If you open Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business, expecting to learn how to build a fortune in Nigeria, brace yourself for disappointment. What you will find instead is a glossy self-portrait of a man who insists he climbed to the top by grit and instinct, but whose story, when stripped of its polish, reads as a manual on how to leverage privilege, political access, and government bailouts into a personal empire. Femi Otedola wants us to believe he “made it big” by instinct, hustle, and a refusal to quit. His new memoir, is packaged as a motivational manual. In reality, it is a case study in how wealth in Nigeria is manufactured; not in factories or boardrooms, but in the corridors of government power.
Otedola’s empire was not built on invention, risk management, or product obsession. It was built on diesel, deregulation, and deliberate state favor. Otedola would like us to believe he is the Nigerian Ray Kroc – an intuitive entrepreneur who spotted inefficiencies and turned them into empires. But unlike Kroc, who obsessed over French fries, Otedola never obsessed over diesel. His business genius, such as it was, lay not in mastering a product or building systems, but in mastering the corridors of power. His memoir is less a guide to making it big than a confession of how “big” in Nigeria is almost always made: by proximity to the state.
A Monopoly by Any Other Name
Zenon Petroleum, the crown jewel of Otedola’s empire, did not rise on the back of ingenuity. It rose on the back of deregulation, selective import approvals, and sweetheart concessions from Obasanjo’s government. Otedola casually boasts of “controlling 93%” of the diesel market by 2004, yet glosses over how he got there: early import approvals that froze out competitors, exclusive access to key jetties, privileged import rights, and sweetheart concessions handed out by the Obasanjo administration. That’s not entrepreneurship; it’s patronage. His story is littered with contradictions. At one point, he mangles the arithmetic of his own trade, wrongly instructing readers to “divide by 1,164” to convert diesel tonnage to liters. No serious trader could survive with such an error. But Otedola could, because margins fattened by monopoly rents allowed him to stumble his way to billions. By his own admission, Zenon’s spectacular rise was not possible in a “functioning” country. That honesty is commendable; but his pretense that it was nonetheless entrepreneurship is insulting.
Printing Money, Not Building Business
The book’s anecdotes, told with self-deprecating charm, inadvertently reveal the thinness of the empire’s foundations. At one point, Otedola insists that to convert tons of diesel into liters, you “divide by 1,164.” This is mathematically wrong. A small slip? Perhaps. But it is emblematic: the man who dominated the country’s diesel trade did not need to understand the most basic arithmetic of his commodity. His profits were secured not by efficiency or technical mastery, but by state-enabled monopoly rents so obscene that he could afford to blunder.
And blunder he did, when his hubris finally caught up with him. His spectacular $500 million miscalculation in 2008 – betting unhedged on oil at its peak – nearly collapsed the Nigerian banking system. He became the single largest debtor in the country. Ordinary entrepreneurs who fail at this scale disappear into bankruptcy. Otedola was rescued by AMCON, by the Nigerian taxpayer. His comeback, which he celebrates as a triumph of resilience, was made possible only because the state once again offered him a bailout and absorbed over N80 billion of his losses.
Lessons in Cynicism
One of the book’s most telling passages recounts how his father lost an investment in local lightbulb manufacturing when the government undercut its own protectionist policy. Otedola draws the lesson that his father should have lobbied harder in Abuja. Not that Nigeria needed consistency. Not that true innovation should be protected. No, the lesson is that survival depends on access, not productivity. His takeaway is that innovation doesn’t matter. Influence does. This is the unvarnished truth of Otedola’s memoir: to “make it big” in Nigeria, you don’t need genius or grit. You need access. You need friends in the Villa. You need the state to guarantee your profits and absorb your losses.
This worldview saturates the memoir. Competitors are “haters,” rivals are to be crushed, and his final ship was named Zenon Conquest – a literal monument to domination. The advice he dispenses – avoid adultery, cherish family, give to charity – is decent enough, but irrelevant to the real story. You don’t make it big by staying faithful. You make it big by knowing which NNPC official to call at midnight to jump the fuel queue.
Making It Big, Keeping Nigeria Small
The greatest tragedy of Otedola’s tale is that it perfectly mirrors Nigeria’s wider economic failure. Our billionaires grow fat on state concessions, arbitrage opportunities, and policy distortions, while the country itself remains poor, underpowered, and underdeveloped. His memoir is meant to inspire. It should, instead, depress. It is proof that in Nigeria, wealth is decoupled from innovation, efficiency, or national progress.
If there is any lesson here, it is that Otedola did not “make it big” in the sense most readers will understand it. He was born with access, supercharged by political patronage, and saved by government bailouts. Otedola’s fortune grew as Nigeria stagnated. His monopoly on diesel did not make energy cheaper, more efficient, or more reliable for ordinary Nigerians. It made him rich while the country stayed poor. The system worked for him, even as it failed the millions who pay N70 for a litre of diesel when it should cost far less.
Making It Big is thus a paradox: a billionaire’s self-help book that can’t actually help you, unless your father is a governor, your friends are in Aso Villa, and the state stands ready to clean up after your catastrophic bets. For everyone else, it is a reminder that in Nigeria, the game is rigged, and the house always wins. So, let’s be clear: Making It Big is not a blueprint for aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s a confession of how Nigeria’s billionaires are created – through privilege, patronage, and protection. For most readers, it offers no usable lesson except this: in Nigeria, the game is rigged, and unless you’re already at the table, you’re only a spectator.
