Femi Otedola has deployed approximately ₦391 billion — around $300 million — buying First HoldCo shares in 2026 alone, lifting his ownership of the parent company of FirstBank from 5.65% at the time he joined the board in August 2023 to 26.1% today, according to Business Insider Africa. His total declared investment in the group now exceeds ₦600 billion, or roughly $460 million, meaning the purchases made this year alone account for about two-thirds of everything he has put in.
The accumulation has been relentless and accelerating. Otedola held roughly 2.03 billion First HoldCo shares — a 5.65% position — immediately before he became a non-executive director. By end-2024 that had more than doubled to 4.23 billion shares, or 11.8%. A year on, he controlled 8.06 billion shares equivalent to 18.12% of the enlarged share capital. Then the pace shifted up again: a 549.54 million-share purchase for ₦43.41 billion in May, a 706.13 million-share block for ₦77.58 billion in July, then the single largest disclosed transaction — approximately 1.78 billion shares costing ₦222.21 billion. His most recent purchase, disclosed last Friday, added another 138.04 million shares for ₦18.11 billion (roughly $14 million), pushing him to nearly 12 billion shares in total and the 26.1% mark.
The share count alone tells a striking story: Otedola's position has grown almost sixfold from the level reported before he assumed the chairmanship. So has the share price. First HoldCo stock closed 2025 at ₦47.90; his latest purchase was executed at ₦131.20 per share, nearly a 2.7x increase. At that price, his near-12-billion-share holding is worth roughly ₦1.57 trillion — which also means every additional percentage point he tries to acquire will cost materially more than the last.
Otedola has now made his intentions explicit. In an interview this week he compared the First HoldCo trajectory to two prior investments: at African Petroleum — later rebranded Forte Oil — he said he moved from 28% to 75% ownership; at Geregu Power, the electricity producer he listed on the Nigerian Exchange, he went from a 51% founding stake to as high as 95% before trimming. "I am on the same trajectory with First HoldCo Plc," he said, a statement that transforms how the share-buying should be read — less portfolio management, more staged takeover.
Crossing 51% would give Otedola outright majority control of a financial group built around FirstBank, a lender founded in 1894 and one of the oldest surviving banking franchises in sub-Saharan Africa. The bank operates not just in Nigeria but in Ghana, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the United Kingdom — a pan-African footprint that makes any ownership change consequential well beyond Lagos.
The timing intersects with a pivotal moment for Nigerian banking. The Central Bank of Nigeria has raised minimum capital requirements for lenders, triggering a sector-wide recapitalisation wave. First HoldCo's shareholders have already approved plans to raise as much as ₦253.1 billion in fresh equity, and Otedola has been the single largest source of that new capital. Over a nine-month period recently reported, the Otedola-chaired group posted a $303 million profit, driven primarily by interest income — suggesting the underlying bank is generating real returns even as it digests the capital injection.
The distance from 26% to 51% is, however, considerably more expensive than the journey that brought Otedola this far. With the stock up roughly 174% from where it ended 2025 and the free float shrinking as he accumulates, each percentage point will command a higher price. Market participants will also be watching for any regulatory or corporate-governance triggers — Nigerian securities rules impose disclosure thresholds and, above certain levels, mandatory tender-offer obligations — that could complicate or publicly price a 51% bid before it arrives.
Why it matters: A majority-owned FirstBank, controlled by one of Africa's wealthiest private individuals and already recapitalised ahead of peers, would be positioned as the continent's most aggressively consolidated banking franchise — a test case for whether personal-balance-sheet conviction can reshape a systemically important African institution faster than institutional capital ever managed.