Never lobby to be or remain a leader, warns Gaius-Obaseki

Tomorrow, many people from far and wide including family, friends, associates, captains of industry and government officials will gather at his Benin GRA residence to celebrate a mass in honour of a former Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Mr. Jackson Gaius-Obaseki, as he clocks 70 years.
Gaius-Obaseki means different things to different people. To the people in government, he is simply very stubborn. To his petroleum industry counterparts, “he is urbane, bold, brainy, doesn’t stab friends, slightly arrogant, articulate, has good command of English.”
To the international community, he is known as the petroleum industry reformer. To some students of the then Hussey College, Warri, he is a teacher. But whatever one may think of him, he is simply one who sees himself as a master of the game, because of his professionalism and exposure and not given to vagaries. He allows his motto: God’s Grace, My Gift, to guide his decisions on everything.
Gaius-Obaseki tells Clara Nwachukwu, in this no-holds barred interview that being a leader, your success depends more on how firm you are in taking crucial decisions of common good and instituting a culture of excellence among your people. Excerpts:
AT 70, you are retired but not yet tired, so where is all the energy coming from?
I normally tell people that the grace of the Lord is my gift (His Grace, My gift), and that summarises my life – whether its energy, whether its decision, whatever it is. The decision I make is not born out of intelligence, but because I have the Grace to say yes when I should say yes, and to say no when I should say no.
…Not many people can keep to yes or no whenever they want to?
Yes, but If you’re just and believe in what you are doing, and you’re also conscious of the fact that you are accountable, then you don’t have to fear. Fear is the devil’s weapon against most people ideally. Again, if you also believe that you have a provider, honestly I can’t remember if I ever prayed one day to say: God do this for me, or God do that for me; all my prayers is usually thanksgiving because He has done so much therefore, temptations came my way like they will come everybody’s way, but they passed. Not many people believed when I was going that I was happy, but I also knew that it is difficult for people to believe you, and I don’t claim to be better than anybody, but that I have His grace, that is all.
Tell us about your growing up?
I had my own experience growing up; my father died when I was 10, and I experienced love that period. I came from a humble polygamous home. What you expect at times from a polygamous home is that the parents will be distant from their children, but I never experienced that. I slept with him; he used to give me his shirt to wear, although I heard later that he (my father) was told that when he was at that age I was just a carbon copy. But he died, he died in my arms, I was with him.
The truth of the matter is that I wasn’t as informed as my children are now, so I probably didn’t even know what it was to die, but I was there with my immediate senior brother, William. My father woke up in the morning, went to the bathroom, came out, he then asked a question: What is today’s date? And my brother answered, 12th of April.
The next minute he slumped. So for me I was just watching, watching my father fall right there before me. My senior brother, who was about three year older than me, so he understands more than me, screamed. My late brother, Joseph, who was also lying down heard the scream and rushed down, carried my father, put him on the bed. He would have driven like a crazy man, brought the only English doctor that was in the central hospital then, he was by name Dr. Drew, who came and certified him dead.
So that was a disconnect at that time. And for a family of 37 children, it was a little bit of a survival of the fittest, but the leadership was good. The leadership focused on my father’s desires that his children be properly educated, and I also have a fantastic mother anybody would want to have – peace, godliness, and again, by the time I grew up, I understood where my mother was also coming from. She was a princess from Ikare (Ondo State), so they were all moulded, just like my father was from Benin here because he also had royal blood.
So I grew up and before he died I had started my primary school and I finished. I was just going to school, and to be honest with you I also didn’t even know what education was, it was just my father said I should go to school and that was it. If anybody failed his exams, when we meet at the end of the year, in family hall meetings, if you passed your exams you will sit on the chair, if you failed, you sit on the floor, so everybody struggled to pass. But when he died, he had made provisions for all of us and I continued, and I ended up in Warri, Hussey College. I finished, I had school certificate and in 1967, I taught for a while in the same school before going to the University of Ibadan.
Looking back to where you came from to where you are today, would you say you realised all of your dreams, all of your objectives?
I believe that every man on earth is sent here on an assignment. You must have a covenant with your God. So the prayers we should pray all the time is: His will be done, because also there is a competition with the devil. We begin hear two voices, and if you are strong in prayers, you will recognise the right one and if you have the grace, you will win. But my mother before she died when I was growing up, especially when I was GMD, she used to tell me: fear not my son, what you are and what you will become was foretold before you were born. So if my mother said that I love her and I believed her. I dint plan to be GMD NNPC, no.
In that case, do you have any regrets or are there things you would wish you had a second choice to have done better?
No! I think every opportunity I had I gave it my best shot, I don’t have any regret.

Check the Vanguard newspaper for the full story.