Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola's net worth hits $2 billion on the Forbes list

Forbes has valued Femi Otedola at $2 billion, the highest figure it has ever put on him and the first time he has reached that level in seventeen years on and off its lists.

The number is too low.

First HoldCo, the parent of FirstBank, has gained 194.4% this year and hit a record 162.80 naira on Friday, taking Otedola's stake past 2 trillion naira, about $1.52 billion on its own. He owns 12,338,067,668 shares, roughly 27.6% of the company, chairs it, and has said publicly that he intends to pass 51%.

The figure comes from Forbes' real-time tracker, which updates daily on share prices and currency moves rather than waiting for the annual list published each March. It caught First HoldCo's rise as it happened.

What it has not caught is how many shares he now owns. Forbes revises a holding only when it verifies one, and Otedola has filed purchase after purchase with the Nigerian Exchange since the March list was built.

The debut

Otedola first appeared on the Forbes billionaires list in March 2009, the second Nigerian after Aliko Dangote, at $1.2 billion. He was 46, and he had built the fortune in a decade.

After running a finance company called Centerforce through the 1990s, he founded Zenon Petroleum and Gas in 1999 at 37 and went into diesel, which powered the generators keeping Nigerian factories running because the grid did not. By the mid-2000s Zenon controlled more than 90% of that market, supplying Dangote Group, MTN, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Unilever, Guinness and Nigerian Breweries.

Holding it cost him. Otedola put more than $110 million into storage and logistics in 2004, buying terminals at Ibafon and Apapa with combined capacity of 147,000 metric tonnes and four cargo vessels, and adding 100 tanker trucks for about $10 million. Ten Nigerian banks syndicated a $1.5 billion loan to him in March 2007 to build the largest petrol storage facility in Africa.

Zenon then took 28.7% of African Petroleum in 2007, Otedola personally acquired a further 29.3% that December, and merging the two holdings gave him 55.3% at a total cost of about $400 million. African Petroleum's market value rose from roughly $305 million to $1.84 billion in six months.

The crash

The Forbes list was published in March 2009. By the 27th of that month, the magazine estimated his fortune had fallen to about $500 million.

Nigerian equities had lost more than 60% of their value over the preceding year, and African Petroleum went with them.

The feud

He was fighting the only other Nigerian on the list at the same time.

Dangote's family investment vehicle M.R.S. Holdings joined a consortium that outbid Otedola for Chevron's West African downstream business in 2008, paying $1 billion, some $800 million more than Otedola had offered for the Nigerian operations alone. Otedola regarded it as a breach of an understanding that each would stay out of the other's industry, went to court to block the sale, and announced he would invest in sugar and cement, which were Dangote's businesses.

Advertisements then appeared alleging share manipulation, and two days later Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission said it was investigating Dangote's companies and a broker. Both men had risen through close relationships with former president Olusegun Obasanjo.

They are now close friends.

The debt

Otedola ended up at the top of Nigeria's register of bank debtors, owing lenders around $900 million, and paid all of it.

The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria confirmed the debts were settled in full, and Forbes Africa put him back on its list in 2014 under the headline that he had returned wealthier and wiser. He stayed on for several years before dropping off again.

The rebuild

Otedola came back to the global list in January 2024 at $1.2 billion, his third appearance, on assets that had nothing to do with importing fuel.

He sold his controlling stake in Forte Oil, the rebranded African Petroleum, and bought Geregu Power, taking it to the Nigerian Exchange as the country's first listed utility. He held stakes in Zenith Bank and Transcorp and sold both. Then he started buying FBN Holdings, which became First HoldCo.

None of what he bought carries the working capital that broke him. Fuel importing meant borrowing dollars to buy cargoes, selling at prices the government set, and waiting on subsidy reimbursements that arrived late or not at all. Geregu sold electricity under contract. Bank shares pay dividends.

Why $2 billion is the floor

Billionaires.Africa estimates his actual position above $3 billion.

The First HoldCo stake alone is worth $1.52 billion at Friday's close, and that is the holding as last verified. Every share he has bought since sits outside the calculation.

He is also holding more than $1 billion in cash, from the Forte Oil disposal, the sale of his Geregu shares, the sale of his Transcorp shares to Nigerian multimillionaire Tony Elumelu, a settlement involving Zenith Bank, and money generated by Zenon that has been sitting in Nigerian and offshore accounts for close to two decades, earning interest the whole time.

The property is worth more than $250 million on its own. Otedola owns homes in Monaco, London and Dubai, and a string of Nigerian properties across Abuja, Ikoyi, Banana Island and Victoria Island in Lagos.