• Why the billionaire businessman is not having a party….
Like an ancient mariner whose heartbeat dwarfs echoes of his incredible exploits, IT guru, Chief Leo Stan Ekeh, the chairman of Zinox Group, commands the awe of many of his peers and admirers in Nigeria’s socio-political and business sector.
The billionaire businessman would be 60 years in few days and interestingly, the hopes of many a well-wisher yearning to be invited to his birthday anniversary would be dashed. He’s not really rolling out the drums.
A confidant of Leo told TheCapital that the billionaire businessman is sponsoring a wondrous Praise and Receive Rock Gospel Concert in 7 cities. The first leg which kicked off on St Valentine’s Day, February 14th, made the old parade ground in Abuja creaked at the eaves.
The concert which featured best gospel artists was captioned “Sinachi live in concert” and featured over 16 artists like Buchi, Frank Edward, Chioma Jesus etc. Some of the privileged guests at the event confirmed they have never seen a thing like that in the history of Abuja. It’s going to be a week-long birthday celebration. Some of his friends are planning a big party for him but we are not sure if he is going to be around for any party. According to an insider, “Have you ever heard where Bill Gate or Steve Jobs had a lavish party?”
Interestingly, Leo Stan recently launched the biggest Digital Entertainment Company in Africa, New Concept Media Group (NCMG), investing millions of dollars on latest music concert equipment, lights, logistic trucks etc. Chief Ekeh is widely admired and regarded for his dazzling and humane exploits in industry and philanthropy. This duly earned him the national honour: OFR by the Federal Government of Nigeria and interminable accolades from his peers and even his business rivals.
This is simply a rare peep into his world; and tempting as it is to embark on a more extensive and revealing voyage into the fathomless folds of his private reality and unusual humanity, it is a discourse best saved till later. Perhaps this cursory sortie into his confidential space will enhance better understanding of the man whose sterling manhood and citizenship of humanity is widely acknowledged by family, friends and even mere acquaintances.
From afar, Leo cuts the picture of a man that seems too tightly packed up inside. Some would say he is chock-full of ideas and flights of imagination that are too densely cast to be undone. Unfastening Leo thus presents a tasking exercise. It’s an onerous task to unbolt the hub of who Leo Stan-Eke is and what he represents; notwithstanding, friends, family and business associates may seek contentment from the fact that a man like him symbolises the universe’s rarest gift to mankind. This galactic gesture is borne from the universe’s belief in man’s unusual capacity to rebel against the conventional and stun the odds while manifesting as something more than a curse or blight to humanity and the future.
Leo is no doubt a rare phenomenon and gift to this generation. While most of his friends, family and business associates are already in the know and appreciate this fact, like the infinite crowd of folk that constitute mere acquaintances to him, they are continually stunned, captivated and humbled by the man, Leo’s infectious humility and generosity of spirit.
Those who are yet to encounter the benevolence of Ekeh or profit from it nonetheless share a bubbly enthusiasm for it. At the very least, everybody seems to love him. Magnificence, order, complexity, mystery and possibilities—the same things that draw folk to their most treasured daydreams lure them to Zinox head honcho.
The primary difference is that subtle and blatant idolatry takes a front seat in the flurry of emotion and perpetual elocution of the rare civility and bounteousness of spirit accorded them by Leo. Yet he is forever quick to counsel folk about his ordinariness and thus prevent them from dressing him in what he considers spurious cloaks of a ‘saviour, ‘messiah,’ or ‘deity’ or ‘tin god.’ Yeah, Leo, for his extraordinariness, tirelessly seeks to be viewed as ordinary – which makes unlocking his core both a boon and conundrum to anyone.
It is hard to be more specific about the true worth of Leo’s humanity because unlike most of civilization’s great, contemporary statesmen and philanthropists, he has something quite different to offer to his several dependants and beneficiaries of his generosity. Leo is several things at the same time to everyone and anyone: he is a humanitarian who depicts raw compassion expressed with the greatest refinement and discipline.
The is an aesthete with stormy sublimity, unimaginable genius and that famed vision of ingenuity that separates the practiced from the mediocre; Leo to most and all of his acquaintances radiates an entirely different reality amid the world’s brutal capacity for ill and insensitivity; his humility and graciousness in his dealing with friends and established foes alike manifests as a sharp, shrill yet pleasant contradiction to the ugly and vulgar reality that daily becomes the plague of the mortal world.
Ekeh through his company Task Systems Limited was one of the few who pioneered Desktop Publishing and Computer Graphics in Nigeria. He computerized 95% of the Print Media, Publishing Houses and Advertising Agencies in Nigeria. Task Systems Limited, his first company has consistently won outstanding industry Awards as Best Partner Award for Compaq, HP, Microsoft, American Power Solution, APC, etc. for 20 years. Leo Stan Ekeh also pioneered IT Solutions in West Africa through his company ITEC Solutions Limited through which he has delivered the largest IT Solutions ever, from an indigenous firm, to the Nigerian Corporate Market.
Ekeh also pioneered IT Distribution in West Africa through Technology Distributions Limited, TD, which has emerged the Number 1 ICT distribution company in West Africa. TD has consistently won for ten years the highest industry Awards and recognitions for market penetration, revenue, and preferred partner status to become the most decorated ICT Distributor in West Africa.
Leo Stan Ekeh scored another first in 2001 when he set up Zinox Technologies Limited to manufacture Zinox Computers, Nigeria’s First Internationally Certified Branded Computers. Leo Stan’s Zinox Computer has some innovative features, which include – the Naira sign, and a Power Supply designed to contain the erratic nature of electric power in Nigeria. He ensured that at launch Zinox Computers already had the WHQL certification, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, consolidated 5 years later with the attainment of the NIS ISO 2000: 9001 QMS Certification.
In October 2013, the company announced the production of its computer tablet line named Zipad.
Leo Stan Ekeh has a record of incisive entrepreneurship and his vision to Computerize Nigeria has rewritten the history of Information Technology in the Third World. Ekeh who believes that no one is destined to be poor in this knowledge century has been the main driver of digital knowledge Democracy in Africa.
The most integrated Information Technology Group in the whole of Africa, the Zinox Group has shown multiple competencies in manufacturing, solutions delivery and logistics. The Group salvaged the 2006 Voters’ registration exercise by delivering 12,000 systems to INEC in 3 weeks. Again in 2011, under his leadership, the Group has been responsible for the technology backbone for the 2011 voters’ registration through the supply of 80,000 DDC Machines in 35 days, an awesome accomplishment for an indigenous firm in Nigeria or anywhere in the world.
Leo, The Great, has been married to his dark and lovely wife, Chioma for years. Leo and Chioma’s story reads like a dreamy exposition to extraordinary verses of love. Rather than dwell on familiar intrigues and alien realities that render human passion a shoddy and infantile enterprise in the annals of mortal romance, the story of their love becomes the reference point for aspiring romantics.
Leo and Chioma’s love story is best told in a more substantive format and literary forum hence this only represents a cursory glance at the genesis of their love.
That the duo started out as friends and cautious romantics is a reality known to their loved ones: friends, family particularly.
According to Leo, loving Chioma is both enlightening and invigorating; it reveals to him daily, his immense and unpredictable capacity for compassion and high affection. He never knew he was capable of loving anyone so until he met Chioma. And ever since he met the apple of his eye, he has worshipped daily in the spirit house of her love and elevated warmth.
Living with Chioma is equally liberating; it unearths to him daily the subtlety and clamorousness, and unrivalled ethereality of her love. The longer his stay with her, the deeper and more confounding his capacity to love her and yearn for her love.
Until he met her, he simply thought of love just another routine human exercise or demand, like eating and entrepreneurship. No sooner did he fall in love with her than he experienced a life-changing transfiguration from disenchanted speculator of love to an incurable romantic. Chioma thought him to discover inwardly, that ingenious facility to knit together a timeless yarn of love that promises to outlive their friendship and their remarkable, simple lives.
