Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola hosts Dangote, Rabiu at dinner for Lagos governor hopeful

Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola hosted Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest man, and cement and food tycoon Abdul Samad Rabiu at a special dinner at his home in honour of Obafemi Hamzat, the ruling party's candidate for governor of Lagos State in the 2027 election.

Rabiu, chairman of BUA Group, made the gathering public in an Instagram post on Sunday, Oct. 18. He described it as an evening of "warm friendship and meaningful conversations," thanked Otedola for hosting him and Dangote, and wished Hamzat success in his bid to lead Lagos. Hamzat, 62, has been deputy governor of Lagos since May 2019, serving under Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, whose second and final term ends in May 2027. He is the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, the party of President Bola Tinubu, which has governed Lagos without interruption since 1999 under its present name and the parties that preceded it.

The race for Lagos

Lagos is Nigeria's commercial capital and its most populous state, home to the country's main seaports, its stock exchange and the headquarters of most of its big banks and companies.

Hamzat won the APC primary on May 21 with 657,917 votes across the state's 245 wards, after Tinubu and the party's Lagos leadership council endorsed him as the consensus candidate and his main rival withdrew. The party later named Damilola Sonayon-James, from the coastal town of Badagry, as his running mate.

The governorship election is scheduled for Feb. 6, 2027, under the timetable the Independent National Electoral Commission revised in February. Campaigns for governorship seats opened on Sept. 9. Hamzat is one of 17 candidates on the commission's final list for Lagos. His best-known challenger is Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour of the African Democratic Congress, who won 312,329 votes in 2023 as the Labour Party candidate.

Hamzat, an engineer with a doctorate from Cranfield University in England, worked in the private sector in the U.S. and was chief information officer of Oando, the Nigerian energy company, before entering government. Tinubu appointed him Lagos commissioner for science and technology in 2005, and he kept the post under Tinubu's successor, Babatunde Fashola. He later served as Fashola's special adviser when Fashola was federal minister of works, power and housing.

He has been courting the business community. In late September he set out his plans for the state, including a technology program he calls "Digital Lagos 2.0," at a private dinner in Ikoyi attended by about 150 young executives, founders and investors.

Three of Nigeria's richest men

Otedola, 63, is chairman of First HoldCo, the parent company of FirstBank, Nigeria's oldest bank. He made his money in fuel trading and power generation and has bought First HoldCo shares almost every week this year, lifting his stake to more than a quarter of the company. He is worth about $2 billion.

Dangote, worth about $28.6 billion, built Africa's largest cement producer before moving into fertiliser and oil refining. His 650,000-barrel-a-day refinery outside Lagos is now selling shares to the public in what is Nigeria's largest initial public offering.

Rabiu, the founder of BUA Group, owns about 98% of BUA Cement and about 95% of BUA Foods, both listed on the Nigerian Exchange. His fortune more than doubled in the year to March, to about $11.1 billion, making him Africa's third-richest person.

The three men are longtime friends and appear together often at weddings, birthdays and state events in Lagos and Abuja.