Otedola Reveals How Banks Sent Beautiful Women to Sway His Business Decisions
When your bank starts flirting harder than your crush, you know your money has serious magnetism. At the peak of his business empire, billionaire Femi Otedola says he wasn’t just wooed with offers and deals—banks sent stunning women to charm him into moving his deposits their way.
The chairman of First Bank of Nigeria Holdings Plc is sharing these juicy details in his upcoming memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business, hitting shelves on August 18, 2025. In the book, Otedola peels back the curtain on his rise, fall, and financial rebirth—complete with the wild antics banks once used to get in his good graces.
“At one point, I was the banks’ favourite. They did everything—offered loans, begged for deposits, even sent enchantingly attractive ladies to push their agenda,” he wrote. Clearly, banking charm offensives weren’t just about spreadsheets and suits.
But as life tends to do, the sweet turned sour. The global oil market crashed, the naira spiraled, and Otedola’s empire took a multi-million-dollar nosedive. He laid out the painful math: $480 million vanished with the oil price collapse, $258 million evaporated due to currency devaluation, $320 million bled out from interest, and another $160 million got swallowed by a stock market slump. That’s over a billion dollars—gone.
“It was like being trapped in a nightmare, except I couldn’t wake up,” he confessed. The banks that once treated him like royalty soon sent muscle-bound debt collectors instead of flowers and smiles. According to him, it wasn’t unusual to see intimidating men stationed outside his gate, waiting for the moment he stepped out.
He also recalled a major blow in 2008 when he purchased diesel at $147 per barrel, only for the price to plummet to $40 by the time the shipment arrived. Add the naira’s nosedive from ₦120 to ₦167 per dollar, and you’ve got a business disaster that would give even the most seasoned mogul sleepless nights.
Otedola’s journey from being banks’ golden boy to financial cautionary tale is a rollercoaster ride through Nigeria’s complex business terrain. Still, he’s managed to stay standing—and now, he’s got the stories, scars, and wisdom to prove it.