Nigeria’s equities market ended August on a cautious note, holding onto a slim 0.31% gain despite heavy selloffs that erased much of the month’s earlier advance.
The All-Share Index opened at 139,863.5 points and briefly surged past the 146,000-mark mid-month, buoyed by momentum from July’s rally. But the gains proved fleeting.
A reversal in oil and gas stocks, combined with weakness in cement majors, dragged the benchmark down more than 3,500 points in the third week. The slide deepened with another 708-point drop in the final week, paring back almost all of August’s progress.
The index eventually closed at 140,295.5 points, just 432 points above where it began. While the headline gain looked modest, the underlying shifts were stark: some of Nigeria’s wealthiest investors booked billions in paper profits, while others absorbed steep markdowns in their banking and energy holdings.
Against this backdrop, fortunes tied to cement, consumer goods, energy, and finance experienced mixed reactions in terms of share price gains as well as losses.
In this article, we look at Nigerian billionaires with the highest share gains/losses in August 2025.
Gain: N1.05 billion
Femi Otedola, chairman of Geregu Power and a leading shareholder in FBN Holdings, recorded one of the sharpest gains on the Nigerian Exchange in August, with his listed holdings rising by an estimated N1.05 billion.
Otedola’s wealth remains anchored in two sectors: power and banking. Geregu Power Plc, his flagship utility, was unchanged at N1,141.50 per share during the month.
- The more pronounced upside came from FBN Holdings, where the share price advanced modestly from N32.25 to N32.50, a gain of less than 1%.
- Scale amplified the result; Otedola’s 1.69 billion direct shares rose by about N422.4 million, while his 2.54 billion indirect shares added another N635.9 million.
Combined, the positions lifted Otedola’s paper wealth by N1.05 billion in August, highlighting the impact of concentrated holdings in Nigeria’s most liquid financial and power stocks. The result highlights how incremental moves in banking shares, when coupled with large equity exposure, can deliver outsized gains for investors of Otedola’s scale.
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