The 2023 presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, has revealed how he made his first million working with an accounting firm in America.
He made the revelation in a 2012 interview conducted by The NEWS magazine which is currently recirculating.
Tinubu said he began working at Deloitte and Touche Consulting, one of eight big accounting firms that showed interest in his services as he graduated from the Chicago State University.
Read excerpt of interview below:
Were you tempted to stay back in the US after your studies?
To be honest with you, yes. I was lucky when I got to Chicago State University. I entered the university with honours from the Richard Daley College, because I got credit in majority of the Accounting courses.
After the first term, I was one of the candidates on the Dean’s list and my professor, Joe Jesse, commended me for my hard work, class participation and brilliance. He said that I would be lucky if I could keep my activities and brilliant results up till the end of the term. He didn’t say more or in what form the luck would manifest.
At the end of the term, and still on the Dean’s list, Professor Jesse came around to inform me that he would employ me to manage the Accounting laboratory for the institution. He gave the letter of employment to the dean of the faculty. The following week, I was called upon to take up employment as a tutor in the institution because I was very good at Mathematics and Accounting.
I met Tunde Badejo in the school; he was a year ahead of me. But I told him (we took a bet) that we would graduate the same year and he didn’t believe. Later, when I was given a scholarship to become a tutor, I took the letter to Tunde Badejo and said: ‘See, the school is paying my tuition.’ He was amazed. That was how I became a tutor, with my tuition being paid.
Tunde Badejo majored in Mathematics, and having been challenged, his performance got better the following semester and he also became a Maths tutor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. I was challenged and severely under pressure to keep up the grade as each semester rolled by, because if my grades should drop I would lose the scholarship. It was quite challenging and in the end, I graduated top of my class and I was recruited as an Accounting major. There were big accounting firms then.
Touche was number nine. I was recruited. And I still got other job offers. Then there were eight big accounting firms in the United States, including Arthur Andersen , Arthur Young, Ernst and Whinney, Peat Marwick and Mitchell, Deloitte and others. Out of the big eight, five of them offered me jobs and that was school recruitment–right on the campus.
I was on the Dean’s list; I was in line for the award for the overall best counting student as well as that of the university scholar’s award. With that, the big firms would continue to woo you. Despite the five job offers, I was equally offered employment by IBM and others. Professor Jesse called me and advised that I should not be arrogant. He asked that I remove my name from the career placement centre because, according to him, the more they saw my grades, the more I would be sought after.
He said that might hinder other accounting graduates from being recruited and that the faculty wanted as many accounting graduates as possible to be recruited by the big companies. So I went and removed it. Usually, there was a benchmark for recruitments by the big professional accounting firms and they didn’t go beneath that. I got an offer of $20,000, with travelling allowances and all that. It was big money for me at the time.
But when Arthur Young saw the money I was offered, they offered an additional $3,000. My adviser told me to consider an offer that would make me function effectively in my country, particularly given that the country is blessed with crude oil. I wondered what I would be coming back to do. The career placement officer called me again and asked me what I wanted to do. I said they just spoke to me from my department.
Unlike what happens here, universities in America prepare the students for the future; how to dress, how to face job interviews. The third day after that, Deloitte, Haskins and Sells, now Deloitte and Touche Consulting Group, gave me another offer. They said they were not just going to hire me, but develop me. They asked me to take the salary I was being offered or forget about the job. I went back to Professor Jesse and said: ‘Look at what these people are offering, I would rather go to Arthur Andersen because they were offering to pay more’.
But he said that I should not. He said he had always advised me that my career and professional development were more important. He said Delloite had clients like General Motors, Procter and Gamble, National Oil and worked with Aramco Exxon, etc. He said I should consider that my country has crude oil and I might want to return someday. He said I should consider a firm with clients in anufacturing and oil sectors than Arthur Andersen, which only dealt with financial institutions and banks.
I took to his advice. I resumed work at Deloitte training school in June 1979. By April 1979, when I was graduating, I had gotten my future charted. And that was the greatest thing I achieved in America.
Tunde Badejo was still looking for a job. As a honours student, I was there at the high table with the Dean, President of the college and so on, while the rest of the graduands were on the lower platform. So, when they called my friend, Tunde Badejo’s name, he refused to get up because they mispronounced his name and called him ‘Tunde Badeho’. He refused to get up.
I was laughing at him from the high table and was saying: ‘You see, I told you we would graduate at the same time.’ I later stood from where I was seated and whispered to the event handler that his name is Badejo and not Badeho. It was not until they called the name correctly that he stood up.
Why did you opt to study Accounting?
Sincerely, it was accidental. It was the university placement. I was good in Mathematics and business courses. In fact, if I were to choose a career for myself, I would have chosen marketing. I know Tunde was placed in the Mathematics department also by the university. I came in with A grades and I had nothing less than A+ in Accounting and Statistics.
How did you get into Mobil?
At Deloitte and Touche, I chose to travel more than 80 per cent of my working years there. And that is because if a staff chose to travel, he would make more money because he would get travel allowances. That got me into National Oil, which became the Joint Venture Partner of Aramco Oil in Saudi Arabia, which is like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
We had gone there to set up their accounting and auditing system. It was while on that service that I got my financial break. When I returned to the United States, my employers gave me a huge bonus, which instantly turned me into a millionaire.
How much was that?
The bonus was $850,000, before taxes. My salaries were also being paid into the bank and I was not touching them. At the time, my salary deposits in the bank had risen to about $1.8 million.
READ ALSO: Tinubu: I would’ve been in Aba chasing lizards as native doctor if not for Lagos – Joe Igbokwe
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