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Top Richest and most influential Nigerian men from Delta state and their Net Worth 2022
Delta State is a state in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Named after the Niger Delta, a large part of which is in the state—the state was formed from the former Bendel State in August 27, 1991.
Bordered on the north by Edo State, the east by Anambra and Rivers States, and that south by Bayelsa State while to the west is the Bight of Benin which covers about 160 kilometres of the state’s coastline.
We bring you a list of some of the most notable and influential persons from the oil rich state with 25 local government areas.
Asaba as its state capital located along the River Niger on the northeastern end of the State, while the state’s economic center is Warri on the southwestern coastline.
Benedict Peters is a businessman, entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Aiteo Group, one of Nigeria’s largest and most successful corporations. He has a track record of excellence spanning over 20 years in the commodity and energy trading and banking sectors.
Peters got involved in the Nigerian oil and gas industry in the 1990s, working for companies like Ocean and Oil Limited and MRS Oil and Gas Limited, where he served as a pioneering Managing Director. Driven by a strategic vision and a passion for business and leadership development, he founded Aiteo Group in 2000 and has built it into a business that not only employs thousands of workers but is also strengthening Nigeria’s capacity to manage its natural resources.
Benedict Peters was named Man of the Year by Nigeria’s Leadership Newspaper in 2014. He was recognized for his groundbreaking contribution to strengthening Nigeria’s control over its strategic assets. He has a net worth of about 1 billion dollars.
Tony O. Elumelu is an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, the Chairman of Heirs Holdings, United Bank for Africa Plc and Transcorp Nigeria Plc.
In his early career, he made a name for himself by turning the nearly bankrupt Standard Trust Bank into a top-five player in Nigeria. In 2005 he led the largest merger in the banking sector in sub-Saharan Africa, acquiring United Bank for Africa (UBA). In five years, he transformed it from a single-country bank to a pan-African institution with over 7 million customers in 19 African countries.
In 2010, he commenced full-time operations at Heirs Holdings. He founded The Tony Elumelu Foundation, an Africa-based and African-funded philanthropic organization focused on supporting entrepreneurs in Africa by enhancing the competitiveness of the private sector.
He serves as a member of USAID’s Private Capital Group for Africa Partners Forum. He sits on the Nigerian President’s Agricultural Transformation Implementation Council and serves as Co-Chair of the Aspen Institute Dialogue Series on Global Food Security. He played a leading role in forming the National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria and serves as its vice chairman. He is also a member of the Global Advisory Board of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SE4ALL).
He is the author and leading proponent of the philosophy he calls “Africapitalism,” which is the private sector’s commitment to Africa’s development through long-term investment in strategic sectors of the economy that drive economic prosperity and social wealth.
In 2003 the FG of Nigeria conferred the national honour of Member of the Federal Republic on Mr Elumelu. In 2012 he was also awarded the Commander of the Order of the Niger for his service in promoting private enterprise. He was recognized as one of “Africa’s 20 Most Powerful People in 2012” by Forbes Magazine. He has a net worth of about 700 million dollars.
Jim Ovia dubbed the “Godfather of Banking” by Forbes Africa, earned this title by building Nigeria’s largest Bank. Ranked 325th in the world (The Banker, Top 1000 World Banks, 2016), Zenith Bank has over $16bn in assets today across over 300 branches in Nigeria, with a strategic international presence in the UK, Dubai, China, Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. He had always instilled a high level of corporate governance across the Bank, enabling it to achieve an $850m GDR listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2013. In 2017, the Bank issued a $500m Eurobond four times oversubscribed and priced better than the equivalent home country sovereign bond.
As the Chairman of Prudential Zenith Life Assurance Limited, he oversaw the landmark partnership of Prudential UK, one of the world’s largest life assurance companies and Zenith Life – Nigeria’s fastest-growing life assurance company. Currently, he is Chairman and majority shareholder of Zenith General Insurance Limited, Nigeria’s most profitable general insurance company. An avid fan of iconic architecture, he developed the Civic Centre and Aquamarine Boat Club to exploit Nigeria’s burgeoning hospitality sector. Adjacent to this, he built the Civic Towers, a 15-story office block colloquially referred to as Nigeria’s “Empire State Building”. Driven by technology’s role in Nigeria, he established Cyberspace Limited to provide internet services and Visafone Communications Limited to offer telecom services. The latter was sold to MTN, Africa’s largest telco, for an undisclosed sum in 2015.
Realizing education’s importance in his success, he established the Jim Ovia Foundation. To date, over 1,500 students have been provided with university scholarships. Recognizing the gap in high-quality secondary education, the Jim Ovia Foundation established James Hope College in his hometown of Agbor, Delta State, a co-educational boarding school that provides scholarships for over 50% of its pupils.
Successive governments have recognized Jim Ovia’s contribution to the Nigerian economy; he was conferred with the national awards of Member Federal Republic (MFR, 2000) and Commander of the Order of Niger (CON, 2011). He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School (OPM), University of Louisiana (MBA) and Southern University, Louisiana (B.Sc). He has a net worth of over 500 million dollars.
Prince Ned Munir Nwoko is a British-trained Lawyer. Born on December 21, 1960, into the Idumuje- Ugboko Royal family in Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta state, Prince Nwoko attended the University of Keele in Staffordshire, United Kingdom. Here he acquired his Bachelor’s degree in Law and History.
He then obtained an LLM in Maritime and Commercial Law from King’s College, London. He was subsequently called to the English Bar at Lincoln’s Inn.
Prince Nwoko later qualified as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He then set up his firm, Ned Nwoko Solicitors and became the Principal Partner and Senior Consultant.
At the zenith of his practice, his organization had over 30 Lawyers in his employ. It gained international acclaim for its meticulous and tenacious legal battles for financial integrity, transparency, management and verification of foreign debts of third world countries and their component states.
The firm was renowned for its legal and consultancy work for several African and Asian governments in interstate and inter-government work. Relationships in democratic settings are, therefore, a familiar terrain.
Prince Nwoko and his firm won global acclaim when he took some banks to court in Uk Paris and Geneva in a test case on behalf of some states in Nigeria who were said to be indebted to Paris and London Club group of lenders. He initiated discussions with the Nigerian government on the need to reconcile and verify our foreign loans that eventually culminated in the exit from the foreign loans.
He engaged with the Federal government resulting in the acceptance by the Obasanjo government to reimburse the state governments to the value of 20% in full and final settlement for their claims for refund on the Paris and London Club Debt Buy-Back. Prince Ned Nwoko persuaded reluctant state governments to accept the Federal government’s offer and pursue the balance as the law was in their favour.
This eventually played out as the state governments accepted the informed advice of the incisive counsel.
In 2009, following Nigeria’s exit from foreign obligations, he was engaged in a class action at the Federal High court, Abuja, by all the states in pursuit of their refunds from over deductions. The Federal Government settled out of court, leading to a total rebate of over US$ 10 billion to all the states.
His Nigerian firm, Linas International Limited, was equally engaged by the 774 Local Government Areas. Following various court judgements in Linas’ favour, the federal government has refunded over US$ 3 billion to the Local Government Areas.
Prince Nwoko returned to Nigeria in 1998, contested and won the Federal House of Representatives election as a member representing Aniocha and Oshimili Federal Constituency of Delta state. He remained a member of the legislative House till 2003.
As a member of the House, he sponsored 22 bills. Some of these bills are still being implemented today. They include :
* National Minimum Wage Bill 1999
* A bill for an Act to standardize allowances and fringe benefits payable to public/government officials– Monetization Bill.
* A bill for an Act to establish public funds recovery and reward commission (Whistleblowing)
In 2019, Prince Nwoko contested the Delta North Senatorial election.
He won at the High Court in the complex litigations that followed the election, but the Appeal and Supreme Courts voided his initial victory.
Beyond his manifest strides in legal practice and politics, Prince Nwoko has interests in aviation, real estate and agriculture.
He is the Chairman of Project Tourism. His company, Linas International Limited, launched in collaboration with the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation, NTDC, to project Nigeria’s tourism and cultural endowments through profitable creative projects.
Prince Nwoko is the founder of the first sports university in Africa, STARS, an acronym for Sports, Technology, Arts and Research Sciences. With structures now nearing completion, STARS would, in Prince Nwoko’s vision, address the critical issue of Nigeria’s increasing poor performances in international competitions through internationally financed training abroad for its sports students and administrators. STARS also delineates Prince Nwoko’s yearning and zeal for the education of athletes and those working in the sports arena in Nigeria.
In January 2020, his Foundation, Ned Nwoko Foundation, launched the Malaria Eradication Project, a mission to eliminate malaria in Nigeria and Africa in general, beginning with waste management, sanitation and vaccine development. He has an estimated net worth of over 500 million dollars.
Igho Sanomi is the founder of Taleveras, a $2 billion (revenues) international commodities trading company active over a broad spectrum of global energy markets, including crude oil and refined petroleum products, natural gas and power. Taleveras’ trading arm, now based in Dubai and Abuja, is one of the largest independent energy traders in Africa, with additional offices spread across West Africa, Europe and Asia. The company at its prime moved more than 170 million barrels of crude and oil products annually and has upstream and downstream assets in several African countries.
He has twice been recognized by the world-renowned Institute Choiseul based in France, topping the ranks of the Choiseul 100: Economic Leaders for Tomorrow, which ranks young African leaders under 40 who will play a significant role in the economic development of the African continent. Sanomi has traditionally stayed away from the media spotlight, but he’s finally breaking cover for a good reason.
“It’s easy to get caught up and carried away by the media hype,” he says briskly, chopping the air for emphasis. “All I ever wanted to do was to quietly build a successful company, keeping to the old traditional way of doing business with a handshake and performing the contracts we got very well. But as we succeeded, many people began to make up stories about us. At first, we decided to ignore all the noise and focus on the business, but now it’s gotten to a tipping point, and I think it’s a good idea to set the record straight.”
Taleveras and Igho Sanomi have featured prominently in the media for myriad reasons. For one, some of Taleveras’ most important revenue streams were cut off. For example, in December 2014, Taleveras failed to clinch the renewal of its crude for product exchange which it had operated for over three years. The crude for products exchanges used the way the state oil company bartered crude oil for petroleum products rather than selling for money. While others renewed theirs, Taleveras had its contract cancelled by then-President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration. This dealt a big blow to Taleveras, as it had entered forward agreements and based revenue projection models on it. Sanomi’s analysts and detractors were keen to see how Taleveras would replace these revenue streams.
The information in this article was curated from online sources. NewsWireNGR or its editorial team cannot independently verify all details.
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