Yesterday,
27th July, 2016 will go down in the history of this land as the day two
prominent Muslims of the land woke up on the shores of the afterlife. One was
the wife of the General Manager of the
Greater Accra Islamic Education Unit,
Sheikh Armeyao Shuaibu and the other was Alhaji Adamu Iddrisu, the owner and Chairman of Global Haulage
Group Limited (GHGL). May their souls
rest in absolute serenity.
I was at the latter’s funeral gathering at the
head office of Global Haulage Group Ltd at Achimota and I left there with a
change in my usually lively and spirited mood. The sea of mourners with their
attractively-packed cars, the melancholic countenances with an ambiance of
sorrow and the surreptitious burial with its attendant quietness brought every
activity to a tie-up. With a mere sight on the faces of mourners, one could
sense the ejaculation of sorrow.
Everybody concurred on the decision to bury him
privately in the edifice of his domicile. It would have taken hours of
difficulty and everything will have ended in a gridlock. (Gridlock: The
stoppage of free vehicular movement in an urban area because key intersections
are blocked by traffic).
The death of Alhaji Adamu Global as he was
affectionately called attracted high-profile personalities. The vice-president
of the land, His Excellency Kwesi-Amissah Arthur was there to finally escort
the remains of the great entrepreneur. The former President of the land, His
Excellency John Agyekum Kufour was there and refused to move away from the sun
when told to. He cited the fact that those praying for the dead body were also
under the sun. That was when the final prayer for Alhaji Adamu was in session. Dr.
Mahamadu Bawumia, Mr. Inusah Fuseini were among the top-notch individuals of
the country who came to bid their farewell to the philanthropist. I described the death as “nation-stopper.”
I am not writing to inform anyone about this
death. It’s already known. Far from
that. I wrote this because I am peeved and seriously disappointed. That a great
man of such status will die without something to glean from about the major
decisions he took in his life that shaped him. A great entrepreneur of such
standing should have a well-documented chronicle about his life.
Alhaji Adamu died at the age of 72. In his
three score and ten life on earth, he founded the Global Haulage Company.
According to the company’s website,
“Global Haulage Company Limited is one of the most
successful private transport entities in Ghana. The success of this company has
been accomplished by virtue of the principles and beliefs fused into it by the
Founder and Chairman,
Alhaji Adamu Iddrisu. This is a man who demands HONESTY, HARD WORK and LOYALTY which he believes must permeate the
entire business organization.
Global Haulage Company Ltd. operates throughout the length and
breadth of Ghana and to other destinations in the West African Sub – Region. It
evacuates 17% of the total national output of about 650,000 tonnes of cocoa
from producing areas in the hinterland to in- land Take – Over Points and the
two sea ports of Tema and Takoradi. It also transports commodities like lime
from Takoradi to mining companies in West Africa and also steel products,
fertilizer, chemicals, consumables etc. from the two sea ports to destinations
within the country and the Sub – region.”
Under the name Global Haulage Group Ltd, eleven
successful companies formed by Alhaji Adamu thrive. These are the Global
Haulage Company Limited, the Royal Bank, Imperial General Insurance, Federated
Commodities, Trans Royal Ltd, Cocoa Merchant, Royal Commodities, Isudam
Construction and more recently, Global Automobile Limited. It also has the GG Farms and
Global Haulage Real Estate, which is into the construction of warehouses and
residential properties.
Alhaji Adamu has left us sadly and with nothing
for the generations to come to read and understand the difficulties he had to
overcome to become one of the most affluent men in our nation. We read about
entrepreneurs and other great men from other parts of the world from books authored
by themselves or others. They help us in
one way or the other.
However, we need more of the lives of our
successful ones to be written. It will resonate well with our circumstances
here in Ghana. In that way, we can easily identify with the choices they made.
The situation elsewhere can never be the same as in Ghana. We should be given
the honor of knowing how they were able to make it in a land Mensah Otabil described
as “poisoned”.
That will definitely inspire us and imbue in us
the “confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above
the circumstances of our birth” as
Barrack Obama stated.
Alhaji Adamu’s chronicle will have been a life
worth-reading. To inspire and carry along the next generation of our
entrepreneurs. A lot of the people who know Alhaji Adamu only know about the
good times. They never knew about the turbulent period in his life. They never
knew how he struggled to build such a business empire. They never knew how he
rose from nowhere to be a recipient of the Millennium Excellence Awards. How he
became the Greater Accra District Best Farmer in 1986 and the Greater Accra
Regional Best Farmer in 1987.
They never knew
about the two awards he received during the Africa International Awards in
Tunisia in 1992, and two European Awards- Brussels in 1999 and Spain in 2003. A lot will never know either.
Chinua Achebe stated in Things fall Apart that “Looking at a king's mouth, one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.” A lot do not see
the difficulties Alhaji had to surmount to reach where he reached. In
1971, Global Haulage had only 15 vehicles. The company now runs over 230 trucks
daily. It transports goods
from the Tema and Takoradi port to Northern Ghana, Mali, Niger and other
countries in the West African sub-region.
When the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology conferred an Honorary Doctorate degree on him in 2015, he said this
to the Daily Graphic when interviewed "When many transport companies left
Ghana in 1980 to seek greener pastures in other African countries, we stayed in
Ghana to build this brand."
The last time I had a chat with Abdul Salam
Daaru, the CEO of Yaa Salam Publishers, we lamented the fact that we really
have such paucity of writers and written materials as a people. He exhorted all
of us to begin writing no matter how insignificant the subject is. Another
brother of mine (Idris Gulo of the Gh Online Radio) left me speechless when he
reminded me that the National Chief Imam’s life has not been documented yet.
How sad!
The
late Adamu Iddrisu was born at Old Fadama, a suburb of Accra, near the bubbling
Agbogbloshie foodstuff market. Yet he has risen through the mill
to a position where he is providing job opportunities for about 12,000 people
in direct and indirect labor. The advice I have for his twenty-six children is
that they should have even if it is a short story of their great dad documented.
To the
youth, I leave you with my words. These words were captured in another
piece I wrote. It is titled “Letter to Hassan: Ghana must write more.” It was
published on Ghana Web on 5th July,
2014.
“The
youth must rise up to the occasion to fill the gap left by the demise of these
two great writers and subsequently correct the writing anomaly in this country.
When we say “Ghana must work again”, we are not only talking about the economy
and governance. We are also not only talking about sports. Neither are we also
talking about the manufacturing of aircrafts and rocket science. When we say
“Ghana must work again”, it encompasses everything. Including that which
consolidates our heritage as a people, everything that entrenches our position
on the map of the world and everything that will make later generations proud
of the well-documented history and lives of their successors. And writing will
massively ensure that.”
Thank you!
Inusah
Mohammed.
NB: The
writer is a Youth-Activist and a Student of Knowledge.