For years, Nigerians have longed for a more relatable billionaire class, one that opens up the black box of wealth creation rather than just showcasing its fruits. Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and industrialist, has been the most visible, but much of his more recent public presence has revolved around his bruising battles with Nigeria’s political elite over his $20 billion refinery project. Tony Elumelu, the banker-turned-investor who built United Bank for Africa and later the Heirs Holdings conglomerate, has mastered the art of social media visibility, curating the image of the stylish, family-oriented, cool billionaire through Instagram posts and Twitter soundbites. Yet for all the charm, his methodology, the real mechanics of how he built and sustains his empire, remains only lightly sketched in public.
Into this vacuum steps Femi Otedola. His memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business, might be the best attempt yet by a Nigerian billionaire to give readers an unvarnished window into the machinery of wealth. It is part confession, part celebration, part cautionary tale. A story spanning childhood hustles, billion-dollar oil gambits, devastating crashes, and eventual philanthropy, the book promised both candour and controversy. It has delivered both. And the public has responded. Within weeks of release, Making It Big became a three-time Amazon best seller, a milestone that cements Otedola not just as a business mogul but also as a storyteller whose account has struck a nerve far beyond Nigeria.
On social media, readers are split. Some hail Otedola’s honesty while others question what his story means for innovation, technology, and the future of African entrepreneurship. At its heart lies a bigger debate: what counts as innovation in Nigeria?
The Business Playbook: Scale, Access, and Deregulation
Otedola’s memoir is filled with stories of hustle meeting timing, but it is in the founding of Zenon Petroleum and Gas in 1999 that the playbook crystallises. By 2004, just five years later, he claimed to control 93% of Nigeria’s diesel market. This breathtaking rise was not the product of a new invention or a technological breakthrough, but rather the ability to seize opportunity at a decisive policy moment.
The enabler was the deregulation of diesel imports, a shift that ended the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s monopoly and opened the door for private players. While many were still scrambling to understand the new terrain, Otedola moved quickly, securing import licences, locking in supply chains, and clinching a crucial concession to use the Ibru family’s Ibafon jetty. This single move gave Zenon a chokepoint advantage, ensuring his tankers could berth and offload while competitors languished in queues.
Where others saw chaos, Otedola saw the opportunity to build order. He constructed an empire of logistics: fleets of shipping vessels, sprawling storage depots, and distribution networks that reached deep into Nigeria’s industrial and commercial centres. At its peak, Zenon was reportedly realising up to $6 million monthly, an astonishing cash flow that became the war chest for his expansion into finance, power, telecoms, and even shipping.
Critics argue that this was less about innovation and more about policy-enabled dominance. They point out that timing, access, and proximity to the corridors of power mattered more than any breakthrough idea. Yet defenders suggest that in Nigeria, where dysfunction is often the rule, innovation does not always wear the clothes of technology. Sometimes, it is about removing friction in broken systems.
Agboola Sodiq (@SodiqAgb) captured this nuance when he wrote:
Innovation isn’t only those that take the world by the neck; it can also be local. OTE removed frictions in Nigeria’s oil logistics. That’s innovation too, for a different market.”
Seen this way, Otedola’s dominance in diesel distribution becomes less a story of invention and more one of infrastructure entrepreneurship: the creation of efficiency where inefficiency once reigned. It is a distinctly Nigerian form of innovation, born not in labs but in the gaps left by a failing state.
The Cynical Thread: Corridors of Power vs. Product Obsession
Professional reviewers were less charitable in their reading of Making It Big. Feyi Fawehinmi, writing under The Billionaire’s Contradiction, concluded that Otedola’s story illustrates a Nigeria where connections matter more than product mastery:
In the quest to ‘make it big’ in Nigeria, understanding the product is optional. Understanding the corridors of power is everything.”
This line goes to the heart of the unease many readers felt. Otedola’s narrative is filled with phone calls from NNPC insiders, concessions that tilted the playing field in his favour, and friendships that smoothed his access to contracts. These elements are presented with candour, but they also reinforce the idea that in Nigeria, fortune flows not from the mastery of an industry, but from navigating its political gatekeepers.
The memoir is strikingly light on diesel itself as a product. There are few passages exploring its global price volatility, refining processes, or supply chain mechanics. Unlike Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, who obsessed over the perfect french fry, Otedola presents diesel as simply a commodity and a vessel for arbitrage. The passion is for the deal, not the product. For some, this is proof that Nigeria’s billionaire playbook rewards access more than innovation or technical depth.
A viral review thread by @A_Feranmi put it even more bluntly:
The true source of Nigerian fortune is rarely innovation… It is information asymmetry. It is knowing someone others don’t know.”
This is where Otedola’s memoir becomes more than personal history. It is also a mirror of Nigeria’s economic culture. In countries where institutions are stronger, billionaires often emerge by obsessing over product excellence, whether it is Jeff Bezos with customer service at Amazon or Elon Musk with battery technology. In Nigeria, the fuel of wealth is less about mastery of product and more about mastery of access, who you know, what concessions you can secure, and how you can leverage scarcity into dominance.
Innovation Reframed: Not Deep Tech, But Deep Strategy
And yet, dismissing Otedola’s approach as “non-innovative” risks a narrow reading. Innovation in Silicon Valley is often defined through patents, intellectual property, or ground-breaking technology. In Nigeria, where institutions are weak and infrastructure is broken, innovation frequently looks different. It is about building where nothing exists, navigating an unpredictable policy environment, and surviving crises that could bury entire industries.
- Logistics Innovation: By controlling jetties, fleets, and depots, Otedola created efficiency in a system plagued by bottlenecks. In a country where ships could wait weeks offshore and trucks routinely broke down on dilapidated roads, Zenon Petroleum’s network provided reliability that competitors could not match. What might look like simple logistics on paper was, in the Nigerian context, a radical intervention.
- Financial Innovation: Otedola’s use of capital was equally inventive, though in a blunt, audacious way. His decision to pay N2.8 billion for a competitor’s depot that had cost just N300 million to build and was valued around N800 million shocked observers, but it eliminated competition and gave him a stranglehold on distribution. This was financial muscle as strategy, a demonstration that capital could be wielded as a weapon to consolidate dominance.
- Crisis Innovation: Perhaps his most remarkable trait was resilience under pressure. The oil crash of 2008 left Otedola with losses of nearly ₦200 billion and debts so large they threatened the stability of Nigeria’s banking sector. His survival required the intervention of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which purchased much of his toxic debt and forced him to surrender a significant portfolio of his real estate and equity holdings. Unlike many of his peers who never recovered, Otedola took the painful step of parting with prized assets, effectively restarting from scratch.
With the slim foundation of Forte Oil, and later Geregu Power, he was able to rebuild credibility, restore his fortune, and eventually reposition himself among Nigeria’s top industrialists. His recovery was a story of humility, adaptation, and reinvention, but it was also a case study in how the Nigerian state, like others globally, steps in to stabilise systemic risks.
The comparison with the 2008 United States financial crisis is instructive. Just as AMCON became a lifeboat for Nigeria’s fragile financial system, the US government poured billions into bailing out banks and automakers through programs like TARP. In both contexts, the survival of national economies demanded state intervention, and in both cases the beneficiaries were those with the most at stake in the system.
This is not deep tech innovation, but it is adaptive innovation in hostile terrain. Otedola’s comeback illustrates how in Nigeria, as in the wider world, the line between private risk and public rescue is thin. His ability to rise again, despite such a collapse, demonstrates that resilience itself can be a form of innovation, even if it comes wrapped in controversy.
Could He Have Demonstrated More Product Mastery?
One of the recurring criticisms of Making It Big is Otedola’s apparent disinterest in the technicalities of his product. Diesel is treated in the memoir not as a fascinating commodity to be mastered, but as a vehicle for profit. Even when he attempts to sound technical, such as with his flawed calculation on tonnes to litres, the moment exposes a lack of product depth and raises questions about how much he really knew versus how much he delegated or improvised.
The question then is whether this was a genuine gap in Otedola’s entrepreneurial journey, or a conscious editorial choice. Did he not understand the product as deeply as global peers like Ray Kroc did with hamburgers or Howard Schultz did with coffee at Starbucks? Or did he believe that Nigerian readers did not need to hear about sulphur content, refining margins, hedging instruments, or risk management techniques? Perhaps what he felt mattered more were the stories of deals closed, crises survived, and rivals outmanoeuvred.
There is also a cultural dimension to consider. In much of the Nigerian business imagination, product obsession has rarely been celebrated. What captures attention are tales of influence, speed of execution, and scale of wealth. By giving us stories of access, privilege, and capital deployment, Otedola may have been speaking directly to the audience he believed wanted a front-row seat to the drama of business: the spectacle of power, the thrill of audacity, and the glamour of winning.
Yet in doing so, he leaves behind an uncomfortable void. There is little sense of the science of diesel, the long-term strategies of energy, or the structural reforms needed to stabilise supply chains. That absence reinforces the perception that in Nigeria, business mastery is often secondary to political access, arbitrage, and deal-making.
This tension is part of what makes the book fascinating. It is not simply Otedola’s personal choice of what to reveal or conceal, but a reflection of Nigeria’s business culture itself, where wealth is rarely equated with expertise in product or process. His memoir inadvertently documents that reality, offering a mirror of how fortunes are made in a system where access often eclipses mastery.
Making It Big in 2025: The Moniepoint Example
If Otedola’s empire was built on oil, logistics, and state-enabled opportunity, then Moniepoint’s rise offers a fresh counter-narrative for 2025.
Moniepoint did not emerge overnight. It began in 2015 as TeamApt, a scrappy startup founded by Tosin Eniolorunda. The company started out building enterprise software for Nigerian banks at a time when financial institutions were still lagging in digital adoption. Its early revenues and survival came from these partnerships, riding on the coattails of deep relationships with incumbents like Zenith Bank. This proximity to legacy finance helped Moniepoint establish credibility in a heavily regulated sector where trust is everything.
But unlike Otedola’s Zenon, which remained heavily dependent on government concessions, Moniepoint steadily pivoted away from dependence and built an independent empire that is now reshaping the landscape of African financial services. Its rebrand from TeamApt to Moniepoint signalled that transformation: from a vendor to banks into a consumer-facing financial ecosystem with continental ambition.
Today, Moniepoint has become a Unicorn, with analysts insisting that this is only the beginning. The company powers millions of transactions daily, serving not just urban elites but also small businesses, rural agents, and underserved communities. Its model is both digital and physical: a cloud-powered backend of APIs, data platforms, and automation, paired with a nationwide network of human agents that extends financial access into the farthest corners of Nigeria.
This hybrid model is where Moniepoint’s innovation truly lies. Where Otedola captured market share through exclusive control of a jetty, Moniepoint has captured market share through open rails and accessibility, making banking services available where traditional banks could not reach.
Banking Relationship to Independence: Moniepoint started by serving banks as TeamApt and leveraging Zenith’s credibility, but now competes directly with GTCO, Access, and Zenith for dominance in payments and SME finance. This is still very early days, but it shows how quickly digital platforms can leapfrog incumbents.
Innovation Model: Moniepoint’s strength lies in APIs, automation, and data analytics that cut friction out of transactions. Instead of relying on monopolistic state concessions, its growth is rooted in solving the everyday pain points of millions of Nigerians.
Future Vision: Analysts project Moniepoint could evolve into a “Super Bank”, rivaling Nigeria’s top-tier financial institutions in market cap and consumer trust. Unlike Otedola’s empire, which collapsed under the weight of global volatility and required AMCON to intervene, Moniepoint’s resilience will be tested by how it handles crises without a state safety net.
This is where the comparison becomes more complex. If Moniepoint were to fail, what would be its AMCON? Would the Nigerian government step in to rescue a fintech the way it rescued Otedola’s oil-fuelled empire, or would Moniepoint be forced to turn to private markets and investors for a lifeline? Could its investors in New York, London, or Dubai play the role that Abuja once did for Zenon? And perhaps this is what Femi Otedola understands better than most: that in Nigeria, the ultimate guarantor of survival has often been the state.
The contrast is stark. Otedola’s fortune was born from state policy and personal networks in the corridors of power. Moniepoint’s fortune is emerging from technology, inclusion, and scalability. Both models required relationships and grit, but one is extractive while the other is expansive.
For young Nigerians looking to “make it big,” the Moniepoint story may be the clearer signal of where opportunity lies in 2025: not in lobbying, but in building platforms that millions can stand on.
The Bigger Paradox: Big Men, Small Country
Still, the memoir underscores a paradox. One can make it big in Nigeria while the country itself remains small. The playbook that builds billionaires is often disconnected from the playbook that builds nations. Wealth is amassed through policy loopholes, monopolistic opportunities, and privileged concessions that do not always translate into shared prosperity or structural growth.
This is the paradox of the Nigerian elite: the bigger the individual, the smaller the country seems to remain. Otedola’s story, like Dangote’s or even Elumelu’s, is a story of private ascendancy against the backdrop of a stagnant national economy. The wealth dazzles, but the country lags behind.
It is precisely why many younger readers, though entertained, felt the book did not provide a true “how-to” guide. As Black Jaguar (@A_Feranmi) put it:
“By all means, read the book for its thrill and the excitement that comes with seeing how money makes things happen. But don’t expect sharp insights on how to innovate your way to making it big.”
Making It Big vs. Making It Better
Ultimately, Making It Big is less a blueprint for innovation than a mirror of Nigeria’s business environment. It teaches that success often comes from timing, access, resilience, and strategic daring. It also reveals the fragility of fortunes built on policy winds, as seen in Otedola’s near-collapse during the 2008 crash.
For African entrepreneurs, the lesson is twofold:
- Build scale, remove frictions, and use every tool available. That in itself is a form of innovation, even if it is not Silicon Valley-style invention.
- But also ask: can we redefine success beyond making it big to making it better? The challenge is to build enterprises that endure without corridors of power, that empower communities rather than simply extract from them, and that create platforms of opportunity for millions rather than dynasties for a few.
In documenting his life with unvarnished candour, Otedola has, perhaps unwittingly, sparked that conversation. His book reminds us that wealth in Nigeria has often been about power and privilege. But it also invites a generation to ask whether the future belongs to those who can make it not just big, but better.
And in that sense, Making It Big may yet be one of the most innovative things he has ever done: not because it teaches the next billionaire how to rise, but because it forces the rest of us to rethink what rising should really mean.
Amazing 👏🏻