Nigerian billionaire and oil magnate, Femi Otedola, has disclosed how banks as soon as deployed enticing ladies to entice him into depositing funds and securing loans in the course of the peak of his enterprise empire.
The revelation is available in his soon-to-be-released memoir Making It Massive: Classes from a Life in Enterprise, which can be accessible on August 18, 2025, beneath FO Books.
In excerpts obtained by TheCable, Otedola recounts his dramatic financial rollercoaster, from commanding the Nigerian vitality scene to dealing with colossal debt.
“One second, I used to be the darling of the banks, who did every little thing on the earth to courtroom me… They might ship bewitching girls to make their presents extra convincing.
“And now I used to be waking as much as the sight of hefty, barrel-chested males standing menacingly in entrance of my gate,” Otedola wrote.
He revealed the sheer scale of his financial losses in the course of the world oil downturn and Nigeria’s financial challenges.
“All instructed, I misplaced greater than US$480 million to the plunge in oil costs, US$258 million by the devaluation of the naira, US$320 million due to accruing curiosity, and one other US$160 million when the shares crashed,” he lamented.
Otedola’s Journey to Wealth
Otedola constructed his wealth by Zenon Petroleum, which grew from promoting diesel in drums to dominating the native diesel market.
He later acquired African Petroleum and remodeled it into Forte Oil Plc, as soon as one of many best-performing shares on the Nigerian alternate.
However his fortunes changed when a 2008 diesel shipment ordered at $147 per barrel arrived after crude had slumped to $40.
Mixed with the naira’s devaluation from N120 to N167 to the greenback in 2009, Otedola confronted a double monetary blow — low diesel costs and hovering greenback liabilities.
His memoir guarantees a deep dive into the trials and triumphs that formed one among Nigeria’s most outstanding enterprise careers.
