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Otedola Shares Journey From School Dropout To Business Mogul

Published

3 hours ago

August 19, 2025

Editor

Billionaire Femi Otedola has revealed his journey to building a multi-billion-dollar empire began without a university degree or even a completed high school education.

In his newly released memoir titled ‘Making It Big’, cited by The PUNCH on Tuesday, the 62-year-old energy mogul shares how his academic struggles led him to abandon formal education and dive into the world of business, where he ultimately found his calling.

In the 286-page book, Otedola recounts his early years at the University of Lagos Staff School, starting at the age of six in 1968, and notes that despite being classmates with notable figures like Kola Abiola, son of the late business magnate Moshood Abiola, he struggled academically.

“Academia and I were not compatible,” he writes, noting that he repeated a class and consistently ranked at the bottom of his class, sparking his pivot toward a different path.

“I finished primary school in 1974 because I repeated a class. Even when I was allowed to pass, I consistently anchored the bottom rungs of our end-of-term examination results. My interests were definitely not in academia,” he added.

He noted that after finishing primary school, he proceeded to Methodist Boys’ High School, Lagos, even as his academic struggles continued.

“The school had been founded almost a hundred years earlier, in 1878. Alumni include grand names in Nigerian history: Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mobolaji Johnson, Ola Rotimi, Fola Adeola, Olusegun Osoba, and Hezekiah Oladipo Davies. When I joined the student body in 1974, the principal was D. A. Famoroti, who’d taken up the post in 1963 and would leave in 1980,” he recalls. “I started Form 1 at age 12 and was there for three years,” he said.

He pointed out that in 1977, after it became clear that his performance was not improving, his parents transferred him to Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, a boarding school founded by Southern Baptist missionaries in 1945.

“My parents’ thinking was that all my siblings were boarders, and they seemed to be doing well,” Mr Otedola writes. “They thought this change would help turn around my attitude towards academia, but nothing changed.

“I started in Form 3 at Olivet, and as I rounded off the first year of my A Levels, my father was establishing his printing company, Impact Press, in Surulere, a residential and commercial district in Lagos State. I grew fascinated with the machines and told myself that my future would be inextricably tied to them. I managed to remain in school until the Lower Sixth examination was over. And then, I was finished; I never returned for my Upper Sixth.

“All I wanted to do was get involved in business. My father kept watch over me and drew me close. My sister taught me shorthand. I knew how to type and began typing letters for my dad. I prepared all his business correspondence. I was fascinated by the way printing machines treat paper. The white paper is placed on one end, the ink and plates are fixed, and the printed material comes out of the other end. It was captivating,” he stressed.

Despite his mother’s protests and tears, Otedola abandoned school to work full-time in his father’s printing business. He rose quickly, becoming managing director of Impact Press in 1987 at the age of 25.

“However, I soon became restless. I had immersed myself in all aspects of the business and learned the ropes at my dad’s right hand. I certainly enjoyed the job more than grappling with the Pythagoras theorem and struggling through homework at Olivet. As time went by, though, I also thought it was time for a measure of independence from my dad.

“I still wanted to work for him — I really enjoyed hearing the rumbling of machines and savouring the smell of freshly printed material — but I also wanted to do things differently. I told him I wanted to become a sales consultant for the press, and he agreed. He said he would pay me a commission of 10–15% on any work I brought in.

“That was a significant break for me. I invested my money in buying cars for sales and marketing outreach and moved on to the next phase in my nascent professional life.”

With his new role, he began bringing in jobs from major companies and advertising agencies, particularly in calendars and diaries.

“We could hardly keep up with the demand. Our unique selling point was quality, thanks to the state-of-the-art machines we owned. We were also always on time with job delivery. We were engaged in healthy competition with Academy Press, a company located in the Ilupeju area of Lagos.

“I served as my dad’s sales exec up until 1991, when he started his Lagos State gubernatorial campaign. It was a run for office — ultimately successful — that I had initiated.”

According to him, the break in his family business gave him the confidence and foundation to strike out on his own. In 1994, he founded Centre Force Ltd. with ₦10 million in starting capital.

“From those beginnings, he built a vast business empire in oil and gas, shipping, real estate, finance, and philanthropy. He went on to chair Forte Oil, invested in power through Geregu Power Plc, and today chairs the board of FirstHoldco Plc, one of Nigeria’s largest financial groups.

The businessman’s disclosure of his educational history may come as a surprise to many who long believed he was a university graduate. At one point, his Wikipedia page even suggested he studied at the University of Lagos.

But in “Making It Big”, Mr Otedola insists his true classroom was not a lecture hall but the business floor. His lessons, he says, came from watching his father, trusting his instincts, and learning from both failures and triumphs.

“I never returned for my Upper Sixth. All I wanted was to get involved in business,” he writes. That decision, once a source of his mother’s tears, would lay the foundation for a career that has made him one of Africa’s most influential businesspersons.

In the end, Mr Otedola’s memoir delivers a striking message: formal education may have eluded him, but discipline, persistence, and the hunger to build made him — in his own words — “make it big.”

News

[OPINION] Bus Terminals: Our FG In Agbero Business

Published

41 minutes ago

August 19, 2025

Editor

By Suyi Ayodele

After settling KWAM 1 with ambassadorial epaulettes, it appears that National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) President, MC Oluomo, is next to receive Baba’s blessings. With the approval of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) at its meeting last week, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will be building six motor parks (aka bus terminals) across the country.

Our President is a personality prone to hilarious performances. He has introduced another phony enterprise into the business of state with the planned ‘Modern Bus Terminals’ in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria. Please pay attention to the qualifier, ‘modern’ because what follows is pure superlative! When the government is deliberate in its dictions, using adjectives to qualify its head words, you should know that it has something up its sleeves.

The motor parks are evenly distributed this time around. The ‘dot on the map’ zone got its own fair share. There is no ojooro, no magomago, no wuruwuru! The principle of ‘Federal Character’ is at its best element. There will be one bus terminal in Kano. That will take care of the seven states in the North-West. One will be in Gombe for the six states of North-East. The Confluence Town, Lokoja, Kogi State will have one for the entire people of the North-Central zone.

Down South, Abeokuta, Ogun State, will have one for all the children of Oduduwa in the South-West. The Ndigbo will all travel to the commercial city of Onitsha, Anambra State, to enjoy the proposed state-of-the-art bus terminal. The oil-rich Niger Delta is taken care of, also. Their motor park is going to be tucked in the belly of Ewu in Esan Central Local Government Area of Edo State.

Never mind the distance; never bother about the 9.3 hours travelling hours between Sokoto and Kano; a mere 537-kilometre distance. The government has the magic wand to bridge the gap and extend the dividends of the bus terminals to everybody. Fela Anikulapo Kuti called it “government magic”! This government works wonders! Ógbenután!

Now the main gist. Each motor park, the government said, would cost ₦23.6 billion. Please don’t shout! Yes, the bus terminals will be built with bricks and mortar. It will merely cost the country an arm, a leg and several pints of blood. That is not too much of a pain to inflict by a government that is far away from reality!

But the beauty of it all is that the bus terminals will be beautifully decorated and equipped with world-class facilities and equipment. When completed, Angels would no longer want to fly. Our Celestial brethren will travel our roads with us. That itself gives us peace of mind. Nothing can be safer than to be in the same bus with the Angels, the Malaikas and the principalities in high places! We are lucky folks, aren’t we?

No sarcasm is intended. Methinks that every Nigerian that will commence and terminate his or her journey at the bus terminals (please add modern), is guaranteed of his or her safety. How? Aso Rock Villa will be able to monitor every vehicle that leaves each of the bus terminals (or is it bus stop sef?). I put my shirt on it! It is a sure banker! A ₦23.6 billion bus terminal must have security gadgets that should be able to monitor our present, our progress and our future! If it is otherwise, then it is a waste of resources, and President Tinubu blocks wastages!

Nigeria is an ojúmó kan, àrà kan (one day, one stunt) country. We don’t run out of damfool ideas here. The only thing in short supply is a leadership with depth. A complacent followership equally promotes inept leadership. We are gradually gravitating towards the precipice of a failed nation. Many people believe we are already one!

President Tinubu may end up the luckiest president by the time he completes his tour of duty. He is one president who treats the country like his personal estate. And he gets away with it, all the time. Nobody questions him, nobody interrogates his policies. Nobody has the temerity to say: “Baba Seyi, you are not fair to us.”

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: KWAM1, KWAM2’ And Their Holy Water

In Aso Rock Villa, where he lives at our expense, Tinubu marks off the number of the strokes he has administered to our backs. Then, he takes his champagne. Or is it freshly tapped palm wine? He asks the boys to go back to procure more canes for future flogging. We are completely pummelled! How does he do that; how does he achieve that total appropriation of the people’s resilience?

We simply swallow whatever pill the President forces down our throats. We agonise like the proverbial woman being pleasured by a man with a big phallus. And nothing more. She merely waits in palpable trepidation for the next round of tortuous grinding.

Nigerians have been conditioned to be perpetually complacent by a government that trades in poverty and profits by inflicting pain! We blech. We stretch. We look for any available pillow to rest our weary heads. Then we wait for the next round of dosage. Our ruiners of this epoch are not just mean, wicked and audacious; they are inorganic, pathologically cold-blooded!

That the Tinubu administration is heavily transactional is no longer ‘a topic for future symposium’ (apologies to Fela). That itself is not the real problem, not the real bad case, here. The brazen way the administration goes about its Mr-Giwa-is-a-trader activities is the most irritating. The citizenry appears completely battered such that not a whimper is heard from them anytime the government comes up with its nothing-go-happen policies.

By the approval given by the FEC last Wednesday, the six motor parks, colourfully presented to us as “Modern Bus Terminals’, will be built for the sum of ₦142,028,576,008.17. Nigeria’s FEC is the gathering of all ministers and any appointee of cabinet rank. Sa’idu Ahmed Alkali, the Minister of Transportation, told us FEC approved the project.

By simple Arithmetic formula of Division, the cost of each terminal is N23.6 billion! That will depend on the inflation rate between when the contract is awarded and when it is executed. If prices of goods and services go up the way they do daily in Nigeria, there will be room for contract variation. So, by the time the terminals are ready, the cost might have gone up.

When Alkali announced the ‘deal’, my mind raced to my secondary school days when we were taught Types of Legislative Power. Did our Government subject teachers misinform or miseducate us by saying that building a motor park is a function listed in the Residual Legislative List? Were they wrong to have said that construction, running and the maintenance of motor parks or ‘modern bus terminals’ are the responsibilities of the third tier of government, the local government? Do I simply say this “is confusing me?”

The minister, a former senator, while justifying this put-on, attributed “crimes, road accidents and illegal arms proliferation” to the lack of major bus terminals in the country. How can a man be phony and funny at the same time? How do we situate this type of reasoning: “because there are no bus terminals to address the interests of millions of Nigerian commuters, as a result, we have a lot of crime, road traffic accidents, and proliferation of arms and ammunition on our highways?”

What logic! In Alkali’s reasoning and Tinubu’s approval, once these bus terminals are built, all the bandits, kidnappers and other felons operating all over Nigeria will have no way to move their weapons? The Kano bus terminal designated for the North-West for instance, would ensure that bandits in Kaduna, Kebbi, Jigawa, Sokoto, Katsina and Zamfara are shut out of arms and ammunition supply? What exactly is lacking in this administration?

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Tinubu And His Northern Teachers

How would a government think that in 2025, a bus terminal built in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, would solve the road transportation problems of the remaining states in the South-West? Couldn’t we have channelled the ₦142,028,576,008.17 to the East-West Road that has remained in a state of interminable construction?

How does one explain that of all the problems confronting us as a nation, the priority of this administration is the construction of “modern bus terminals” in the six geo-political zones of the country? How do we tell generations to come that at a time Nigeria was battling with insurgency and banditry in the North and kidnapping, farmers cum herders’ clash in the South, the Federal Government was busy constructing motor parks, a project that local government councils could handle? Why this lack of compunction by this government of promised but undelivered ‘hope’?

In China, there is a bridge that is 168.8 kilometres long. The Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is rated as the world’s longest bridge, spanning 164 kilometres! Constructed between April 18, 2006, and November 15, 2010, the bridge cost the Chinese Government $8.6 billion US dollar. That, in our currency, is a whopping ₦13.175 trillion.

Back here in Nigeria, we have our darling 3rd Mainland Bridge built by the Alhaji Shehu Shagari and General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) administrations in two phases between 1980 and 1990. The span of the 3rd Mainland Bridge is 11.8 kilometres. And to repair the bridge, this administration said it would cost us ₦3.6 trillion! In mathematical terms, the cost of repairs on the 3rd Mainland Bridge is one third the cost of the construction of Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge.

To know who we are and what the government thinks we are, we must understand that the Chinese Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge is 14 times longer than our 3rd Mainland Bridge! If Fela were to be here today, he would simply sing: arrangee na be that o. And he would be right!

That is not all. In the last two weeks again, the FEC also approved the sum of N712 billion to remodel the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA). In justifying this prodigious spending, we were told that by the time the facelifts were completed, Angels would want to fly to Nigeria because the airport would be as beautiful as the gold-paved streets of heaven!

Nobody is saying, by any stretch of argument, that the government should not fix decaying infrastructure. Our argument here is that the government should get its priorities right. The data gleaned from the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) as of December 2023, gave a figure of over 5.9 million passengers at the MMIA in two years.

What percentage of Nigeria’s estimated population of over 200 million people is that? The simple implication is that there are far more Nigerians on the road than in the air. A government that is masses-sensitive will address critical segments that touch the lives of the highest population distribution. If more than 70 percent of Nigerians use road transportation, the focus should be on building more roads in addition to rehabilitating existing failed roads across the country.

In the last one week, Ekiti State has been in the news for the wrong reasons of the bad roads there. The videos of the terrible states of the roads are too graphic to ignore. The state is almost completely cut off from the rest of the country. And the situation is the same in all states of the Federation. There is no state in Nigeria without its own tales of woes when it comes to bad roads.

Worst hit is the Niger Delta where we get the resources that oil the engine of Nigeria. It is an eternal shame that the East-West Road has remained in perpetual state of construction. It is a national embarrassment that the terrible state of the Benin-Warri Expressway makes people spend six hours on a journey that was less than one hour before!

For Pete’s sake, the MMIA is not in a beauty pageant with any international airport. Yes, fix it, make it good but not with the humongous figures the government is throwing at us. That we are not hunters does not mean we cannot identify the spores of games on wet soil (àìi sode rí, kò ní ká má mo sa kò ko níhîn). If the government is looking for chop money for the boys, it should come out clean.

The defense by Tunde Moshood, Special Adviser on Media and Communications to Festus Keyamo, the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, asking Nigerians to adopt a ‘more informed and constructive approach’ to the N712 billion MMIA project, is to say the least, very insensitive and insulting to our sensibilities. We cannot all be slaves to our stomachs; Moshood should be told to be bold enough to advise his boss and the government he represents that certain things can wait. He and his boss are the ones to learn to gauge the mood of the people before they begin to call the dog monkey for us!

A Federal Government that is talking about building motor parks in a true Federal State needs elementary tutorials in Government and Devolution of Power. Minister Alkali got it completely wrong to think that lack of bus terminals is the reason why crimes like kidnapping and armed robbery happen on our highways.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: [OPINION] PDP: A Prince And A Pastor’s Son (SENT)

The felons on the bad spots of the death traps we call highways don’t need any bus terminal or motor park to operate. They don’t have to register their vehicles and their content before they move to ‘sites’. We should be able to boast of someone with bare-bones penetration in this government. The jejune argument for the Federal Government ‘Modern Bus Terminals’ is annoying, very unnerving.

It is odiously nauseating that presumed men and women of class sat in that FEC to approve such a proposal. If the short among them is lacking in depth, the tall should show acuity (bí kékeré won bá gò, ó ye kí gíga won gbón). Someone should have shot down the Alkali’s proposal as lacking in sensitivity to the needs of the people. Someone should have reasoned that Nigerians cannot be going through the pain in the land and a FEC would be debating or approving inane proposals like the motor park project, no matter the deodorant sprayed on it!

How did they all sleep with their heads in one direction in that Council? How did the cabinet members come up with the conclusion that six motor parks in six different locations in our 36-state federation is the best the government could offer? And these are the ones leading Nigeria of 2025? Yes-men and women with illogical minds? Ghosh!

Can someone please tell President Tinubu to spare us this farce! Can those close to the President tell him that his boy, MC Oluomo, cannot be doing the monkey business of motor park management pan Nigeria as NURTW President, while the Jagaban himself is running the same show at the centre, from Aso Rock? This ‘Modern Bus Terminals’ project is nothing but an agbero business. Mr. President, e kúrò nídìí ìdò, eré omodé ni (Leave the hide and seek game, it’s juvenile play)!

News

Chieftaincy Title: Why Ooni Of Ife Won’t React To Alaafin’s 48-hour Threat — Palace Aide

Published

3 hours ago

August 19, 2025

Editor

The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, and the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Akeem Owoade.
The Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, and the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Akeem Owoade.

Moses Olafare, the Spokesperson for Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Ogunwusi, has explained the reasons why the monarch will not react to the 48-hour threat by the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Owoade, to reverse the title conferred on a popular Ibadan-based business mogul, Dotun Sanusi.

Olafare, in a Facebook post on Tuesday, disclosed that Oba Ogunwusi had particularly directed him to ignore the revered Oyo monarch.

According to him, the Ooni will not dignify what he described as “undignifyable” with an official response, stressing that he had left the matter to be handled in the public court of opinion.

He wrote, “My principal has directed me against issuing a press release on the empty threat. I beg to disappoint you, gentlemen of the press.

“We can not dignify the undignifyable with an official response. We leave the matter to be handled in the public court of opinion, as it is already being treated.

“Let’s rather focus on narratives that unite us rather than the ones capable of dividing us. No press release, please. 48 hours my foot!”

The PUNCH reports that Oba Owoade described the Ooni’s action as an “affront” after he issued a 48-hour ultimatum for the revocation of the chieftaincy title.

He also claimed it was a direct challenge to his authority.

The Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade, has given the Ooni of Ife, Oba Enitan Adeyeye Ogunwusi, a 48-hour ultimatum to revoke the Okanlomo of Yorubaland chieftaincy title recently conferred on Ibadan business tycoon, Engineer Dotun Sanusi.

In a statement on Monday signed by his Director of Media and Publicity, Bode Durojaiye, the Alaafin described the Ooni’s action as an “affront.”

He also claimed it was a direct challenge to his authority.

The Alaafin reiterated that he holds the exclusive right to bestow titles that cover the entire Yorubaland.

“The conferment of a Yoruba-wide chieftaincy title by the Ooni is not only ultra vires but an insult to the Titan of Yorubaland.

“The Supreme Court itself has ruled that only the Alaafin has such authority. Yet, the Ooni continues to act above the law, trampling on both tradition and the courts.”

The Alaafin warned that if the Ooni fails to withdraw the title within 48 hours, “consequences will follow.”

Recall in 1991, a similar occurrence happened when the late Alaafin, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, wrote to the military governor of Oyo State, Colonel Abdulkareem Adisa, to inform him about an aberration by the late Ooni, Oba Okunade Sijuade, of conferring an imaginary chieftaincy title of Akinrogun of Yorubaland on the National Chairman of the National Republican Convention, Chief Tom Ikimi.

Oba Adeyemi described Oba Sijuade’s action as an outright desecration of the sacred institution, especially when such abuses come from quarters that are expected to protect and embellish such institutions.
(PUNCH)

News

The Waiting Is Over, Nigerian Woman Welcomes Twin Girls In Her 50s

Published

4 hours ago

August 19, 2025

Editor

A Nigerian woman, Adesuwa Ujiadughele, has celebrated the arrival of her twin baby girls in her 50s.

Sharing the joyful news in a Facebook post on Monday, August 18, 2025, Ujiadughele described the journey to motherhood at her age as a challenging one but expressed gratitude to God for seeing her through.

“The waiting is over and we thank God for the gift of bountiful twin girls. I do not take it for granted at all. Having to carry my own babies in my fifties is not a road easy to pass but then I thank God I passed it gracefully and not wearing it as a mask on my face,” she wrote.

She acknowledged the demands of caring for two babies at once, saying: “Taking care of 1 kid is a handful let alone twins. Things come in doubles these days and my prayers to all waiting couples is that God have got your back.”

Ujiadughele encouraged couples hoping to have children not to delay in seeking medical assistance. “Make sure you seek medical aids ON TIME because most times we spiritualize things that are medically and please don’t get me wrong! Without Jehovah saying amen to our ventures, obviously it can’t work. Anyways, all the Glory belongs to God Almighty.”
(PUNCH)