The small Nigerian town of Nnewi has more naira billionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country.
Shortly before Nigeria’s independence in
1960, Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, reportedly Nigeria’s first black
billionaire, and founding president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
The royal honor came after he helped the British during World War II with his fleet of trucks.
He was so wealthy that during the
Queen’s visit in 1956, she was chauffeured around in his Rolls-Royce –
apparently the only one in the country at the time – on the request of
the colonial administration.
Profiled in September 1965 by TIME
magazine, Ojukwu made his money by importing dried fish for resale, and
diversifying into textiles, cement and transport. When he died a year
later, his wealth was an estimated $4 billion in today’s economic value.
His son, Chukwuemeka, who also ended up a
billionaire, returned from Oxford University at 22 with a master’s
degree in history and led his fellow Igbos into the Nigerian civil war
as head of the secessionist state of Biafra in 1967.
Their hometown Nnewi, in the
southeastern state of Anambra, either by good fortune or hard work, has
bred more naira billionaires than any other town in Nigeria, and
possibly Africa.
The Igbos, who sometimes refer to themselves as the ‘Jews of Africa’, have entrepreneurship in their blood.
They have built themselves from the
ground up, with little help from the government, after a controversial
policy left them all with 20 pounds each, regardless of their bank
balance, at the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970.
Nicknamed the Japan of Africa, Nnewi is
famous as a hub for automobile spare part dealers, and most recently,
Innoson, Nigeria’s first indigenous car assembly plant.
The town is also known for its factories
that manufacture household goods and is home to the biggest road
transport companies in the country.
Nnewi, with a little over two million
residents, is a 30-minute drive from the Onitsha – the biggest outdoor
market in West Africa – on the banks of the Niger River.
These are 10 of the most prominent naira billionaires from Nnewi, in no particular order:
CLETUS IBETO
The Ibeto Group has been described as
the largest industrial enterprise in southeast Nigeria. Starting out as
an apprentice to an already established auto spare parts dealer, Ibeto
eventually branched out on his own and effectively ended importation of
lead acid car batteries in Nigeria in the late 80s.
The result is a conglomerate dealing in hospitality, motor products, real estate, petrochemicals, agriculture and cement.
COSMAS MADUKA
One of the country’s foremost car
dealerships, Coscharis Group, is the brainchild of a man who lost his
father at four and had to drop out of school to sell bean cakes, a
popular food staple.
His company, one of the largest car
dealerships in Nigeria that deals with BMW, Jaguar, Range Rover and
Rolls-Royce, has diversified into agriculture.
INNOCENT CHUKWUMA
Another school dropout, he is the
founder of Innoson Nigeria Limited which produces sport utility
vehicles, commercial buses and passenger cars at the first indigenous
assembly plant in Nigeria.
The company has factories in Nnewi and
Enugu and has the governments of Anambra and Enugu states, as well as a
few federal agencies, among its customers.
GABRIEL CHUKWUMA
The elder brother of Innoson, Gabriel is
invested in sports, real estate and hospitality. As chairman of Gabros
International Football Club, he oversaw its rise into the Nigerian
Premier League and partnership with English side, West Ham FC before
selling to fellow Nnewi entrepreneur, Ifeanyi Ubah.
He began business as a patent medicine dealer.
ALEXANDER CHIKA OKAFOR
Chicason Industries, and one of its products – A-Z Petroleum, are household names in Nigeria.
The conglomerate has made significant inroads in the mining, manufacturing, and real estate in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Okafor, its founder and chairman, was
named in 2011 by the Senate as one of the beneficiaries of the subsidy
fraud under the Goodluck Jonathan administration, pocketing as much as
N18 billion ($54 million).
AUGUSTINE ILODIBE
An orphan and mass server in the
Catholic Church, young Ilodibe was gifted £35 by one of the priests and
he initially invested in motor spare parts trading.
By the sixties, he pioneered the interstate luxury bus transport service; for years, he was the sole importer of these buses.
After helping organize vehicles for the
Biafran side during the civil war, he established the hugely popular
Ekene Dili Chukwu Transport, his main cash cow and later diversified
into brewery and agriculture.
IFEANYI UBAH
The flamboyant businessman funded parts
of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign ahead of the 2015 presidential polls
and unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of his home state, Anambra,
in 2014.
His wealth comes from investments in oil
and gas, as well as exportation of motor spare parts and, recently,
from sales of football players.
In June 2015, Ubah – described by one
Nigerian newspaper as ‘the new sugar daddy of Nigerian football’ –
completed the purchase of Gabros FC for N500 million and renamed it
Ifeanyi Ubah FC.
LOUIS ONWUGBENU
The head honcho of Louis Carter Industries dropped out of school in 1967 when the Nigerian civil war broke out.
He got his nickname from weekly trips to Lagos to sell motor spare parts under the popular Carter Bridge in the city.
His reinvested profits allowed him to
diversify into manufacturing car batteries and pipe fittings,
agriculture, food processing, real estate and, by the age of 30, he was
already a naira multimillionaire.
The headquarters of his conglomerate sits in the Carter Industrial Estate, spanning many acres in Nnewi.
OBIAJULU UZODIKE
Nigeria is one of the foremost cable producers in the world due to many indigenous manufacturers across the southeast.
One of the top cable companies is Cutix
Nigeria, whose founder, Obiajulu Uzodike, cut his teeth in the business
as a staff at a US-based aircraft and military wares and accessories
company.
By 1982, the Harvard Business School
alumna and civil war veteran set up Cutix with N400,000 ($1,200),
nurturing it to eventually become the first indigenous firm in the
southeast to be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
Written by Eromo Egbejule
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