Elumelu disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja when he delivered a lecture on “Strategic leadership: My business experience”. The lecture was organised for Course 30 of the National Defence College,
Describing oil theft in the Niger Delta as a national challenge, Elumelu said: “We produce sometimes about 87,000 barrels per day, thieves take 50,000 per day and to me, this requires a national seminar or dialogue.
“In my view it is one of the highest levels of threat to our country because it’s so much money in the hands of people who don’t pay tax, people we don’t regulate, the country is not safe. They do that to us; they do that to other operators also”, The Nation quoted Elumelu as saying.
According to him, Nigeria lost over $4 billion to oil thieves in the last three quarters of last year. He lamented that those involved in theft use the money realised from the oil heist to acquire more lethal ammunition, thereby posing threat to Nigeria’s corporate existence.
Furthermore, he noted that activities of oil thieves “requires strategic leadership to deal with issues like this within the country”, stressing, “but the lesson there is resilience in leadership.”
“Nigeria cannot continue like this. Our country will wake up to the realities someday. We look forward to men and women in this room who will help remove this national disgrace and problems that we face”, he warned.
Speaking the growth of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), Elumelu said the bank has been granted a license to operate in Dubai.
Speaking on how big the UBA has grown from when he led some young bankers to take over distressed Crystal Bank and transforming it to Standard Trust Bank, followed by the acquisition of UBA, Elumelu said: “We are the only African bank that has deposit taking license in all of USA, we have today UBA UK, we have UBA, Paris and we just got license for UBA, in Dubai.”
He said the team that transformed Standard Trust Bank to UBA today wanted to make a statement that “out of Africa, out of Nigeria you can do businesses successfully, and can do business in various environments anywhere in the world, today that experiment or dream has come to life.” THE NATION