By Chukwudi Iwuchukwu


FBN Holdings Plc, the holding company of First Bank of Nigeria announced this evening that it has received notification that Femi Otedola, billionaire businessman, has acquired a 5% stake in the company.


The Bank earlier denied this morning the news that Femi now owns the bank.


With this announcement, Otedola is now the biggest shareholder of First Bank Holdings, which includes First Bank Of Nigeria.


This is why this is very significant:


I woke up this morning to a WhatsApp message from my Oga and the former Nigerian Electricity  Regulatory  Commission( NERC) Acting chairman, Tony Akah


The news link he sent  reads:


Breaking: First Bank Denies That Femi Otedola Is The New Majority Shareholder Of The Bank.


I laughed. I knew what was at play was pure board room politics and nothing more than this.


Let me explain.


Before now, the major shareholders of First Bank Of Nigeria were Glo Chairman, Mike Adenuga.


Honeywell Group chairman and founder, Oba Otudeko.


Akene Ayinda, an oil and gas big-time player.


The founder of Leadway assurance, Tunde Hassan-Odukale who is the current chairman of the bank.


Nigerian woman of God who is a billionaire businesswoman, Ibukun Awosika.


CBN removed Oba Oteduko and Ibukun Awosika from the board earlier this year for Infraction and abuse of office.


These were the major shareholders of the bank. Femi Otedola was never in the picture.


One thing that the current board members of the bank did not know is that Femi has a dream to own a bank one day, also he has free cash he is not using at the moment.


Remember that  Femi sold his Forte Oil and Gas business to Prudent Energy, a local oil trading firm for $250 million, many years ago.


Also, his independent power plant Gerugu power plant is doing well and generating a lot of cash flow for him, so the Lagos state billionaire has a lot of cash to play with.


Once his financial advisors identified that the First bank of Nigeria has floating shares in the excess of what Femi needs to control the bank,the man with his close financial advisors went to work, without making noise, using an investment company not related to him to mop up shares in excess of  30 billion naira belonging to First Bank Of Nigeria.


The shares he has mopped up automatically gave him 5%  ownership of First bank holdings and he is not done yet.


He is still mopping up more shares even though he is the majority owner of the bank as it were now.


Apparently, the news that Femi is now the majority owner of the bank leaked yesterday, the news jolted and startled the Chairman of the bank Hassan as he did not see it coming.


Hassan has only 3%  ownership of the bank, what it means is that Femi with his 5%  can boot him out of the chairman's seat and then take over the bank which he did not want to happen.


The embattled Chairman Hassan influenced Seyi Kosoko, the company secretary to issue a press release yesterday that FBN Holdings was not aware of Otedola's shares in a statement to the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX).


What the Leadway Assurance founder and the current chairman of the First bank did not know is that late Victor Hugo had him in mind when he said:


" No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come"


In a volte-face this evening, Kosoko issued another notice saying FBNH had received "a notification from APT Securities and Funds Limited, that their Client, Mr Otedola Olufemi Peter and his nominee, Calvados Global Services Limited have acquired a total of 1,818,551,625 units of shares from the Company's issued share capital of 35,895,292,791.
"Based on the foregoing, the equity stake of Mr Otedola Olufemi Peter and his nominee in the Company  is now 5.07%."


So as it were, Femi Otedola is the largest shareholder of First Bank Of Nigeria and according to my reliable sauce, he is not  done yet as he is still mopping up more shares of First Bank of Nigeria using different investment vehicles.


Man has the cash to burn to achieve his dream of owning a bank in his lifetime so money is not a problem.


Femi Otedola is a maverick businessman, one of the finest of his generation of entrepreneurs, underate him at your peril.


Femi Otedola recently announced  that he will release his business memoir next month and if there is one thing I'm looking forward to, I'm looking forward to buying a copy of the book  when it comes out, to consume the literary mind of one of the finest entrepreneurs to come out of this part of the world.


I hope corporate business students are reading this First bank drama between the bank and Otedola, I also hope that they are also paying attention.