Oprah No Longer the Richest Black Woman; Replaced by Folorunsho Alakija

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Oprah No Longer the Richest Black Woman; Replaced by Folorunsho Alakija

oprah.jpg


Oh no! Say it isn’t so.

OK, put it like this. Oprah had a nice run as the world’s richest black woman, but as they say, all good things must come to an end.

O, move over ’cause Folorunsho Alakija is now the richest black woman in the world. Ventures Africa says she bested Oprah by $500 million. Alakija is estimated to worth $3.3 billion and at last count, Oprah’s in the neighborhood of about $2.7 billion, according to Forbes Magazine.

Would you believe the now billionaire Nigerian oil baroness and fashion entrepreneur started her career as a secretary at a bank in Nigeria? Yes, she most certainly did.

When she moved to England in the 80’s she studied fashion and eventually ended up starting her line called “Supreme Stitches”.

The 62 year old did well with her fashion brand but the bulk of her fortune comes from the oil business. Her company Famfa Ltd got an oil exploration license and they attained a 617,000-acre oil block which was highly lucrative.

http://blackamericaweb.com/2015/01/...t-black-woman-replaced-by-folorunsho-alakija/
 
humble forever

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forbes says she's worth about 600 million :sas1:

The business thrived, and Alakija quickly made a tidy fortune selling high-end Nigerian clothing to fashionable wives of military bigwigs and society women”.
One of those military bigwigs was one Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, whose wife, Maryam, soon became a major client of Alakija’s. In 1993, Ibrahim Babangida had become Nigeria’s military dictator and Head of State of Nigeria and was in the final year of his 8 year reign after overthrowing the government of General Muhammadu Buhari in 1985. His wife, Maryam was of course Nigeria’s First Lady at the time. Alakija had by then become the unofficial clothier to the now late Maryam Babangida, which is a pretty big deal in itself as Maryam Babangida had cultivated a reputation as a “celebrity and an icon of beauty, fashion and style’".

How did Alakija go from Babangida’s clothier to “billionaire oil tyc00n” with an alleged net worth of $3.3 billion dollars? Well, that’s where Ventures Africa’s carefully written hagiography starts to break down.

“In May 1993 Alakija applied for an allocation of an Oil Prospecting License (OPL). The license to explore for oil on a 617,000 acre block – (now referred to as OPL 216) was granted to Alakija’s company, Famfa Limited. The block is located approximately 220 miles South East of Lagos and 70 miles offshore Nigeria in the central Niger Delta”.

In May 1993, Alakija, applied for the allocation of an Oil Prospecting License (OPL) and was awarded a license by the Federal Government to explore for oil on a 617,000 acre bloc in the Niger Delta. Her known qualifications for the award of a 617,000 acre oil bloc were essentially that she made really nice clothes for Maryam Babangida.

“This was in 1993. Many wealthy Nigerian businessmen and military bigwigs who had been allocated oil blocs by the military administration at the time had no clue as to the technicalities in operating an oil bloc, so many of them typically acquired OPLs, and then flipped them off to international oil companies for substantial profits. But Alakija was intelligent. She had no expertise or experience in running an oil field, but she decided not to sell off her license. In September 1996, she entered into a joint venture agreement with Star Deep Water Petroleum Limited (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Texaco) and appointed the company as a technical adviser for the exploration of the license, transferring 40 percent of her 100 percent stake to Star Deep. Subsequently, Star Deep sold off 8 percent of its stake in OPL 216 to Petrobas, a Brazilian company. Folorunsho Alakija and her family owned 60 percent."

Alakija had no expertise or experience running an oil field. This is the most important thing you need to know about ‘the richest black woman in the world’. She had no expertise or experience doing the thing from which she became stupendously and improbably rich.

Alakija was not qualified to be awarded a license to produce palm oil, much less crude oil. Ventures Africa won’t say it but the truth is Folorunsho Akakija is allegedly worth $3.3 billion dollars because Ibrahim Babangida’s wife’s favourite fashion designer, somehow acquired a 617,000 acre oil bloc now worth $3.3 billion dollars of Nigeria’s money. If that isn’t a scandal, I don’t know what is. Ventures Africa's estimate of Folorunso Akakija's net worth is questionable, considering that Forbes Magazine, a significantly more respectable publication, estimates her wealth at a mere $6oo million dollars; considerably less than Oprah Winfrey's $2.7 billion dollar net worth. If you want to see what $3.3 billion dollars gets you then you should check out these photos of her son's wedding this September. Needless to say, it was quite the party.




Get in cozy with a dictator brehs :beli:

still, sounds like she is a legitimately smart woman. :yeshrug:



I still have a lot more respect for oprah, she put in such a long grind and built her business empire legitimately. Not any of this "i'm friends with the dictators wife and am able to acquire a 3 billion dollar oil field on the cheap"


som of you guys don't realize Nigeria lost as a whole by the actions of this dictator. had the oil fields been sold off to intelligent Nigerians with experience the country could've held onto more of the money
 
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with the drop in oil prices, Oprah might get that title back. but good for her :salute:
 
kayslay

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Idk why africans are always tryingto compare themselves to AAs, especially when it comes to wealth.:mindblown:
Oprah worked her way from the bottom (her grandma literally was a slave, and shes literally one of the first people in her family to learn to read much less attend college:whoo:), navigated through white supremacy, and continues to help millions of people.
You really trying to compare that to a person that literally woke up with a goldmine in their back yard?:dahell:
You want to compare compare the nigerian oil industy to the Saudis oil industry:sas2::sas2:
Compare their billionaires. To the african billionaires.:sas1:
 
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kayslay said:
Idk why africans are always tryingto compare themselves to AAs, especially when it comes to wealth.:mindblown:
Click to expand...

You chump, it was an African American website doing the comparison. :dahell: Why do y'all think Africans think about you that much?

http://blackamericaweb.com/2015/01/...t-black-woman-replaced-by-folorunsho-alakija/

kayslay said:
You want to compare compare the nigerian oil industy to the Saudis oil industry:sas2::sas2:
Compare their billionaires. To the african billionaires.:sas1:
Click to expand...

Compare African Billionaires in third world country to those blacks in the USA (first world country). :sas1:
 
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