Apart from being a successful businessman, Femi Otedola has also added the title of “award-winning author” to his list of accomplishments, thanks to the success recorded by his first published memoir, Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business.
When the book was published last year, went on to be a best seller on Amazon as it gathered a wide range of comments on its robust views on business success, among other topics. Many acclaimed that it is one of the best business books in the last ten years, as Otedola detailed his single chess moves in business and how he was able to recover and bounce back to winning ways after losing fortunes to failed business decisions.
The 2026 medalists were announced on the 25th of March, as the Chairman of FirstHoldCo struck gold: his debut book won the Business Book Gold Medal at the 2026 Axiom Business Book Awards. The award, founded in 2007 and managed by the Jenkins Group of Traverse City, Michigan, is widely regarded as the most respected critical benchmark for business books in the United States. The 2026 edition drew over 600 entries from 31 countries. As it stands, Otedola now joins former gold medalists including Nobel laureate Robert Shiller, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin, and investor Ray Dalio as a winner of the highly coveted Business Book Prize.
The book has also received endorsements from some of the most prominent figures in African and global business, including Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization; Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank; and Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man. The book uncovers Femi’s early career in the downstream petroleum sector through Zenon Petroleum and Gas, his acquisition and transformation of African Petroleum into Forte Oil, his pivot into power generation through Geregu Power, and his eventual arrival as the dominant shareholder and chairman of First HoldCo, the parent company of Nigeria’s oldest bank.
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