Gaming mogul Mr Eazi plans an NGX listing

Mr Eazi intends to list a technology company on the Nigerian Exchange, and named Aliko Dangote, Abdul Samad Rabiu and Femi Otedola, his father-in-law, as the men he wants to follow.

The musician and investor, whose legal name is Oluwatosin Oluwole Ajibade, told Nairametrics in an interview published Wednesday that he is already a shareholder in Nigerian listed companies and considers a listing of his own a matter of sequence rather than intent.

"It will be a pleasure to list a technology company on the NGX," he said. "I'm just at the beginning of that process."

He framed the ambition in generational terms, using the Yoruba word for elder brother.

"I think it will be beautiful to one day be like my egbons," he said. "The likes of Abdul Samad Rabiu, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Mr Femi Otedola and the likes, and list, not just your normal brick-and-mortar businesses, but also in this new world. The new brick and mortar is also the rails we are building in technology and in IP."

Mr Eazi married Temi Otedola, daughter of the First HoldCo chairman, whose own purchases of bank shares have made him one of the largest individual shareholders on the exchange.

The comments arrive as the NGX pushes founders toward domestic listings. Total market capitalisation has risen more than 430 percent in three years, from about ₦30 trillion in 2023 to ₦160 trillion, with the exchange projecting ₦230 trillion before December. It has asked President Bola Tinubu to introduce policies compelling large fintech and e-commerce companies to list locally. Dangote Petroleum Refinery is targeting a $5 billion offering by October.

The business Mr Eazi would take public is Choplife Group, which he has assembled across entertainment, media, gaming and technology since founding emPawa Africa as a music company in 2021. The group runs the Detty Rave events franchise, now in its eighth year, and moved into gaming in 2019 by licensing intellectual property for betPawa before building its own platform, Chopwin. It has since added the sports property 1v1 Africa.

He also invests through Zagadat Capital and sits on the board of the fintech company pawaPay.

Choplife has moved its operations to Itana, the digital-first special economic zone backed by the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority, after a period in which African founders routinely incorporated in Delaware or London instead. More than 21 engineers now work for the group from Nigeria.

"You used to have people setting up in offshore jurisdictions, places like Delaware, London," he said. "But for us, coming to Itana was a logical step."

He said the zone addresses capital lockup and cross-border friction, letting the company avoid conflicting local banking rules, foreign exchange restrictions and shifting corporate tax treatment across the markets it operates in.

Regulation across borders remains his largest operational complaint. He described being able to drive from Lagos to Benin in an hour, or reach Porto-Novo by boat in two, while needing to repeat an entire licensing process from scratch to run the same technology business in both countries.

"Sometimes you're not able to take advantage of an opportunity because the lead time may have passed," he said. "Maybe it takes two years to process your papers, and by that time the opportunity you saw is gone."

He put part of the fundraising problem down to reputation rather than economics, and part of that back onto the press.

"A guy who wants to raise money for his business in Nigeria, it's so hard," he said. "But all of a sudden, if he sets up that business in Delaware, it's a different conversation, because now it's a Delaware company."

He said the quality of Nigerian engineering talent goes largely unreported, adding that if the story were told properly, "dem go dey rush us like hot noodles."

Asked what African infrastructure still needs building, he pointed at his own industry rather than technology. Nigeria lacks the mid-sized music venues of 250 to 1,000 capacity that carried his early career, he said, which limits touring inside the country and prevents artists from Ivory Coast, Benin, Ghana or Tanzania playing rooms of that size.

He has taken formal training in the business, completing Harvard Business School's Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports programme around 2022, and counts the founders Iyin Aboyeji, Gbenga Agboola and Shola Akinlade among his close contacts.

He gave no timetable for a listing.