Billionaire businessman Femi Otedola has revealed that his dominance of Nigeria’s diesel market was not born out of grand ambition, but out of necessity, a strategic response to the country’s chronic infrastructure and energy failures.
In his forthcoming memoir, Making It Big, Otedola recounts how power outages, fuel scarcity, and a broken supply chain in an oil-rich nation created a gap he felt compelled to fill.
“If Nigeria had been working well, I would have no business controlling the diesel market,” he writes.
“There was no good reason for diesel to be scarce in an oil-producing country. But scarce it was. I simply saw a gap and capitalised on the inefficiency in the system.”
Otedola traces the roots of his entrepreneurial journey to the 1993 military coup led by General Sani Abacha and the collapse of finance houses, which pushed him to seek a business independent of his family legacy.
“In a sense, it took the coup for me to start thinking of a line of business that would be entirely my own, not connected to my father or the family in any way,” he says.
Contrary to speculation that Zenon Petroleum was born from backdoor deals, Otedola describes the venture as a product of “blood, sweat, and tears,” built through strategic investments and relentless persistence.
“Some seem to think we came out of nowhere and were handed a monopoly on a silver platter. There is a story behind every success… It took blood, sweat, and tears for me to build Zenon from the ground up.”
Beyond his personal story, the memoir critiques Nigeria’s systemic dysfunction, portraying his rise as both a testament to resilience and an indictment of governance failures that allow private empires to thrive on public sector weaknesses.
He also offers advice to aspiring African entrepreneurs: “You will encounter people who are waiting like angels to open the door and others intent on slamming it shut in your face.”
Making It Big is set for release on August 18, 2025, and promises to be a revealing account of one of Africa’s most influential business figures.
