Nigerian Billionaire Chasing After Dangote’s Title of Richest Man in Africa.

Nigeria has a lot of successful businesses that have gone from local to becoming internally recognised. One of such business empire is BUA Group, a business conglomerate that has interests in various sectors of the Nigerian economy, employing thousands of workers across the country and neighbouring African countries.

In this article, we will be pointing our searchlight on the founder and Chief Executive Officer of BUA Group, Abdulsamad Rabiu. We will be highlighting his major business thresholds and how he grew the company from a local business to a multinational conglomerate.

Family background & Education

Born on August 4, 1960, into a wealthy Kano family, Abdulsamad always knew from a tender age he was going to follow in the footsteps of his father, Khalifah Isyaku Rabiu, a pioneer industrialist.

Abdulsamad had his primary and secondary school (Federal Government College) in Kano State where he was born and bred. He later moved to study Economics at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, the United States of America.

He returned to Nigeria after his education to oversee his father’s commodity trading business with new ideas acquired from his study abroad. Courtesy of his hardwork and doggedness, the business grew profits and expanded from its locality.

While overseeing his father’s business, Abdulsamad decided to establish his own company, BUA International Limited in 1988, which was into the importation of items including edible oil, iron, rice, etc. A few years later, the company expanded into the production of steel, construction and importation of iron ore after it got a contract from the government to supply Delta Steel Company with raw materials.

Following his recent successes, BUA Limited bought Nigerian Oil Mills Limited, an oil processing company in Nigeria.

At the time of acquisition, the oil mill was the largest vegetable oil processing company in West Africa.

To break the monopoly that Dangote Sugar enjoyed in the production of sugar to Nigeria, BUA commissioned its 720,000 metric tonnes/annum refinery in Lagos, the second-largest sugar refinery in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2009, BUA Limited bought a controlling stake in a Nigerian Stock Exchange-listed Cement Company of Northern Nigeria (CCNN).

In 2015, it went on to construct in Edo State a cement plant worth close to a billion dollar. Abdulsamad has over the years grown his business into a conglomerate, The BUA Group, with several subsidiaries with interests in Cement production, Sugar refining and plantations, Flour Milling & Pasta Processing, Mines and Steel, Ports Operations and Real Estate.