Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola has revealed he dropped out of high school and never attended university, citing his incompatibility with academia as the driving force behind his early plunge into business. In his 286-page memoir, Making It Big, released on August 18, 2025, the 62-year-old energy mogul disclosed that he left Olivet Baptist High School in Oyo after his Lower Sixth exams, choosing instead to work in his father’s printing business, Impact Press, in Lagos. “There was something about academia and me; we were not compatible. All I wanted to do was get involved in business,” Otedola wrote. His decision, initially opposed by his mother, Lady Doja Otedola, set the stage for a career that saw him rise to become one of Africa’s most influential businessmen, with a net worth estimated at $1.7 billion by Forbes in 2025.
Otedola’s memoir details his academic struggles, starting at the University of Lagos Staff School in 1968, where he repeated a class and consistently ranked at the bottom of his class, even alongside peers like Kola Abiola, son of the late business magnate Moshood Abiola. Transfers to Methodist Boys’ High School, Lagos, and later Olivet Baptist High School did little to improve his performance. His fascination with his father’s printing machines at Impact Press in Surulere marked a turning point, leading him to abandon formal education. By 1987, at age 25, he became Managing Director of Impact Press, later founding Zenon Petroleum and Gas Ltd in 2003, which propelled him into the oil and gas sector.
Otedola’s story challenges the notion that formal education is essential for success, emphasizing practical experience and instinct. “My true classroom was the business floor,” he wrote, crediting lessons from his father, Sir Michael Otedola, former Lagos State Governor, and his own failures, including a $1.5 billion loss during the 2008 oil price crash. The memoir, climbing to No. 4 on Amazon’s Business Biographies and Memoirs category, has sparked widespread discussion about alternative paths to success.
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