Billionaire businessman Femi Otedola has revealed that his rise to prominence was shaped more by practical experience than academic learning.

In his newly published memoir, Making It Big, cited by Premium Times on Tuesday, Otedola recounted how his entrepreneurial instincts were honed under the guidance of his father rather than in classrooms.

According to him, he left school to work full-time at his father’s printing company, a decision made despite his mother’s disapproval.
“All I wanted was to immerse myself in business,” he wrote. “My father kept me close and supervised me. My sister taught me shorthand, and soon I was typing and preparing my father’s business correspondence. I was especially fascinated by the printing process, watching plain white paper go in one end and finished material emerge from the other was truly captivating.”

The 62-year-old energy magnate explained that his academic struggles were a key factor in his shift away from formal education. In the 286-page memoir, he recalls starting at the University of Lagos Staff School in 1968 at age six, where he studied alongside contemporaries like Kola Abiola, son of the late Moshood Abiola. Despite the notable company, he consistently performed poorly, repeating a class and often ranking among the lowest in his cohort.

Acknowledging that “academia and I were not compatible,” Otedola turned to business, where he flourished. By 1987, at just 25 years old, he had already risen to the position of Managing Director at Impact Press, a milestone that marked the beginning of his business empire.