Kolade Harps on Adherence to Business Principles

. Says he fought to make Cadbury truly Nigerian company 

Dike Onwuamaeze

The first Nigerian Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc, Dr. Christopher Kolade, has called on the current management of the company to always adhere to simple business principles that emphasised that “people are seeking to obtain some value that they consider to be of appropriate quality and worth to themselves.”

Kolade made the call this week at an event with the theme: ‘Cadbury@60 Commemorative Event: Fireside Chat with Dr. Christopher Kolade’.

He said that these simple principles emphasised that people make business resources productive and a company does not perform better than its people.

According to him, each person can give or demand his/her best and could do better because they can desire to learn and apply the fruits of their learning, adding that “success, failure and mistakes are opportunities for learning.”

He also highlighted the importance of people to an organisation by stating that no “company performs better than its people” because they “are the most important resource in the management of a business company.”

Kolade also revealed that his overriding vision as the first indigenous chief executive was to “Nigerianise” Cadbury in a manner that would make it a truly Nigerian company by having Nigerians at strategic management and directorate positions in the company.   

He said, “My vision was that Cadbury Nigeria has to become a Nigerian company and we have to work at making it a Nigerian company.

“I came in as director of administration. But four years later I was told that I am going to become the managing director/chief executive, so I had to develop a managing director’s vision.

“My vision then was that if they have ‘Nigerianised’ the chief executive’s position, does that not tell me that I should ‘Nigerianise’ every position because we were having expatriate directors as well then.

“So, my vision was twofold: One, we must try to ‘Nigerianise’ as much as we could because I believed that Cadbury Nigeria should become a Nigerian company rather than an adjunct office of an international business.”

Kolade said that he was convinced then that the company was never going to succeed if it continued to depend on expertise from abroad.  

He also recalled that he and his colleagues had a rough time pursuing this vision to “Nigerianise” the company.

“The last position to be ‘Nigerianised’ was that of the technical director because it was the belief of the international group then (Cadbury Schweppes) that the technical expertise needed for a company like this could not be found in Nigeria and, therefore, had to be someone from abroad.

“But we found a Nigerian with everything you will consider the right qualification to be a technical director. This is in fulfillment of my vision,” he said.

In his remarks, the Chairman of Cadbury Nigeria Plc, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman, said that Kolade was someone he had known for long and admired.

Suliaman said: “I admire him because he has done a lot of work in many places and done all of them with an unblemished record. There are not many Nigerians that are of such.”

In her welcome remarks, the Managing Director of Cadbury Nigeria Plc, Ms. Oyeyimika Adeboye, said that “celebrating 60 years of Cadbury Nigeria Plc and having Kolade to start the yearlong celebration is a real privilege.”