THIS YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR DEFIED DANGOTE’S ADVICE….AND CAME OUT BETTER
When Nigeria’s richest man was reportedly once asked to advise entrepreneurs, one of the nuggets he dropped was “never fight the government of the day”. This he said he got from his own grandfather, himself a multimillionaire.
Dangote cannot be more correct. Truth is, in Nigeria, prepare the epitaph of your business once you start to openly go against the government of the day.
Dangote – Africa’s richest man.
Actually, in the just concluded elections, many big time entrepreneurs in Nigeria, including top company chiefs, actually sided with the opposition. I wont name any of them, but anyone that has a nose for news-behind-the-news in Nigeria knows. Some of them openly came out to associate with the then President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari just minutes after the announcement of the results.
But there is a gentleman that is far from being powerful like these business topshots. He’s just an upcoming media entrepreneur. His businesses are just taking shape. He no doubt has contacts, but we are talking about facing the presidency here – no amount of contact can save you if you mistook a step in this cause.
His name is Chude Jideonwo. Chude is the CEO of RedMedia Partners, the corporate brand of the YNaija group. Just 30 years old, Chude and his friend and business partner, Debola Williams, have redefined PR profession in Nigeria. They make veterans who have been into PR before they were born look like amateurs.
Chude – the background hand behind Buhari’s image overhaul
Chude and his friend, also 30, owned the company, Statescraft Inc, that handled Buhari’s image polishing in the last elections. In this brief write-up, he narrated how he risked all to take the job, knowing his business would be in trouble if the candidate they worked for lost.
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By Chude Jideonwo
This morning (Friday, May 29, 2015), my team member, Oluwatobi Soyombo and I sat in the office, and discharged our final responsibility to the Buhari Campaign Organisation – we changed the bio of the Muhammadu Buhari account across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and everywhere else to ‘President of Nigeria’.
I asked Tobi for the privilege to do this myself, with my own hands. Then, as he looked at me, shocked, the tears began to follow. After sending out the tweet for the new president of Nigeria (personal tweets from him are signed –MB), I took to my own private account and shared: ‘@MBuhari better not disappoint us. This is too important. This is too important’.
My team and I were offered the job to handle the communication for the Buhari campaign in November 2014. I couldn’t believe it. We had never been close to the All Progressives Congress; I had never even met Buhari. Even the ‘closer’ Tinubu, I have not met since that time in 2002 when I served him tea as a production assistant at the Nigerian Television Authority.
I had a few weeks before declined a meet to discuss youth communication for the Goodluck Jonathan campaign because I no longer had any faith in his leadership, but I was almost certain he was going to win anyway.
In May 2014, I had arrived Abuja to speak at a #BringBackOurGirlsevent. But I had hardly left the airport, when someone high up in the government called me: “If I see you up on that stage with Oby (Ezekwesili), you are finished in this country.”
So, I wondered, was it wise to finally set up enmity with the government for the next four years by working directly for its opposition?
All through the time my co-founder, Adebola Williams worked hard with the team of Uche Nnaji (OUCH) and Kelechi Amadi-Obi to shoot the photographs that redefined Buhari’s image, all through the period the team was assembled from Tobi to Alex Yangs to Kathleen Ndongmo, I couldn’t move. I was transfixed in fear, in hope that dared not speak. Could Nigerians actually unseat a seating President from the People’s Democratic Party?
I wondered if the rage I felt was worth the sacrifice I was about to make – putting my life, my relationships and my business on the line in a country where the biggest advice our richest man has given entrepreneurs is ‘never fight with the government of the day’?
All of that is history now. What looked like a mirage then has become reality. The job became a mission. After four months of the most emotional campaign in my lifetime, sleepless nights at the StateCraft Inc headquarters, from the campaign office in Abuja, supervising the setting up of billboards, fighting TV stations that didn’t want to air our ‘Is This Transformation?’ promos, Adebola following the candidate around the country, and rewriting speeches in the dead of the night because the candidate knew exactly what he wanted to say, we are here now. Nigerians have unseated a 16-year monopoly.
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Debola Williams – Chude’s partner that did the public part
I personally have studied these gentlemen in the last two years, and I think they deserve some commendation. Like I mentioned earlier, they have disrupted PR in Nigeria. PR and communication management are before now the exclusive preserve of old horses in the journalism profession – some journalists and mediamen who have practiced for years and decided to retire into image management. Yet, here are two young men that got the biggest PR job in Nigeria in the last one year and delivered with class. I leave you to imagine the door this will open for the gentlemen. Having on your company proposal that you handled the PR job that saw a widely resented man gain unprecedented acceptability to become the President of Nigeria, defeating a seating President, is enough line to get your company image management jobs anywhere in the world!
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He did well and one of the things I think worked for him was his professionalism. It isn’t an easy thing to “fight” the government of the day especially in a politically heat country like ours but with handful and “headful” of professionalism, one can maneuver his way. Well done Chude. I still envy you.