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Retired Lt. Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma has once again reached into his fortune for a public cause. His oil exploration company, South Atlantic Petroleum Ltd, known as SAPETRO, has donated N1 billion to the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, a private-sector contribution that officials say ranks among the largest single gifts the Fund has received in recent years.
The donation was announced recently and arrives on the heels of a similar N1 billion gift that Mike Adenuga's Globacom made to the same fund in January, underscoring a growing push by Nigeria's billionaire class to bankroll security infrastructure in Africa's largest city.
The Lagos State Security Trust Fund is a public-private vehicle that fills gaps in policing and emergency response across a megacity of more than 20 million people. It relies on voluntary corporate contributions to fund equipment that government budgets alone cannot cover. Priorities for 2026, according to the Fund's executive secretary, Dr. Ayo Ogunsan, include multipurpose security helicopters and drones, armoured personnel carriers, water cannons, digital communication systems and smart CCTV cameras.
Danjuma's ties to Lagos run deep. SAPETRO operates its headquarters in the city and the 88-year-old billionaire recently expanded his Lagos footprint with a multi-million dollar logistics hub at Alaro City, inside the Lekki Free Zone near the Lekki Deep Seaport. The city has been both his base and one of his most productive markets.
Beyond Lagos, SAPETRO holds upstream oil and gas assets in Nigeria, the Republic of Benin, the Central African Republic and Madagascar. Danjuma founded the company in 1995 and built it into one of the most valuable privately held oil interests in Nigeria, anchored by its stake in Oil Prospecting License 246, the deep offshore block that produced the Akpo condensate field and the Egina discovery.
The general, as he is still widely called in Nigerian business circles, retired from the army in 1979 after serving as Chief of Army Staff and later served as Defence Minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2003. He is also the founder of the TY Danjuma Foundation, which has channelled hundreds of millions of naira into health, education and poverty alleviation programs across Nigeria, cementing his reputation as one of the continent's most active private philanthropists.
His net worth is estimated at over $1 billion, derived largely from SAPETRO and his shipping interests through Nigeria American Line and COMET Shipping Agencies.
