Encomium
The first excerpts from Femi Otedola’s business memoir paints a picture of desolation and despair as he narrates how he was harassed and hounded by banks after his oil business hit an iceberg in 2009.
From being courted and wooed by the leading banks who sought deposits by sending elegant ladies, he became a prisoner in his home. Hefty and tough looking men besieged his Ikoyi (Lagos) house at the crack of dawn to demand for the loans he owed banks following his financial woes in 2008/2009.
Zenon Petroleum had run into troubled waters when prices of crude oil crashed from $147/barrel to $40, and the naira was devalued from N120/$ to N167/$.
He made a loss of $1.218 billion ($480 million to oil price crash, $258 million to devaluation of the naira $320 million through skyrocketing interest rates and another $160 million to stocks woes).
“It was devastating, like a terrible nightmare, but a nightmare would have been better: day would break, and I would wake up. There was no waking up from this,” he wrote in ‘Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business’.
“One moment, I was the darling of banks, who did everything to court me, do business with me, give me loans, take deposits from me. They would send bewitching ladies to make their offers more convincing, and now I was waking up to the sight of hefty, barrel-chested men standing menacingly in front of my gate, waiting for the moment I’d step out of my compound.”
The Chairman of First HoldCo PLC and Geregu Power PLC, whose long-awaited memoir, ‘Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business’, is scheduled for release on Monday, August 18, 2025, announced that preorder is available on www.makingitbigbook.com.
Endorsed by leading lights across sectors—from Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, Prince Samuel Adedoyin and Ms Arunma Oteh—Making It Big took about seven years to package.
