By Olukorede Yishau
The United States of America is one nation that many other nations look up to. As history has shown, its greatness has a lot to do with its people. It was blessed and is still blessed with many men and women who see touching lives as a divine assignment. To them, making a difference was and is still not an exception but the rule. One of these angels who graced our world and made a difference not just in the United States but all over was John Davison Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil. He was America’s richest man in his time. He made philanthropy a defining attribute of his life.
Rockefeller, who was described as a man with a “strong moral sense and intense religious convictions”, donated huge amounts of money to biomedical research and it is thanks to his money that vaccines now exist for Meningitis and Yellow fever. Decades after his death his vaccines are still helping millions in Africa, Asia and elsewhere.
“The best philanthropy is constantly in search of the finalities—a search for a cause, an attempt to cure evils at their source,” he once said.
Like Rockefeller, America is also blessed with Uber rich billionaires like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and others who have amassed wealth and have expressed a commitment to give it all away.
Nigeria is also not without men and women with milk of human kindness flowing in them. One very outstanding one was in the news last week for yet another enviable philanthropic gesture. His name is Alhaji Muhammadu Indimi, an Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR). Like Rockefeller, he is an oil billionaire as founder of Oriental Energy Resources, one of the oldest and most successful indigenous oil companies in Nigeria. On Thursday, December 23, 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurated a multibillion naira complex purpose-built and donated to the University of Maiduguri by Indimi. The complex is home to the Centre for Distance Learning as well as the International Conference Centre. Facilities include Exam Hall, conference room, e-Resources Centre, laboratory as well as staff offices and recreational areas.
Indimi’s oil and gas odyssey began in 1990 when alongside 10 other Nigerian businessmen he received an oil licence in a discretionary oil licensing round superintended over by Prof. Jubril Aminu, who was oil minister under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Aminu, as a minister, pursued a deliberate policy to encourage indigenous participation in the industry.
Oriental was among the first of the class of 1990 to hit oil in commercial quantities and has continued to produce till today.
That oil licence and the setting up of Oriental Energy has made Indimi one of Nigeria’s richest men with an estimated net worth of $500m according to a 2015 Forbes report but unlike other rich men, Indimi seems focused on accumulating wealth so that he can give it out to the less fortunate for the betterment of the society.
Indimi’s giving is not tokenistic. To structure his philanthropic endeavours, the Maiduguri-born billionaire set up the Mohammed Indimi Foundation (MIF), which has contributed greatly to education, health, social enterprise development and special emergency interventions.
The host communities where Oriental Energy operates in the Mbo and Effiat Local government areas of Akwa Ibom State have been recipients of his large-heartedness and generosity. Over 1,000 indigenes of the state have enjoyed full scholarship since 2009. An annual medical outreach, which was launched in 2018, impacts 15,000 yearly while a science Laboratory Complex donated to the Community Grammar School, Ebughu in Mbo, Akwa Ibom is helping to raise a new generation of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) scholars.
The foundation has organised capacity building workshops on sustainable community development planning and management for the host communities. It has also built a Youth Empowerment Centre in Mbo and sponsored a Sustainable Business Development and Management training for 15 members of the Board of Trustees and management staff of the Centre.
To help cushion the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Indimi donated food items worth millions of Naira to communities in Mbo Local Government and gave N5 million as a start-up grant to the Mbo Empowerment Foundation to manage the Mbo Youth Empowerment Centre.
Indimi may not have helped in funding the discovery of vaccines for Meningitis and Yellow Fever like Rockefeller but his philanthropy is helping to lighten the burden of many in Nigeria and is putting a smile on the faces of beneficiaries of his generosity from Mbo in the Southsouth to Bama in the Northeast and elsewhere.
What Indimi and others do with their wealth brings to mind the clips of an interview a radio station in the United States had with an American who used to be very rich and famous. In it, there were no tears in his eyes but he was crying; crying inside for opportunities missed and most likely never to be regained. His cry was that when he had money, he neither helped nor facilitated anybody’s rise. He spent only on one person: himself.
From one five-star hotel to the other, he moved. From one holiday resort to the other, he junketed. He thought taking care of himself meant wasting money on hard drugs, champagne, designer suits and, of course, women. Dollars were rolling into his accounts regularly through endorsement deals and others and he blew them all. On the wrong things! At the time he was engaging all these vanities, there were beggars on the streets of New York. There are still a number of them around Times Square.
My final take: As another year begins tomorrow, please let us make it a habit to touch lives in our corners, no matter how little. We don’t have to be wealthy like Muhammadu Indimi and others before we can make a difference.
• Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author of ‘In The Name of Our Father’ and ‘Vaults of Secrets’