Femi Otedola celebrates 60th birthday on Christina O Yacht

Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola is celebrating his 60th birthday on the French Riviera aboard the 99.13-meter-long Christina O Yacht, once owned by the late Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.

Otedola’s daughter, Ifeoluwa, who goes by the moniker “DJ Cuppy” posted videos on her Instagram page on Wednesday showing the energy tycoon, his wife, and children celebrating at a private, intimate soiree off the Italy coast on the yacht, which has a rich history and has hosted some of the world’s most historic figures.

Femi Otedola is paying a pretty penny for chartering the yacht — an estimated $3 million. According to private sources who spoke to Billionaires.Africa, Otedola is renting the vessel for three and a half weeks at a cost of €750,000 ($745,000) per week plus extra taxes and handling fees, bringing the total expenses to €3 million ($2.97 million). He also bought out an earlier charterer for the right to use the yacht during his birthday week.

Plying the seas first as a World War II Canadian frigate and then as a private luxury vessel starting in 1954, the Christina O is a piece of floating history. Aristotle Onassis purchased the vessel in 1954 and named it after his daughter Christina. When Onassis married Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, widow of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1968, the couple held their reception on the Christina O. The yacht would go on to host such famous guests as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, Jr.

With a line of chaise loungers, an alfresco dining and bar setup, a spacious promenade deck with an aft spa pool, and an impressive main deck, where the Onassis’ swimming pool sits with its renowned Minoan bull and vaulter mosaic alongside a dance floor, Christina O offers a plethora of options for lounging and socializing.

For Otedola, chartering the Christina O to commemorate his diamond jubilee is symbolic. In a past interview with Forbes magazine, Otedola revealed that the late Greek shipping tycoon had been his role model since he was 13. Otedola is also known to possess a large collection of Aristotle Onassis memorabilia such as books, movies, and documentaries at his homes in Nigeria, London, Dubai, Monte Carlo, and London. In modeling parts of his life after Onassis, in 2001 – at the age of 39, Otedola founded Seaforce Shipping Company Limited and built it into Nigeria’s largest indigenous shipping company. Between 2001 and 2007, Otedola was the largest private shipowner in Nigeria, owning a tanker fleet that included Mt. Sir Michael (named after his father), Mt. Lady Doja (named after his mother), Mt. Nana (named after his wife) and Mt. Zenon Conquest. He also served as the President of Nigeria Chambers of Shipping./

Otedola has since divested from his interests in the shipping business and is now channeling his energies towards fixing Nigeria’s electricity deficit. Today, he is the chairman of Geregu Power PLC, a power-generating company that made history in the month of October by being the first electricity generating company to list on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Geregu Power has three STG5-2000E gas turbine generator units with a 435 MW installed capacity, and the company has been shortlisted by the Nigerian government to acquire a second plant currently owned by the government with a generating capacity of 729 MW. Otedola owns a 95-percent stake in the $650-million (market cap) company. He also owns an estimated six-percent stake in FBN Holdings, one of Nigeria’s largest financial services groups.

Aristotle Onassis also largely shaped Otedola’s outlook on philanthropy. The Greek businessman, who left instructions in his handwritten will for the establishment of a charitable foundation in memory of his son – the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation – also inspired Otedola in his charitable givings. Otedola, one of Nigeria’s most generous philanthropists, has given away more money to philanthropic causes than any other Nigerian billionaire, except Aliko Dangote, over the last twenty years. In November 2019, during an event in Abuja that was graced by Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Femi Otedola donated a record NGN 5 billion – roughly $14 million at the time – to Save the Children, a UK non-governmental organization. The funds have gone a long way towards improving the lives of destitute children who have victims of a lingering humanitarian crisis in Nigeria’s northeast region. In November last year, he was invited by Save the Children to join the prestigious group as the organisation’s vice president, in recognition of his philanthropic efforts to better the lives of children in Nigeria. In 2020, he also donated $2.27 million toward COVID-19 relief efforts and last year he built and donated a $4.7 million complex to the Engineering department of Lagos-based Augustine University. He is also the Chancellor of Augustine University, and has sponsored scholarships for Nigerian students for two decades.

In 2019 when local media inquired about his motivation for donating the NGN 5 billion to Save the Children U.K, Otedola said: “In my life, in my journey, I have taken the risk, I have done the chase, I have enjoyed the thrill, I have achieved success and recognition. What next? You give it back. A lot of people think when they die they’ll take their money with them. We’ll see.”

Otedola has also gained acclaim for funding the exorbitant medical bills of some of Nigeria’s most prominent personalities. In 2019 he paid over $50,000 for the treatment of former Super Eagles captain and coach Christian Chukwu in London. Otedola also paid over €130,000 to save star actor Victor Olaotan at a hospital in Turkey, and footed the bills of Reggae super star Majek Fashek when he was battling neck and throat cancer at a London hospital. Other people who have benefited from Otedola’s generosity in a similar regard include Super Eagles former goal keeper Peter Fregene, award-winning actor Sadiq Daba, Professor Ini Ebong and celebrated romance writer Kayode Ajala among many others. On various occasions, some of the recipients of Otedola’s generosity were unable to reach him to thank him for his generosity and thereby opted to make videos which they put up in the public domain with the hopes that he would see them.

Born on Nov. 4, 1962 to the family of Sir Michael Otedola, one-time governor of Lagos State, Femi Otedola worked for his father’s Impact printing press in the early nineties and then went on to establish Centerforce Limited, a finance and investment company.

In 1999, he founded Zenon Petroleum & Gas Limited, an indigenous company that engaged in the procurement, storage, marketing, and distribution of petroleum products. At some point, Zenon Petroleum controlled more than 90% of the diesel supply business in Nigeria for nine years. In 2007, he acquired a controlling stake in the government-owned African Petroleum Plc which operated gas stations across the country. He grew the company into one of the largest publicly-traded downstream oil companies in Sub-Saharan Africa at the time. At some point, he was also one of the largest private owners of real estate in the swanky Victoria Island and Ikoyi neighborhoods in Lagos and owned some of the most prestigious commercial landmark properties in Abuja.

In 2008, his stake in African Petroleum was worth over $1.2 billion, and that same year, he became the second Nigerian, after Aliko Dangote, to be included in Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s billionaires. At 46, he was the youngest African billionaire on the Forbes list at the time. Otedola subsequently renamed his company Forte Oil (FO) to match his name, and in 2013, he led the company to acquire a 414-gigawatt power-generating plant from the Nigerian government during a government-led privatization round. In 2018, he unbundled the power assets of Forte Oil and created a separate company, Geregu Power, which he controls today. That same year, he sold off Forte Oil’s downstream businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars to a leading oil distribution firm in Nigeria.

At 60, Femi Otedola is one of Nigeria’s most influential power players. In 2010, he played a crucial role in encouraging the then Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to assume the presidency when President Umaru Yar’Adua became incapacitated. He still remains one of the more colorful personalities in Nigerian business and social circles. And that popularity spills into social media. In 2020, he ‘broke the internet’ in Nigerian media when his daughter, DJ Cuppy, announced that he had purchased a Ferrari Portofino for each of his three daughters. With 1.4 million followers on Instagram, Otedola is social media royalty in Nigeria, and he gives quite a show: From a video where he is dancing with his daughters, to another where he is dancing with his wife during her birthday celebrations in London, to a picture where he is hosting his daughter and her fiance at his Dubai villa – and yet another where he is just chilling in Monte Carlo, where he also has a home – every single post he makes on Instagram goes viral and generates buzz in Nigerian media circles, and gets Nigerians young and old, longing for the good life.

Like the late Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola was a mega-player in global shopping. These were some of the tankers that he owned and operated: