Inside the partnerships building Nigeria’s business giants

VERA ALKALI takes a look at some of Nigeria’s most successful business partnerships, exploring how friends, colleagues and visionaries joined forces to build companies that became household names and powerful business empires

Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha

Babs Ogundeyi and Musty Mustapha are co-founders who have stayed side by side for over six years, building what has become Kuda, one of the country’s most recognisable digital banks.

Kuda was founded in 2019 by Ogundeyi and Mustapha, offering Nigerians zero banking fees and a free debit card. The pitch immediately set it apart in a market long accustomed to paying for basic transactions. The market responded quickly. A month later, in September 2019, the young company announced that it had raised $1.6m in pre-seed funding, its first major vote of investor confidence.

If 2019 was about building the product, 2020 tested the founders’ instincts for timing. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread and the country went into lockdown, Kuda rolled out a COVID-19 fund in May 2020 to support vulnerable residents. The move put the company’s name in front of Nigerians who had never opened a digital bank account. That same year, it struck a partnership with Payoneer to facilitate international business payments into Nigeria. By November 2020, the founders had closed a $10m seed round led by Target Global, proof that the pandemic had not slowed their fundraising momentum.

By February 2021, Kuda was processing more than $2bn in transactions monthly, setting the stage for the biggest year in the company’s short history. In March, Ogundeyi and Mustapha announced a $25m Series A led by Valar Ventures. They followed it almost immediately with a $55m Series B in August 2021, a raise that valued Kuda at $500m and made it one of the earliest Nigerian digital banks to attain unicorn status. Before the year ended, Kuda launched its own branded Visa cards, reducing its reliance on third-party card providers and becoming a direct issuer of physical and virtual debit cards.

Having crossed six million customers by June 2023, the founders turned Kuda’s attention to a new segment: business owners. Kuda Business had launched in October 2022 as an all-in-one platform for Nigerian freelancers and SMEs, bundling business banking, invoicing and API services under one roof. That same expansion drive pushed the bank beyond Nigeria’s borders for the first time, with a UK remittance pilot launched in November 2022, allowing Nigerians in Britain to send up to £10,000 home at a flat fee of £3.

The push outward continued into 2024, when Kuda secured payment licences in Tanzania and Canada in March, positioning the company as more than a Nigerian app, but a global “neobank” built around the needs of Africans wherever they live.

Then, in December 2025, Kuda’s Nigerian subsidiary, Kuda Microfinance Bank, was granted a national microfinance banking licence by the Central Bank of Nigeria, opening the door for the company to expand its physical footprint across the country for the first time.

From a free debit-card promise in 2019 to a national banking licence six years later, Ogundeyi and Mustapha have steered Kuda through nearly every phase a young African fintech can face: a pandemic, a unicorn valuation, cross-border expansion and, now, a shift towards brick-and-mortar reach.

What has not changed is the partnership itself. In an industry known for founder fallouts and boardroom exits, the two men remain at the helm, still building the bank they started together.

Gabriel and Godrey Ogbechei

Nigeria’s enduring business partnerships can also be found in the oil and gas sector, where Gabriel Ogbechei and his wife, Godrey, have spent almost two decades building Rainoil into one of the country’s most diversified indigenous energy groups.

Some businesses are built on big capital and bigger connections. Rainoil was built on N300,000 and a decision by its founder to keep his eyes on the ball. More than 30 years later, that early bet has grown into an integrated energy powerhouse, and the partnership steering it has proven just as durable as the company itself.

Gabriel started Rainoil with just N300,000, a sum that would barely register in today’s oil and gas industry but was enough to plant a seed. From that starting point, he built a company that now spans retail sales, bulk storage, logistics, shipping and LPG distribution; a full chain of operations that few indigenous players in the sector can match.

Rainoil’s footprint today tells the story of that growth. The company operates more than 150 filling stations across Nigeria, giving it one of the widest retail networks in the downstream sector. Beyond retail, Rainoil holds stakes in Eterna Plc, extending its reach into the wider petroleum products market. The group has also built an agro-industrial operation, diversifying beyond oil and gas into agriculture, a sign of a business philosophy that favours steady expansion over standing still.

Growth at Rainoil has not been measured only in stations and stakes. The company runs a philanthropic foundation that funds scholarships and healthcare across communities, translating commercial success into direct social investment, a thread that has run alongside the business since its earlier years.

For almost two decades, Gabriel has built Rainoil alongside his wife, Godrey, who has served as the company’s Executive Director through much of that period. In an industry often shaped by short-lived joint ventures and boardroom disputes, their working partnership has outlasted many, growing quietly alongside the company’s balance sheet.

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Asked what has powered Rainoil’s three-decade climb from a modest sum to a diversified group, Godfrey’s answer has remained consistent: “Success in Nigeria requires resilience, integrity, and a willingness to solve real problems.”

It is a simple message, repeated over 30 years, but one that a 150-station retail network, a stake in a listed petroleum company, an agro-industrial arm and a functioning philanthropic foundation all appear to back up.

From N300,000 to an integrated energy group with interests stretching from filling stations to farmland, the Ogbecheis’ story is less about a single lucky break than about a partnership that kept building, year after year, without losing sight of the ball.

Wale Tinubu and Omamofe Boyo

Long before Adewale Tinubu and Omamofe Boyo became two of Nigeria’s most recognisable oil and gas billionaires, they were two young men trying to make ends meet on the streets of Lagos. That shared struggle, stretching back close to four decades, laid the foundation for a friendship that would eventually grow into Oando PLC, one of the country’s most prominent business partnerships.

The bond between Tinubu and Boyo has always rested on three pillars: love, brotherhood and respect. It is those same qualities, industry watchers say, that have kept the pair together through the decades, turning them into what many now describe as an unbreakable duo.

Like any long partnership, theirs has not been without friction. The two have had their moments of disagreement, but the mutual respect they hold for each other has consistently outlasted the disputes.

In 1994, Tinubu and Boyo teamed up to establish Ocean and Oil Services Limited, a company built to supply diesel and Low Pour Fuel Oil to industries, shipping firms and exploration companies across Nigeria. At the time, it was a modest venture in a competitive market. Today, that same investment has grown into Oando Plc, a multinational conglomerate worth billions of dollars, with operations spread across African countries; a transformation the two founders could scarcely have imagined when they started out.

In an industry crowded with sharp operators, Tinubu and Boyo have consistently stood out, owing largely to their brilliance and uncommon business acumen. Together, the pair have weathered difficult storms, surmounted steep challenges and expanded across multiple markets, building a reputation that places them well above many of their peers in Nigeria’s oil and gas space.

From two young men hustling on the streets of Lagos to co-owners of a billion-dollar African conglomerate, Tinubu and Boyo’s story is a reminder that some of Nigeria’s biggest business empires were built not just on capital, but on friendships strong enough to survive nearly 40 years in a demanding industry.

Kennedy and Ichechi Okonkwo

The partnership behind Nedcomoaks and Victoria Crest Homes is one of Nigeria’s enduring business partnerships: Kennedy and Ichechi Okonkwo, whose shared business journey spans multiple sectors under one growing group of companies.

Not every business partnership announces itself through a single flagship company. Some are built quietly across sectors, making them more difficult to define, with each partner steering a different arm of the same shared vision. That is the model behind Kennedy and Ichechi Okonkwo’s business journey, a partnership that has grown into a diversified portfolio rather than a single enterprise.

Kennedy Okonkwo is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nedcomoaks Group, the umbrella business under which the couple’s various interests sit. Working alongside him is his wife, Ichechi Okonkwo, who serves as Chief Executive Officer of Victoria Crest Homes, a subsidiary of the group.

Rather than running separate, unrelated ventures, the two have structured their businesses so that each leads a distinct arm while remaining part of the same larger group. That division of labour has allowed the partnership to expand into different sectors without either side losing focus.

The Okonkwos’ businesses are spread across different sectors, a deliberate approach that reduces reliance on any single industry and mirrors a pattern seen among some of Nigeria’s most resilient business families: building a group structure where each subsidiary can grow on its own terms while still drawing on the strength of the wider brand.

With Kennedy at the helm of Nedcomoaks Group and Ichechi leading Victoria Crest Homes, the Okonkwo partnership represents a different, more distributed model of building together; one where growth is measured not by a single company’s milestones, but by how well a shared vision holds up across several fronts at once.