{"id":73562,"date":"2025-08-19T09:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=73562"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:38:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:38:23","slug":"73562","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/19\/73562\/","title":{"rendered":"Otedola Reveals How He Built Billion-Dollar Empire Without a Degree"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Omoniyi David<\/strong><\/p>\n

Billionaire businessman Femi Otedola has revealed how he rose to the top without completing secondary school or earning a university degree.<\/p>\n

In his newly released 286-page memoir, Making It Big, the 62-year-old chairman of FirstHoldco Plc recounted how academic struggles forced him out of the classroom and into business.<\/p>\n

Otedola began schooling at the University of Lagos Staff School in 1968 but consistently performed at the bottom of his class.<\/p>\n

His parents moved him from Methodist Boys\u2019 High School, Lagos, to Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, but his grades did not improve.<\/p>\n

By Lower Sixth, he dropped out to join his father\u2019s printing company, Impact Press, against his mother\u2019s wishes. At just 25, he became managing director of the firm in 1987.<\/p>\n

Seeking independence, Otedola turned to sales, earning commissions from jobs he brought in and quickly attracting major clients.<\/p>\n

In 1994, with \u20a610 million in capital, he founded Centre Force Ltd. and later expanded into oil and gas, shipping, real estate, finance, and power.<\/p>\n

He went on to chair Forte Oil, invested in Geregu Power Plc, and today leads one of Nigeria\u2019s largest financial groups.<\/p>\n

Otedola admitted many wrongly assumed he was a university graduate, at one point, even his Wikipedia page claimed he studied at the University of Lagos.<\/p>\n

But for him, business was the real classroom. \u201cI never returned for my Upper Sixth. All I wanted was to get involved in business,\u201d he wrote, adding that discipline, persistence, and an unrelenting hunger to succeed helped him \u201cmake it big.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Omoniyi David Billionaire businessman Femi Otedola has revealed how he rose to the top without completing secondary school or earning a university degree. In his newly released 286-page memoir, Making It Big, the 62-year-old chairman of FirstHoldco Plc recounted how academic struggles forced him out of the classroom and into business. Otedola began schooling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":73563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73562"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73565,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73562\/revisions\/73565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}