at the global Headquarters in The Hague (Netherlands), as Global Upstream Vice President responsible for Shell upstream business in over 45 countries and sitting on Shell Global Leadership Team.

This was the son of a farmer, a public school teacher whose salary cannot even afford to rent a house in Ilorin (never mind Lagos), and was walking the streets of Lagos reading vacancy posts just 25 years earlier.

Fasten your seatbelt and follow JarusHub, Nigeria’s most influential career information platform, as we talk to this oilman.

Thanks for accepting to be interviewed by JarusHub, Nigeria’s leading career and mentoring platform. Our questions will centre around your education and career.

You had all your Nigerian education in Ilorin (from primary school through university), could you tell us about your experience growing up in Ilorin?

Ilorin was a much smaller city of about 500,000 people when I lived there in 1970s to 1990, as compared to nearly one million people now. During the period, I spent most of the time schooling at Baboko Primary School; Federal Government College and University of Ilorin.

My parents were teachers but were also into farming. On Saturdays, whenever myself and my siblings were on holidays, we would accompany my father to farmsteads at the outskirts of the city. We would work on the farm for hours, manually clearing, planting, weeding, and harvesting crops. This enabled us to bond in many ways especially ruminating on completing the day’s assigned tasks.

On Sundays, we would go to church, initially at CAC Church at Agbo Oba and later at the Theological Church, opposite Tate and Lyle. There my values were shaped by the Judeo-Christian teachings and including on the divine hand of God in our lives.

Of course, I also had my experience of youthful exuberance, spending many evenings at social hangouts at lounges or parties with friends. This put me in trouble at home on the occasions when I returned home much later than the 10pm deadline by when our house gates were closed. My parents guided me through this stage through more use of inquiry and introspection as an engagement strategy rather than letting hell loose.

I learnt a lot from all those experiences including on the importance of planning, hardwork, determination, perseverance and minimizing idle socialization. I learnt about honesty and integrity. These lessons continued with me through life and played valuable roles during my career. Knowing where one has come from is useful for where one is going!

You studied Industrial Chemistry for first degree, did you dream of working in the oil and gas industry or you found yourself there by accident?

Studying Industrial Chemistry in itself was by accident, as my JAMB scores did not meet the cut-off mark for studying Medicine, which was my first choice.

The oil and gas industry was a bit remote from me at Ilorin during that period. What was more in my focus at that time were manufacturing industries, especially in Lagos and Otta axis, which was growing at that time.

My dream then was more of working in one of the chemical manufacturing plants, initially in a technical role and later rising to broader senior management roles. So, one could say that I found myself in the Oil and Gas industry by accident or by fate.

You spent the first 3 post-university years as a teacher in a public secondary school, getting job in Shell after being a teacher must have been a big leap for you. How was the recruitment process? How did you get the job?

I taught at Bishop Smith College in Ilorin and loved teaching which I found fulfilling especially seeing the growth and development of young people. However, the salary wasn’t great and had I not been living in my father’s apartment, rent-free and being fed at home, I would not have been able to make ends meet especially as I had also enrolled for an MBA degree at the University of Ilorin.

As soon as I completed the Masters’ program, I resigned from the teaching job and headed to Lagos to seek greener pastures. I visited several places that posted adverts for job in front of their buildings and searched for vacancies in daily newspapers. Friends and family sent me information on other job advertisements they became aware of. I applied for lots (hundreds) of vacancies and attended many interviews.

In December 1991, I was traveling back to Ilorin for Christmas with a colleague from MBA school. At the motor park, I bought a copy of Guardian newspaper and read the vacancies section. There was an advert by Shell to recruit graduates of various disciplines as trainees. I showed my friend, suggesting we apply, but he scorned it and said such companies reserved jobs for children of the high and mighty influential people, not for children of civil servants and teachers, like us. I told him we had nothing to lose in applying. When we arrived Ilorin, I wrote my application and asked him if he had done same so we could post our applications together. He laughed and was adamant that he didn’t have time to waste on such things.

We returned to Lagos after the holiday and months later, I received a response from Shell, inviting me to attend a test at their Port Harcourt office. I would go on to attend interviews on three separate occasions there and each time I showed the invitation to my friend he would laugh it off saying. “They are just using your likes to complete the number and give some credibility to the process, but they already have in mind those they would employ”.

The interviews were professional, thorough and included expatriates on the panel and after a year of interviews and medical test, I received my employment letter early 1993. When my friend saw it, he felt sad he let himself down and possibly lost an employment opportunity.

The whole experience reminds me of Vince Lombardi Jr who said “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will and perseverance”

You worked in Shell for over 26 years (with only few years secondment to NLNG as MD) rising to become a member of the Shell Global Leadership Team,  how was your experience working in Shell which is generally regarded as the most sought after company in Nigeria and the “poster boy” of good job for many Nigerians?

Shell is a company built over the past 110-years on strong fundamental core values and with systems and processes designed to global standards to drive exceptional performance. Shell is a responsible company that desires to be a force for good but it also does acknowledge that it has struggled in difficult and high-risk countries like Nigeria.

One of the key strengths of Shell is its people, as it recruits highly talented staff and provides them with superior technology and tools. As a result, it has a high performing environment that enables creativity, innovation and room for outside-box thinking to deliver exceptional results. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with many of those talented staff.

I thoroughly enjoyed working for Shell as it is an organisation where one does not need a “god-father” to progress. Appraisal systems are designed to enable talents to flourish on the basis of merit. Shell invests hugely in training and developing staff including assignments in overseas offices. For example, I spent 12 years working for Shell subsidiaries in UK, Holland, and Norway and gained considerable knowledge and also delivered significant results. 

What I enjoyed most in my career was the opportunity to coach and mentor several of the young talents. It was fulfilling to be able to share my knowledge and experiences, and to see mentees grow and go on to achieve great results and careers, and with some of them now working at the highest levels of government and some running organisations.

Of course, it is not all perfect or el-dorado working for Shell, but this is in the main due to the imperfection of the human beings who have to run various parts of the organisation. However, as the systems are robust, things get corrected within a medium-term window.

You had a substantial part of your oil and gas career in Supply Chain management and you were indeed the global president of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply at some point. Interestingly, not very much is known about this field to outsiders, or well, to Nigerian students trying to make career decisions. Everyone wants to be an engineer or accountant or doctor. As a matter of fact, it does appear that many people that ended up being supply chain professional got there by accident after being posted to that department when they get their first job. Could you tell us more about this field?

I was fortunate to have been recruited into a Supply Chain department in Shell in 1993 (then called Materials, Procurement, Logistics) but it wasn’t a natural evolution. My first degree was in science field although my MBA thesis was on Optimization of Inventory Management. It was whilst in Shell that I undertook formal training in Supply Chain management, earning a Diploma from the UK Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) in 1997 and going on to become a Fellow in 2006 and Global President of the UK Institute in 2014/15.

In nearly all organisations, outside overhead costs (e.g. salaries), over 80% of the spend of and organisation is on procuring goods and services. Apart from the huge amount of spend which needs to be spent properly to ensure value for money, the timely delivery and quality of such plays a major role in the organisation achieving its objectives. As such, Supply Chain management is increasingly understood as a strategic function and with many of the Chief Procurement Officers now reporting directly to company CEOs. Supply Chain role can be an enabler for innovation through its work with suppliers and it can also enable an organisation meet its strategic external objectives such as developing local content, capacity and creating employment.

One example was when Nigeria LNG contracted $1.4 billion with Samsung and Hyundai in Korea to build LNG ships. Structured transparent tender produced extremely competitive price compared with the Industry benchmarks. Traditionally this would have been where the story all ends. However additional value was extracted from the deal including by having 600 Nigerians trained in shipbuilding in Korea; enabling export of $15mln locally made materials (cables, paints, furniture, anodes); installing $5m shipping simulators  in Nigeria to train staff locally, and enabling set-up of a dry-dock facility in Nigeria to which Samsung and Hyundai committed $16m and to also provide technical partnership. These were significant additional value delivered to the organisation by Supply Chain and gives an insight into the value of the field.

You can read more about importance of Supply Chain Management in my speech delivered in 2015 at the end of my term as the Global CIPS President.

You must have interviewed and interacted with many Nigerian graduates in your career, especially in the years before you moved very high up the ladder, what is your experience interviewing and working with Nigerian graduates? Do you agree with the common reference to Nigerian graduates as unemployable? What are the skills you look for in a potential recruit?

I disagree with such generalization as it is unhelpful. Let me give you an example. During my tenure as MD, NLNG, we started the recruitment of 120 graduates and received over 30,000 applicants who met our requirement. Most were graduates from the Nigeria Universities. Rigorous tests and interviews were conducted and we had over 2,000 of them who scaled through the high cut-off points that we had set and any of them could have been employed.

People can always point to some examples of Nigerian graduates who are not worthy of the certificates they parade or to the deterioration in the quality of our universities. Whilst these are correct, but these are not a fair representation of the majority of the graduates. Also, a graduate is an “entry” level in an organisation, which means that the organisations still has to train and develop such “seeds” and mentor and coach them to be able to “blossom” and reach their potential.

In terms of what I look for in potential recruits, it is not much on the degree or their paper qualification, but more on their clear critical thinking capacity and articulation, character, authenticity, integrity, courage to change status quo, determination and a can-do spirit. 

With such an illustrious career that you have had, what is your advice to young professionals in Nigeria who desire to attain same in any part of the world?

What I like a lot in the younger generation or millennials is their grasp with technology and digitalization and the opportunity that these provide them to do things that we could not comprehend whilst growing up. The ability to link many data sources, process humongous data volumes and to use artificial intelligence to quickly draw deeper insights and create new value makes this an exciting generation. I encourage young professionals to in addition to any degree that they may study, ensure they are at the forefront of technology and digitalization, as it will be defining for their future and career. 

Technology has also made them more of a “global citizen” as they are connected virtually with people all over the world and have information at their finger tip. But this would also require more from them on inclusiveness and how well they build and leverage networks. Social interactions and relationships will make a whole world of difference in impact that people can make and those who will excel will be those who can turn these technological and social capabilities to innovate and create significant value.

I also share some of the thoughts that I espoused at Harvard University few years back here and here, which could be helpful additions.

Finally, I would advise not to think just of a career but to always keep in mind what are the important things to them in life and what makes them happy e.g. family, supporting less privilege, etc. One would live a more fulfilled life when the important things to them in life are not sacrificed for a career.

With the decline in price of crude oil and accelerated shift to renewables, what is your advice to aspiring or current students of petroleum engineering or similar fields in Nigeria?

We are yet to fully evaluate the impact of Covid on crude oil and global energy demand in terms of whether it will further accelerate the shift to renewables faster than 2070 window for which we previously still foresaw crude oil playing a major role within the energy system. However, crude oil is not disappearing anytime soon as the world still needs lots of energy especially in developing countries for electricity, transport and for petrochemicals.

So current students of Petroleum Engineers or similar fields need not be hurrying out quickly as there is still a career over the next 50-years. Also, most of the knowledge and skills in the oil industry are transferable to renewables industry (e.g. offshore wind) and many of the oil companies are investing significantly in alternative energies and would deploy their talents across.

As an oil and gas executive, how do you relax?

This is one of the holy grail challenges in the modern world.

When I started work in the industry in 1993, once you closed from work daily or on Friday, you had all your time till the next day or throughout the weekend, uninterrupted, as no one could reach you except you were on duty and had the duty walkie-talkie. Under such, it was then easy to unwind, with family and friends and for example go to the beach (Abraka resort in those days), to sporting activities or to social events.

However, the world today, with 24-hours interconnectivity via internet and telephones is a different world. The span of Executives is also now much wider, as for example, as a Global functional VP in Shell, I had responsibilities across 40 countries in different continents and time zones, leading to a 24-hour working window.

This makes relaxing a challenge in modern day but it remains important as without relaxing, an Executive will easily burn out. One thing I learnt to do was to spread out my annual leave, so that every two months I could take at least take a week off work to relax and importantly spend time with family travelling together as a family to unwind and get to know different places, far and near. A key during such travels is to avoid being drawn into emails and phone calls with work and thus important to fully delegate during one’s absence.

I also like reading in my spare time (currently reading “The Outsiders – Eight Unconventional CEOs and their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike” and “The Idea in you, how to find it, build it and change your life by Amor and Pellew”). I am also writing my memoir, which would hopefully be published next year.

Many thanks.

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