Nigerian newspapers love interviewing MD/CEOs. Company Founders. Chairmen. Big men. But that’s not limited to the media alone. Even as a people, we are very good at celebrating founders and the organisations they started, whether a company, a bank, an insurance company, a media house or even a religious organisation. We share their amazing success stories. We showcase them as inspirations. We also want to be as rich and influential like them. What we don’t do well, however, is asking questions about the quality of organisations they built. When they are no longer there, what happens next? Will their organisations survive?
Every founder will not be in his company or organization forever. One day, he will leave. That is not a prayer or curse. It is a fact. What happens the morning after the founder is no longer able to come to work again?
A founder can leave a smooth transition or leave a crisis behind him. They are founders who started great and successful companies in this country but whose unexpected deaths caused the collapse of the institutions they laboured all their lives to build. The companies couldn’t endure. They died. Their companies are overgrown with weeds today, sad reminders of the glorious past, and what could have been.
I have spent years at Posterity Media documenting leaders and their institutions. The pattern is consistent. The founder provides the vision and the energy, and in the early days, that concentration of power is useful. When you have five staff, you don’t need a board charter. You need the founder’s phone number. But what works for five will kill you at 500. A company that still runs on the founder’s memory, his personal relationships and his verbal approvals cannot scale. At some point, personality must give way to process. We are seeing this play out right now in our Corporate Nigeria, and the smart companies are showing examples of how it should be done.
Take Seplat Energy for instance. In June, the company announced that Roger Brown, who led Seplat for 13 years and through its dual listing and the major acquisition of Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, would retire on July 31st, 2026. The board did not wait for a vacuum. They announced his successor the same day — Engr. Effiong Okon, who has been inside Seplat since 2018 and who delivered first gas at ANOH. And they went further to announce that Senator Udoma Udo Udoma will retire as Chairman in December, with Tony Elumelu taking over as Chairman on January 1, 2027. That is what a transition looks like. No drama, no press war, no family meeting at midnight. Just governance!
Champion Breweries did the same thing. When Dr. Inalegwu Adoga resigned in June, the board appointed an acting managing director, Rasheed Adebiyi, to hold the fort and announced that Malolan Sampath, with 26 years in FMCG and beverages, would assume office on September 1st. He resumed as planned. Continuity was not left to chance.
Compare that to what happens in many family businesses, and the numbers are sobering. At the International Family Business Conference hosted by Lagos Business School this year, Professor Uchenna Uzo, revealed that while family businesses contribute nearly 50 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, 70 per cent fail to make it to the second generation. Dr. Okey Nwuke of LBS added that only 28 per cent of the 365 businesses they surveyed have a formal succession framework. Meristem Family Office, in its inaugural Family Wealth Report this year, found the same thing: 40 per cent of respondents admitted their business is too dependent on the founder, and only 20 percent have a clear written succession plan.
As John Momoh, Chairman of Channels Media Group, said at that same conference, “If the founder is the system, the system will fail.” He is right. If your accountant needs to call you before paying for diesel, you have not built a company. You have built a shrine around yourself.
This is why Aliko Dangote’s interview on ARISE News on September 15th was important, beyond the headlines. When asked about succession and whether he was looking for a male heir, Dangote said bluntly that having a son is not his priority. He said, “Sometimes you can pray for God to give you a son, but that son might be the one to bring down the name of the family.” His point was not about gender; it was about governance. Dangote said he wants his companies to be run professionally, with the highest level of governance, so that no family member can destroy what he has built. He confirmed that his three daughters, Halima, Fatima and Mariya, are already in senior roles not by force, but by interest, and that one of them can eventually lead the group. And to institutionalize it further, he has signed papers that one-third of his entire estate will go to the Dangote Foundation after his death.
That is a founder thinking about endurance, not just empire. It is the opposite of what we saw recently in the estate of the late Chief Bode Akindele, where a vast industrial empire with tenants like Sainsbury’s and Asda abroad ended up requiring the Administrator-General of Lagos State to be appointed as interim administrator because the family was in court over the Will. How sad!
A serious organisation must be able to answer questions without calling the founder. Why did we enter this market? Which mistake must we never repeat? Which customer took ten years to build? Which values are non-negotiable? If those answers are only in one man’s head, the company is carrying its history in a very fragile container.
Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede made this point at the LBS Family Business Conference last year. He said the mortality of family businesses has a perfect correlation with our stunted development. While other regions build on existing legacies and enjoy compounding, Africa keeps restarting from zero because every founder wants to start afresh.
The solution is not complicated, but it requires humility.
First, start succession on day one. Coleman Technical Industries just celebrated 50 years. The founder’s son, George Onafowokan, told Punch this year that legacy only happens when there is a deliberate attempt to ensure the business grows beyond you.
Second, separate the founder from the institution. Build a real board, even if it is for an SME. Write down the processes. Document the knowledge. This is why at Posterity Media, we insist that institutional storytelling is not PR; it is preservation.
Third, stop confusing loyalty with leadership. The person who was loyal to you for 20 years may not be the person who can lead the next 20 years. The next leader needs competence, emotional intelligence and the ability to earn legitimacy from people who did not witness the founding sacrifice.
Nigeria needs businesses that can survive leadership change without losing identity. We have enough examples of businesses that started strong and died because the founder thought he would live forever. We should celebrate founders, yes, but we should challenge them to build something that does not need them forever.
The true measure of a founder is not how difficult it is to replace him. It is how confidently the organisation continues after he has left. The founder will eventually be gone. The institution should not be.
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O’Femi Kolawole is a journalist, author, publisher and media development professional. He is the founder of Posterity Media, where he specialises in leadership documentation, institutional storytelling and preserving the memory of organisations and their leaders. He can be reached on 08033983499 or ofemikolawole@gmail.com
