Hakeem Belo-Osagie is a Nigerian entrepreneur and philanthropist and also notably a former chairman of Etisalat Nigeria (Now known as 9Mobile). He was the forty-first richest man in Africa in the year 2014 by Forbes rating.
Background
Hakeem Belo-Osagie was born in the year 1995 in Lagos, Nigeria to a gynaecologist father and a mother who was a nurse. He started his secondary education at King’s College in Lagos but completed it at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales. He stands to be one man who indeed has a lot of educational credentials under his belt. He obtained a law degree from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is also a member of the Nigerian Bar Association.
He is married to Dr Myma Belo-Osagie and together they have four children.
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Rise to Prominence
Hakeem Belo-Osagie started his path to success working for the Federal Government of Nigeria after he graduated from Harvard in 1980. He started out as an economist and a lawyer. He is indeed one man who made the best out of every opportunity he was given. His father was the gynaecologist to the family of former Nigerian military president Ibrahim Babangida. This connection made is easier for him to get his job with the government. He occupied the position of Presidential Adviser on petroleum and energy and later on became the Secretary of the Oil Policy Review and LNG Committees. He also worked in the Petrochemicals Division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. He however resigned his appointment in 1986 to start up something of his own. He started CTIC which eventually grew to become a leading energy consulting firm in Nigeria. The positions he had held in the government put him in the best place to make the oil deals that gave him his first fortune.
Hakeem Belo-Osagie also has some experience in the finance sector tucked under his belt. He became the chairman of the board of directors of The United Bank for Africa Plc (The “UBA”) in 1998. His tenure as chairman of the UBA was sadly tinted with some controversy. Allegations purporting that the United Bank for Africa Plc under his tutelage had been involved in unlicensed foreign exchange trading. He resigned around this same period in March 2004 and sadly was blacklisted by The Central Bank of Nigeria. By the next year, 2005 local reports had it that the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission were investigating his chairmanship of the UBA. However no criminal charges were ever filed against him and five years later on the 24th of May, 2010 the CBN removed him from its blacklist after they had acknowledged their actions undeserving.
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Belo-Osagie has also held other top positions in other corporations. He is the founder and former chairman of First Securities Discount House which is now known as FSDH Merchant Bank Limited. FSDH stands to be Nigeria’s leading money markets and Treasury bill trading financial services firm. He owns a significant stake in the telecommunications company- Etisalat. He is also a onetime chairman of the company. He is the chairman of and also main shareholder in Duval Properties Limited. Duval Properties Limited is a real estate company engaged in the development of a new residential and commercial district in Jabi Lake, Abuja. He chairs the board of Vitol Nigeria; a subsidiary of the Swiss-based Vitol Group, multinational energy and commodity trading firm.
Hakeem Belo-Osagie also has investments in Andela, a developing network of high quality computer science education programmes across the African continent. He is also part of the Andela board.
Owing to his experience and qualifications, Hakeem Belo stands to be a man who has served and is still serving in various capacities on the boards of many different prestigious organizations. He is part of the Global Board of Advisers of the Council on Foreign Relations, a top non-partisan US think-tank. He was also appointed to the International Advisory Board of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He is a member of the Yale University President’s council on International Activities and the New York University President’s Global Council.
His wife; Dr Myma Belo-Osagie (a founding partner of Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie)is also very much as active and as involved in charity as he is; they are both members of Harvard University’s Global Advisory Council. In addition to that he is a member of the Yale University President’s Council on International Activities and the New York University’s Global Council. In 2007 he was made the non-executive chairman of the Abuja Investment Corporation, he held the position till 2011. He however was not paid salary for the role.
Aside working on business and education boards, he also has some experience in the entertainment sector. He chairs Chocolate City Music Group, a top Nigerian entertainment company.
He stands to be one man who is devoted to giving back to the society. He and his wife are one of the biggest donors to the African Leadership Academy (the “ALA”), a residential secondary school in Johannesburg that is dedicated to educating Africa’s brightest students. They also established the “Hakeem and Myma Belo-Osagie Fund for the Promotion of Africa” at Yale University. They are also supporters of Harvard University’s Centre for African Studies. He also established a fund to give out scholarships to African students studying at Balliol College, Oxford. He serves on the board of Alfanar; a charity which applies the principles of private sector investment to charity to build sustainable social enterprises throughout the Arab world.
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Hakeem Belo Osagie’s Net Worth
His net worth was estimated to be $600 million as at November, 2014.
