Femi Otedola’s fortune was built on privilege as much as ambition. His rise tells as much about Nigeria as it does about him, in a country where public wealth and private gain often blur.
In 2023, Nigeria ranked 17th in the world for billionaire wealth as a share of GDP, according to Forbes and IMF data. It stood ahead of far larger economies such as the US, China, Japan, Germany and Britain. Egypt, with a similar economic profile, was placed even higher at 14th.
The contrast is sharper in poverty rankings. Of the world’s ten poorest countries, nine are African, with Yemen the only outlier, according to cross-country data compiled by sapa-us.org in August 2025. Nigeria may appear a billionaire factory, but it feels more like a poverty capital.
This is no statistical accident. It reflects a system where wealth pools in crony sectors such as oil, gas and real estate, far removed from the hands that do the work.
One man’s rise, and what it tells us
At the centre of this paradox stands Femi Otedola. To some, his life is an inspiration; to others, an indictment. His memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business, reads like both. He writes of discipline and drive, of growing up privileged as a governor’s son yet pushing himself to build.
But the book also confirms what many Nigerians suspect: fortunes here are not always made in open markets; they are often engineered in the corridors of power, according to Otedola’s own account.
Otedola’s early hustles manicures at home, shifts at the family press, a loan venture called Centre Force helped by military contacts were the prelude. The main act began in 1999 with Zenon Petroleum and Gas, funded by savings and a soft loan from his father according to the memoir.
Within five years, he says he controlled as much as 93 percent of Nigeria’s diesel market. He calls it instinct and hard work. Policy history suggests something else was at play, as synthesised by Feyi Fawehinmi, 1914 Reader, Aug 21, 2025 from contemporaneous reporting.
When rules change, winners are picked
In 2004, the Obasanjo administration deregulated diesel, according to government policy records widely cited at the time. The state broke one monopoly but did not create a level field.
It picked winners, and Zenon was one of them, benefiting from early import approvals, assigned import rights alongside NNPC, and exclusive access to a key jetty at Ibafon, according to the 1914 Reader analysis drawing on contemporaneous sources.
By 2008, Zenon was being described as a “virtual monopoly” on diesel contracts, according to Africa Confidential reporting cited in that analysis. The billions rolled in not because the product was better, but because the market could be controlled.
Cash as a weapon
The sums are staggering. Otedola writes of making up to $6m a month from diesel, even while calling Zenon a “one-man business” according to the memoir. Cash became a strategy. He bought rivals because he could, including a depot acquired for N2.8bn far above its book cost according to his account.
When his daughter suggested the name Forte Oil and found it already registered, he told his lawyers to buy the rights N20m on the spot according to the memoir. In that world, markets bend to money, and money multiplies through privilege.
Fragility of privilege
Then came 2008. At the peak of global oil prices, he placed a $500m diesel order unhedged, by his telling. Prices collapsed, the naira fell, and he was left with about N220bn in debt according to the memoir. The man who once dominated a market became a risk to the banking system.
The state returned. The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), set up to rescue banks, bought his non-performing loans for roughly N141bn, implying steep haircuts for lenders according to Otedola’s account and subsequent summaries collated by 1914 Reader.
Banks took the hit; Otedola kept a foothold in Forte Oil. By 2013, he was debt-free rehabilitated not by the invisible hand of the market, but by the very visible hand of the government. Within years, his holdings had rebounded, according to market disclosures referenced in the memoir and secondary analysis.
The bill others paid
Here lies the book’s contradiction. On one page he praises thrift and resilience. On another he admits Zenon soared because “the country was not functioning well” in his words. He names officials who helped him jump queues and clear ships according to his account.
In plain terms: success came less from perfecting a product than from securing a patron.
The human cost is easy to miss. Diesel didn’t just run factories; it powered the generators that kept homes and shops alive in the dark. Fat margins, sometimes as high as N50 per litre, by his own illustration were paid by families and small businesses. His 2008 bet was not just a banker’s problem; it exposed the economy to the fragility of elite speculation.
To his credit, the memoir is not all triumph. It shows a man who hit bottom, struggled, leaned on family and philanthropy, and rebuilt according to his telling. But the bigger story is not about one man.
It is about a system where wealth is tied less to innovation than to access where fortunes rise even as the country falls behind.
The lesson for the rest of us
While billionaires count their winnings, the majority carry the costs: in fuel queues, shuttered small businesses, school fees swallowed by inflation as reflected in NBS cost-of-living and energy reports over the period. Nigeria produces billionaires, but it does not produce prosperity.
The value of Otedola’s candour is this: he confirms the suspicion. Nigeria is not poor because its people are lazy; it is poor because its institutions reward connections over competition as his own experiences suggest. His life is proof you can “make it big” while the country stays small.
The real question is not whether to envy his billions. It is this: what would Nigeria look like if the ladder of opportunity weren’t broken halfway up?
