Nigerian billionaires seem to have found their voices as they continue to speak on sensitive national issues.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!While they were known to have been largely diplomatic about serious national matters, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, raised the dust recently when he accused some people at the NNPCL of floating a blending outfit in Malta.
While the company has denied such, with his Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, dissociating himself from it, the allegation still echoes here and there.
Also, Geregu founder and Chairman of First Bank, Femi Otedola, has publicly thrown his weight behind the ‘windfall tax’ that affects the powerful in society.
Now, Hers Holding boss/UBA boss, Tony Elumelu, has spoken on a major challenge he had with the Buhari Government.
He said Buhari and his late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, blocked his plan to get an oil field.
He disclosed that Heirs Holdings had been looking to purchase the oilfield since 2017, having raised $2.5bn to purchase a different one.
But in a twist, he claimed that former president Buhari and his late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, blocked the deal.
In an interview with ‘Financial Standards’, Elumelu said he was told Nigeria could not allow something of such strategic importance to fall into the hands of a private operator.
“This defied logic,” he added since he would have been purchasing it from a foreign company.
Elumelu revealed that his decision to buy a 45 per cent stake in an oilfield three years ago when international oil companies such as Shell, Total and Eni were selling off their shallow water assets in Nigeria was to give the country energy security in the face of low power supply.
“We wanted to become a Fortune 500 company and we estimated what we needed. It’s not naira, it’s huge dollars. Energy security is crucial for a country that doesn’t produce enough electricity for its roughly 200 million citizens,” he added.
The businessman has now got his dream to play in the oil sector realised but he urged the security operatives/the government to identify the forces behind oil theft.
