Nigeria’s equities market closed 2025 on one of its strongest notes in nearly two decades, with the NGX All-Share Index delivering a 51.19% year-to-date gain, its best performance in 18 years.
The benchmark index ended the year at 155,613.03 points or a 51.19% gain, supported by strong rallies in selected banking, cement, and food stocks that significantly outperformed the broader market.
However, beneath the headline index performance, market outcomes were sharply uneven.
While a handful of stocks recorded extraordinary gains, others suffered steep declines, creating stark winners and losers among Nigeria’s wealthiest investors.
These divergent price movements translated directly into shifts in the paper fortunes of the country’s leading billionaires.
In total, the six Nigerian billionaires tracked in this analysis collectively added an estimated N11.36 trillion to their paper wealth in 2025, after accounting for both gains and losses across their listed equity holdings.
The bulk of this value creation came from a narrow group of stocks, underscoring how concentrated the rally truly was.
Nigerian billionaires with the highest share price gains and losses in 2025
Loss: –N20.65 billion
Mike Adenuga, founder of Globacom, recorded the steepest decline in the value of his listed equity holdings in 2025, driven entirely by weakness in Conoil Plc shares.
Conoil’s share price fell sharply from N387.20 at the start of the year to N187.20 by year-end, representing a 51.65% decline.
Adenuga holds his Conoil stake indirectly through Conpetro Limited, which owns 103.26 million shares. The stake was valued at approximately N39.98 billion at the start of the year but declined to about N19.33 billion by December, resulting in an estimated N20.65 billion erosion in his paper wealth.
