In a shocking revelation, Tony Elumelu, Chairman of Heirs Holdings and United Bank for Africa Plc, has disclosed how former President Muhammadu Buhari and his chief of staff, the late Abba Kyari, blocked his initial move to acquire an oil field in 2017.

In an interview with, Elumelu revealed that Heirs Holdings had raised $2.5 billion to purchase an oil field in 2017 but was prevented from doing so by former Nigeria President, Muhammadu Buhari and Kyari. He claimed that he was told that Nigeria couldn’t allow something of such strategic importance to fall into the hands of a private operator, despite the fact that he would have been purchasing it from a foreign company.

However, Elumelu’s persistence paid off, as Heirs Holdings acquired OML 17, an onshore oilfield, in 2021, as part of a deal that included $1.1 billion in financing from a consortium of global and regional banks and investors. The OML 17 field has a production capacity of 27,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and estimated reserves of 1.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

When asked if he felt like getting in at the end of the party by buying an oil asset in the age of energy transition and environmental, social, and governance investing, Elumelu said: “We wanted to become a Fortune 500 company and we estimated what we needed. It’s not naira, it’s huge dollars.” Energy security is crucial for a country that doesn’t produce enough electricity for its roughly 200 million citizens, he added.

Elumelu also shared his experience with oil theft, which has been a major challenge for his company. He discovered first-hand why international oil companies were partly divesting from onshore assets, after criminal gangs began stealing crude from his pipelines. In 2022, when things got to a point where his company had to shut down production, Elumelu vented his frustration on social media, tweeting: “How can we be losing over 95 per cent of oil production to thieves?”

Today, though, business is looking up. Elumelu showed the status updates he received on his phone from the field: 42,000 barrels of crude pumped out daily. Theft still takes away about 18 per cent of production, he said. When asked who was behind oil theft in the country, he said: “This is oil theft, we’re not talking about stealing a bottle of Coke you can put in your pocket. The government should know; they should tell us. Look at America — Donald Trump was shot at and quickly they knew the background of who shot him. Our security agencies should tell us who is stealing our oil. You bring vessels to our territorial waters and we don’t know?”

Elumelu also stressed the need for Africa’s private sector to actively contribute to the continent’s growth, a principle he has termed “Africapitalism”. He praised President Bola Tinubu’s “courage” in embarking on necessary reforms and expressed support for skilled young Nigerians emigrating, stating that “joblessness is the betrayal of a generation” and that those who decide to stay should try to create an impact and build a legacy