Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola has recounted a heated clash with former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004 over the deregulation of diesel importation, revealing how the then-president furiously accused him of misleading the government
Otedola shared the story in his memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business, set for release on August 18, 2025, by FO Books. Excerpts obtained by TheCable detail how Obasanjo erupted after being told that deregulation had caused diesel scarcity nationwide.
At the time, Otedola’s company, Zenon Petroleum, had assured Obasanjo that the private sector could meet Nigeria’s diesel needs without the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), which had been importing diesel at below-market prices and collecting subsidies.
“When President Obasanjo deregulated diesel in 2004, Zenon took an unassailable lead in the market,” Otedola wrote. “My opponents told the president that we’d turned the market upside down and that the economy was collapsing because there was no diesel. Obasanjo was mad at me because he’d been assured that NNPC’s withdrawal wouldn’t affect supply.”
According to Otedola, the tension escalated when detractors claimed trucks had stopped moving and industries were shutting down.
“The president called me at 2am, shouting through the phone. ‘You’re a stupid boy! God will punish you! You persuaded me to deregulate diesel, and now there’s no diesel in the country!’” Otedola recalled. “I flew to Abuja the next day, and as soon as he saw me, he started raging again. ‘What kind of rubbish is this? What kind of nonsense is this?’”
Otedola said he patiently explained that the reports were false, telling Obasanjo he had six ships loaded with diesel waiting to discharge and was even paying demurrage due to delays.
To prove his point, he proposed that the federal government publish diesel availability and prices on national newspaper front pages to reassure the public and counter misinformation.
He accused some elements within the NNPC, threatened by deregulation, of feeding the president lies to protect their subsidy-driven profits.
“Obasanjo was a determined and robust president. Once he made up his mind that someone was trustworthy, as he did about me that day, he stopped listening to the naysayers,” Otedola wrote.
The deregulation of 2004 made diesel the first petroleum product in Nigeria to be fully subsidy-free, dismantling a long-standing rent-seeking system.
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