When I first heard the news, I had to double-check the headline. You know that feeling when you read something so massive it feels like a typo? “BUA Group Awards Billions.” Not millions. Billions. I have sat through my fair share of corporate “Long Service Awards.” Usually, it is a standard formula: a plaque that collects dust by February, a branded thermos, and maybe a 50-inch TV if the company is feeling particularly generous that year. But what happened at the Eko Hotel last weekend, the “Night of Excellence” wasn’t just a ceremony. It was a life-altering, seismic shift for the people in that room.
Can you imagine being Debo Agbonyin? He is the Executive Director for Trade Finance and Logistics. He joined the company back in 1988. Think about that for a second. In 1988, mobile phones were bricks, and BUA was just a fledgling dream. He stayed for nearly four decades. And for that loyalty, Abdul Samad Rabiu handed him a cheque for ₦1 billion.
When he was called to speak, he couldn’t even find the words. Honestly, who could? How do you say “thank you” for a billion naira? You don’t. You just stand there, feeling the weight of thirty-six years of early mornings and late nights finally turning into something tangible.
It’s About More Than the Money (But Also, the Money)
There were five people who walked away with ₦1 billion each. Let that sink in. Then you had three people getting ₦500 million, seven getting ₦250 million, and a whole crowd of others receiving ₦100 million. In total, ₦30 billion was disbursed.
Now, I know what the cynics will say. “Oh, it is just PR,” or “He’s a billionaire, he can afford it.” But let’s be real, how many billionaires actually do this? We live in an era of “quiet quitting” and high turnover, where most companies treat employees like replaceable gears in a machine. Seeing a founder look at his staff and say, “This is not my achievement; it is ours,” feels like a glitch in the simulation. It is a bit of old-school honor mixed with modern-day wealth.
I have always thought that loyalty is a two-way street that mostly has “one-way” signs. You give your youth to a company, and they give you a pension that inflation eats for breakfast. But this gesture? It changes the narrative. It tells the guy working at the cement plant in Okpella or the sugar refinery in Port Harcourt that staying the course actually matters.
The “Japa” Era Antidote
We are currently living through the “Japa” wave, where every talented person has one eye on a visa and the other on the door. It is hard to blame them when the economy feels like a roller coaster with no seatbelts. But then you see 510 employees getting rewarded for staying five, ten, twenty, forty years.
Abdul Samad Rabiu mentioned that BUA started with modest beginnings 36 years ago. It’s grown into a trillion-naira empire, but he was very clear: “Every factory built… carries the imprint of employees who believed in the vision long before the results were visible.”
That is the hook, isn’t it? Believing before the results. It is easy to be loyal when the company is a giant. It is much harder when you are working out of a small office with a big dream and a boss who promises you that one day, it will all be worth it. For these 510 people, that “one day” finally arrived.
A Different Kind of Legacy
I saw a photo of the event, Dapo Abiodun was there, Aliko Dangote was there, the usual heavyweights. But the real stars were not the ones in the front row. They were the people holding those oversized cheques with trembling hands.
It makes me wonder: what would happen if more Nigerian companies operated like this? What if “human capital” wasn’t just a buzzword in an HR manual, but something we actually invested in? Most people don’t leave jobs; they leave feeling undervalued. It is pretty hard to feel undervalued when your boss hands you enough money to secure your family for three generations.
At the end of the night, it wasn’t just about the billions. It was about the fact that in a world that’s constantly moving on to the next best thing, someone decided to stop and say, “I remember you were here when we had nothing. And because I have everything now, you should too.”
If that is not the definition of a “Detty December” miracle, I don’t know what is.
Success is a lonely mountain if you don’t bring the people who helped you climb it.
