How I Earned $2.6 million in 2022: What You Can Learn
Karl Toriola,the CEO of Nigeria’s biggest telecom by revenue and size, MTN Nigeria, had a remarkable 2022.
Aside from the honour of being the first Nigerian to ever be appointed as the CEO of MTN Nigeria, Karl, who is a prince in his community, earned a $2.6 million salary from MTN Group last year.
$2.6 million is 2:6 billion naira at today’s exchange rate.
Karl, who is a Modekeke Prince from the Modekeke community in Osun State, was rewarded with such hefty compensation after leading MTN Nigeria to a staggering profit of $1.29 billion in 2022.
The Breakdown
A breakdown of Karl’s earnings shows that he earned a base salary of $546,743 (546 million naira) for the 12 months that made up 2022.
A base salary is what he earned every month for the past 12 months of 2022.
Aside from his basic salary, because of the yeoman job that he did as the CEO of MTN Nigeria, he was rewarded with a performance-based short-term incentive of $654,353, both attributed to MTN Group’s remarkable financial performance.
The incentive of $650,353 was a pat in the back from MTN Nigeria to him for well done making the shareholders richer last year, and that is different from his monthly salary.
Under Toriola’s leadership, MTN Nigeria has cemented its position as the group’s largest and most profitable subsidiary, making substantial contributions to MTN Group’s profits and revenues. In 2022, MTN Nigeria reported revenue and profit figures of N2.012 trillion and a profit of N358.2 billion, respectively, a notable increase from N1.346 trillion ($1.75 billion) and N205.2 billion ($266.14 million) in 2020.
In addition to his executive and governance roles, Toriola also holds a minority stake of 0.0201 percent in MTN Nigeria, totaling 4,086,858 ordinary shares, placing him among the top shareholders with a current value of nearly $1.34 million.
It is remarkable that Karl became a billionaire in naira by working in another person’s business.
He did not go out to start his own business. Putting a lie to the narrative sold to us by motivational speakers that salaries are a bribe given to you by your employees to work for their dreams
It is not true, and the thing is that Karl is not an outlier.
There are many people of his generation who are working for other people’s businesses; they are employees, not employers, but they are rich and billionaires in naira.
Adaora Umeoji, who is the current deputy managing director of Zenith Bank, is a Naira billionaire, and she has worked for one man all her life: Jim Ovia of Zenith Bank.
What Karl made last year from MTN—not many small-scale companies in Nigeria made it as their revenue, not to mention profit. But that is one man’s salary for one year.
So next time, when a motivational speaker approaches you with the lie that salaries are a bribe given to you to sacrifice your dreams for another person’s business,
Show him Karl’s example and remind the delusional motivational speaker that not all of us have the grit to be entrepreneurs in this part of the world.
Entrepreneurship is hard, very hard, and not as glamorous as we paint it.
You can grow another person’s dream and still end up as a rich man or woman.
Many examples abound.
Chukwudi Iwuchukwu is an accomplished Entrepreneur who writes about finance, business and entrepreneurship in his spare time
Copyright 2023
2 Comments
I need to earn any money
That’s great