Mr. Gamaliel Onosode, frontline industrialist, technocrat and administrator, is
dead.
He died at 8.15 a.m. on
Tuesday, his son, Ese Onosode, announced in a statement. He was 82.
He was born May 22,
1933 and was educated at the Government College, Ughelli and the
University of Ibadan. He emerged as one of the country’s leading, educated
chief executives of major corporate organisations before his retirement.
He was at the helm of
NAL merchant bank of Nigeria before he rose to become a leading
boardroom player in Nigeria’s corporate environment. He was also a former
presidential adviser to President Shagari and a former president of the
Nigerian Institute of Management.
Onosode, an
Urhobo was born and raised in Sapele, a suburban city in the current Delta
State by a disciplined father, he sometimes credited the strict family
background and practice as being a complementary factor in his success as a
disciplined civil servant and corporate administrator.
Throughout his career,
Dr. G. O. Onosode has chaired several private and public sector businesses and
initiatives. He was the Chairman of Dunlop Nigeria Plc (1984–2007), a former
chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc (1977–93), the Presidential Commission on Parastatals
(1981), Nigeria LNG Working Committee and Nigeria LNG Limited (1985–90)
and the Niger Delta Environmental Survey (since 1995). He is also the Chairman
of Zain Nigeria, a GSM telecommunications company, the oldest
GSM operator in Nigeria.
Mr. Onosode was
Presidential Adviser on Budget Affairs and Director of Budget (1983). He is a
Fellow of the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, the Nigerian
Institute of Management, of which he was President (1979–82). He is also a
Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, having been elected to
membership of its Board of Fellows in 1998.
In addition, Mr.
Onosode is immediate past and inaugural President of the Chartered Institute of
Stockbrokers, immediate past Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing
Council of the University of Uyo and immediate past and inaugural
President & Chairman of Council of the Association of Pension Funds of
Nigeria. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and holds
Honorary D.Sc. degrees of Obafemi Awolowo University (1990), the
University of Benin (1995), and the Rivers State University of Science and
Technology (2003) as well as Honorary D.D. degree of The Nigerian Baptist
Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso (2002).
Primarily a business
personality, he has seen his career wade through different sectors of the
Nigerian economic environment. Though, he was a part of a profligate democratic
experiment which was the second republic, Gamaliel Onosode tried to bring
a disciplined approach to public finance. Towards the end of 1983, when public
confidence in the economic direction of the country was eroded and
accountability was lacking in government subsidies to public enterprises,
he was brought in to find solutions to the lackluster performance of public
enterprises, as the head of a Nigerian Commission on public parastatals and to bring in a disciplined approach to
government subsidies. The offshoot of his honest and disciplined approach
earned him respect from subsequent administrations. A report which was later
tagged the Onosode report, an outgrowth of his role as the chairman of the
commission to review Nigerian parastatals was the first in the nation to
tackle comprehensively, the industrialisation drive and capital spending which
dominated the oil boom of the 1970s and the early 1980s. The report identified
five major defects in planning which it believed had become evident by the end
of 1983:
Public capital
expenditure rose during the oil boom at a much faster rate than Nigeria’s
physical, technical or financial abilities.
Huge expenditure on
particular industrial projects did not yield expected returns because of
“inappropriate choices in their selection, size, design, location and
management.”
Government policies
laid too much emphasis on industrialisation, without regard to Nigeria’s
resource base and comparative advantage.
Frequent changes in
fiscal and monetary policies created planning problems for the private sector.
The exchange rate of
the naira was not managed “to reflect the basic strength of the economy and the
need to encourage domestic production.
In 1995, he became the
Chairman of the Niger Delta Environmental Survey, a
non-governmental organisation that conducted scientific studies on
environmental and social impact assessment of oil exploration in the Niger
Delta. The survey was partly financed by Shell. The survey reports, which
apportioned responsibilities and blame for much of the environment’s
degradation in the region on oil operators, the federal government and
communities has not been made public.
Deacon Onosode is an
alumnus of the University of Ibadan, and has contributed immense time to
see through philanthropic and governing matters concerning the university. He
is the former Pro-Chancellor of the University and Chairman of its Governing
Council.
He is also a devout
Christian and started Good News Baptist Church in his Sitting Room on 1
Feb.1984. Good News Baptist Church is now a large church of over 2,000 people
and has become a force to reckon with in the Nigerian Baptist Convention in
terms of missions and evangelism. Mr. Gamaliel Onosode was the inaugural
Chairman of the Global Missions Board of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. In
addition, Onosode is Chairman of the Governing Council of the Nigerian Baptist
Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso, Nigeria’s oldest degree awarding theological
institution, which in 2008 marked 110 years of its existence while the
University of Ibadan was 60 years old.
