BUA Group chairman, Rabiu moves 8 places to become Nigeria’s third richest in Forbes 2020 ranking

…as Dangote maintains lead, Adenuga, Alakija on Forbes billionaire list

By Samson Echenim

Chairman of BUA Group, Abdul Samad Rabiu has moved up eight places to become third Nigeria’s richest man and 8th in Africa on Forbes 2020 world’s richest ranking.

Forbes recently released its annual exclusive billionaires ranking with only four Nigerians, Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Abdul Samad Rabiu and Folorunsho Alakija making the highly coveted list.

Amongst the four, Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group retained his spot as the world’s richest black person with a fortune of $10.1 billion. Mike Adenuga, chairman of Globacom came in as second in Nigeria and third in Africa with a fortune of $7.7 billion, while Abdul Samad Rabiu of BUA Group was third in Nigeria and 8th in Africa with a fortune of $3.13 billion, moving up eight places from last year’s ranking.

Folorunsho Alakija of Famfa Oil completes the list of Forbes billionaires from Nigeria with a fortune of $1 billion dollars coming in at number 20 in Africa.

Of the four Nigerians on this year’s Forbes list, only BUA’s Abdul Samad Rabiu saw an increase in his fortunes from the previous year.

Abdul Samad in January merged his Obu Cement Company with the publicly listed Cement Company of Northern Nigeria (CCNN) where he had controlling shares. The new entity listed as BUA Cement Plc on the Nigeria Stock Exchange became the third largest entity on the exchange with N1.18 trillion market capitalisation.

According to Forbes, only eight of Africa’s 54 nations have billionaires in the list of global billionaires. Egypt and South Africa are tied with five billionaires each, Nigeria four; Morocco has two, while Zimbabwe and Tanzania have one billionaire each. In the list, Africa’s 20 wealthiest people are richer in 2019 than 2018 with combined worth at $73.4 billion.

The magazine said the list was generated after the billionaires’ net worth were calculated using stock prices and currency exchange rates from the close of business on Friday January 10, 2020. “To value privately-held businesses, we couple estimates of revenues or profits with prevailing price-to-sales or price-to-earnings ratios for similar public companies. Some list members grow richer or poorer within weeks or days of our measurement date.” Forbes statement further added. The current list shows that Nassef Sawiris of Egypt’s came second in Africa withhis fortunes rising to $8 billion from $6.3 billion.

Others on the list from Africa are: Nicky Oppenheimer $7.7 billion; Johann Rupert $6.5 billion; Issad Rebrab $4.4 billion; Mohamed Mansour $3.3 billion; Naguib Sawiris $3 billion; Patrice Motsepe $2.6 billion; Koos Bekker  $2.5 billion; Yasseen Mansour $2.3 billion; Isabel dos Santos $2.2 billion; Youssef Mansour $1.9 billion; Aziz Akhannouch $1.7 billion; Mohammed Dewji $1.6 billion; Othman Benjelloun $1.4 billion; Michiel Le Roux $1.3 billion; Strive Masiyiwa $1.1 billion and Folorunso Alakija $1 billion.