An ardent football fan Serame Taukobong will takeover from Nigerian Michael Ikpoki as the CEO of MTN Ghana in a massive management shake-up that will hugely benefit Ghana football, Ghanasoccernet.com can exclusively reveal.
South African chief marketing officer Serame Taukobong, who has been responsible for the huge financial injection into South African football by MTN, will take full charge of the operation telecommunication giants in Ghana.
This comes after Telecommunications group MTN has made a major shake-up of executive responsibilities, with a series of new senior appointments at group level and at its key operations in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana.
MTN Ghana CEO Michael Ikpoki has been named as the new CEO of the Nigerian business, while Taukobong will take the reins at the Ghanaian operation.
Taukobong has been responsible for the setting up of the MTN8 competition, an annual off-season knock-out tournament in South Africa, which ensures that the winner gets $1m.
He even championed the setting up of a competition among football fans called the Last Man Standing which earned the winner $100,000.
Taukobong takes over at a time that MTN has been critized for putting little money in the Ghana FA Cup while shying away from other football products for the company to sponsor that might bring more subscribers to MTN.
MTN pays far less money to the Ghana FA Cup, a competition that involves more 200 clubs with massive publicity for the company, as compared to the MTN8 competition that only involves eight clubs.
The arrival of the new MTN chief in Ghana could see the company wrestling key football products like the Black Stars sponsorship and the Premier League sponsorship from Glo who have failed to make good their financial obligation to the Ghana FA.
Ikpoki, who is not an ardent football fan resulting in the company lukewarm attitude towards Ghana sports, return to his country Nigeria to replace Brett Goschen, who took on the role of group chief financial officer and executive financial director on the board to replace Nazir Patel, who resigned.
He joined MTN in 2001 as a regulatory advisor after a six-year stint with the Nigerian Communications Commission’s legal division.
Taukobong was appointed group marketing and sales executive for MTN International in 2002, after joining from M-Net, where he was marketing director.
Two years after joining MTN, he became the chief operations officer at MTN Uganda.
In 2006, he assumed the role of sales and distribution executive at MTN Irancell.
He returned to the group head office as executive for global brand and sponsorships in 2007 and became South Africa chief marketing officer in 2009.