Nigerian billionaire Chika Okafor went from selling bean cakes to building the Chicason Group empire

Chika Okafor was 10 when the Nigerian civil war shut the schools in his hometown of Nnewi in 1967. He never went back to a classroom full time.

Five decades later he controls Chicason Group, a conglomerate that blends A-Z Crown lubricants, refines Life cooking oil, makes soap, disinfectant and plastics, mines barite and develops property. Most of its factories sit on the Chicason Industrial Estate in Nnewi, and its head office is on Bourdillon Road in Ikoyi, Lagos. In 2014 the African Export-Import Bank put its workforce at 5,000.

His record also includes a $2.75 billion development in Abuja that was never built, a gas plant explosion that killed eight people, a bank receivership in which a judge named him personally, and a fraud in which he says he paid 150 million naira to a woman posing as an aide to the president's wife.

Okafor, 69, is one of the best-known industrialists from Nnewi, an Igbo town in Anambra State that has produced an unusual number of wealthy traders. Forbes Africa included him in 2017 on a list of 10 naira billionaires from the town. Chicason is privately held and does not publish accounts, and he has never appeared on a dollar billionaire ranking.

The boy who sold akara

Alexander Chika Okafor was born on Feb. 6, 1957, in Uru-Umudim, a village in Nnewi. His mother sold fish. His father farmed and tapped palm wine, and died while Chika was a boy, according to Forbes Africa.

He was in primary two when the war broke out. As a child he sold akara, the fried bean cakes eaten across West Africa, with his mother, and hawked newspapers and lottery tickets. By 12, he told Forbes Africa, he was keeping 500 birds and selling about 20 dozen eggs a day.

He later took private lessons. In 2008, Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka gave him an honorary doctorate in business administration.

Apprentice to an uncle

Okafor learned business through the apprenticeship system that underpins much of Igbo commerce. Under it, a young man works for an established trader for several years before being "settled" with capital to start on his own. He served his maternal uncle, Chief Ben Akubueze of Nnobi, for five to six years.

"Once you come for apprenticeship, you have to wake up at 4:30 am," he said in Freemen, a 2024 Showmax documentary about Nnewi's business families.

In the late 1970s he supplied fishing products to Ghana until the border closed in 1978. He then sold electronics under the Chicason name and imported women's clothing from Hong Kong. He told Forbes Africa he put $50,000 into the clothing trade and made margins of about 100%. He said he travelled from Onitsha to Lagos every week for 13 years.

What Chicason owns

Chicason Nigeria Ltd., the parent company, dates from 1980 or 1981, according to the group's own materials. Cason Travels, an IATA-registered travel agency, has operated since 1984.

The move into factories began in 1985 with Resources Improvement & Manufacturing Co., known as RIMCO. It opened a 50-tonne edible oil refinery in Nnewi in 1988, added a palm kernel crushing mill that can handle 100 tonnes a day in 1990, and later built a solvent extraction plant that the company says processes 250 tonnes of palm kernel and 300 tonnes of soybeans a day. RIMCO sells cooking oil under the Life brand. In 2016, according to Chicason, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo commissioned a new RIMCO refinery and fractionation plant in Nnewi.

A-Z Petroleum Products Ltd., incorporated on Dec. 28, 1994, became the group's best-known business. It blends lubricants under the A-Z Crown brand, trades petroleum products and runs haulage and oilfield services arms. The company says it also operates in Ghana, Senegal and Kenya.

Afro Asia Automobile & Plastics was set up in 2001 to assemble motorcycles and tractors from imported kits and now makes plastics, with capacity of more than 20,000 tonnes a year. Promotex makes soap and disinfectant under the Dermocare and Tropicana brands. Inter Corp Oil runs a liquefied petroleum gas plant in Nnewi. Chicason-Mannyon Specialist Hospital is a 30-bed hospital that the group says employs Korean specialists. Rock of Ages Properties develops real estate in Lagos and Abuja.

In 2009 Okafor set up RIMCO Mining in Benue State. It says it holds 34 concessions for barite, a mineral used in oil drilling, and has prospected for gold and diamonds in Sierra Leone. In 2011 Chicason bought 70% of International Cement Co., which holds a mining lease on 1,415 hectares near Sagamu in Ogun State. Billionaires.Africa found no evidence that a cement plant has been built there.

The $2.75 billion Abuja plan

The 2010s brought Okafor's biggest announcements.

In November 2010 he opened a Chicason operation in Freetown, Sierra Leone. President Ernest Bai Koroma publicly promised the group "not less than 50,000 acres" of land. Billionaires.Africa found no record that the land was handed over.

In 2014 A-Z Petroleum signed an $80 million facility with Afreximbank. It comprised a $30 million, five-year loan for a lubricant blending plant and tank farm in Ghana and a $50 million standby letter of credit for imports.

In March that year Chicason signed an agreement with Bala Mohammed, then minister of the Federal Capital Territory, to build Abuja Downtown, a $2.75 billion mixed-use project in the capital's central business district. The territory's administration was to own 5%, and PwC was hired as financial adviser. In 2015 the design was unveiled with Eagle Hills, the Abu Dhabi developer, as partner. By then the project covered 17 hectares, carried an estimated cost of 700 billion naira and promised four hotels and about 10,000 jobs.

There is no sign it was built. In 2021 and again in 2023, the Abuja newspaper 21st Century Chronicle listed it among the capital's stalled megaprojects and said its status was unknown.

In June 2015 Okafor broke ground on Rock City Estate, a 10,000-home scheme for workers in Lugbe, outside Abuja, with the Trade Union Congress. Work began on the first 3,000 homes, and he promised delivery before the second quarter of 2016. Billionaires.Africa could not confirm that the homes were finished.

The Christmas Eve blast

On Dec. 24, 2015, an explosion and fire tore through Inter Corp Oil's gas plant on the Onitsha-Owerri road in Nnewi. Police confirmed eight deaths. Early social media reports put the toll above 100, figures the company's managing director, Linus Ilozue, called "grossly exaggerated." He said no staff member died. Police said a disconnection during dispensing was the likely cause.

The bank that came for Maitama

In September 2018 Justice Chuka Obiozor of the Federal High Court in Lagos let a receiver appointed by Union Bank of Nigeria take over an A-Z Petroleum property at Plot 3508 in Maitama, Abuja, over a debt of about 5.2 billion naira. The order barred A-Z Petroleum and Okafor personally from obstructing the receiver. The court also froze about 5.2 billion naira in fuel subsidy payments and debt notes owed to A-Z Petroleum by federal agencies. Billionaires.Africa could not establish how the dispute ended.

A year earlier, Okafor had faced a report claiming a Senate inquiry into fuel subsidies had named him for improperly receiving 18 billion naira. His lawyers said he was "never indicted" and called the report false.

N150 million to a fake first lady

In December 2018, Nigeria's Department of State Services paraded Amina Mohammed, a woman accused of impersonating President Muhammadu Buhari's wife, Aisha. Okafor said he had paid her 150 million naira to help him buy one of two federal government plots in Ikoyi that had housed the Court of Appeal. He said she later demanded a 20 million naira commission and had received him at the presidential villa. She countered that Chicason had bought the property and that officials took bribes. Billionaires.Africa found no record of the outcome of her prosecution or whether Okafor got his money back.

The heir in waiting

Okafor is married to Favour Chika-Okafor, an engineer and former group executive director, who founded the Rock Foundation for Widows, Orphans and the Less Privileged. The couple have six children. Their son, Dikanna Chika Okafor, is deputy group managing director. Okafor told Forbes Africa in 2017 that he was training his eldest son through the same apprenticeship system that made him. Chux Adike is group managing director.

The government has honored him twice. He was made an Officer of the Order of the Niger in 2012 and nominated for the higher rank of Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic in 2022. He is a Knight of St. Christopher in the Anglican Church and a past president of the Nnewi Chamber of Commerce.

The group has announced no new projects in 2025 or 2026, and its website's latest news posts date from 2017. In 2021 Anambra residents voted him the state's man of the year.