In his upcoming memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business set to hit shelves on August 18, 2025, Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola pulls back the curtain on his rollercoaster journey through the world of high-stakes business.
Published by FO Books, this deeply personal account reveals the glitz, the grit, and the gut-wrenching setbacks that shaped his remarkable career.
Otedola doesn’t hold back as he recounts the heady days when he was the golden boy of Nigerian banking.
“Banks were falling over themselves to win me over,” he writes, painting a vivid picture of a time when financial institutions pulled out all the stops—some even sending “bewitching ladies” to sweet-talk him into deposits and loan deals.
It was a world of flattery and opportunity, where his every move seemed charmed.
But the fairy tale didn’t last. A brutal combination of crashing oil prices, a plummeting Nigerian stock market, and a devalued naira turned his empire upside down.
The numbers are staggering: $480 million lost to the oil price collapse, $258 million wiped out by the naira’s devaluation, $320 million in mounting interest, and another $160 million vanished in the stock market crash.
“It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from,” Otedola confesses, his words heavy with the weight of those dark days.
The shift was brutal. Gone were the days of charm and persuasion. Instead, he faced “hefty, barrel-chested men” looming at his gate, a stark reminder of how quickly fortunes can flip.
Otedola’s rise to wealth began with Zenon Petroleum, a company that started humbly, selling diesel in drums before dominating Nigeria’s diesel market.
He later transformed African Petroleum into Forte Oil Plc, a stock market darling at its peak.
But in 2008, a fateful decision to order diesel when oil prices soared to $147 per barrel backfired spectacularly when prices crashed to $40 by the time the shipment arrived.
That misstep, coupled with the naira’s devaluation from N120 to N167 against the dollar in 2009, left him buried under a mountain of debt.
