Paddy Adenuga is in the news again. This time his story of how he almost bought Chevron Netherlands has been dissected by popular Economic analyst, Feyi Fawehinmi for Quartz Africa, his article can be summed-up in this except:

“There’s much to commend in Adenuga’s tenacity and willingness to take a big bet. Certainly the Nigerian economy could do with a lot more bold and daring entrepreneurs willing to go against the grain of what is the acceptable way of doing things. The trouble is that his story is none of these at all. It is the same kind of story that has caused so many problems of late in the Nigerian economy.”

He also compared Paddy’s tactics to that of his father billionaire businessman, Mike Adenuga:

“In essence, these loans were taken out and then handed over to the taxpayer when they went bad. Around a third of these loans relate to the oil and gas ‘enclave’ as the chart from AMCON’s website shows.

“Indeed, Adenuga senior was revealed to be a debtor to AMCON, among others, by a newspaper a couple of years ago. The last time AMCON published a list of its top 100 debtors, the top three were all oil and gas companies with close to $1 billion outstanding among them. All of them taken out in the heady days of $100 oil and aggressive assumptions about how much money it was possible to make.”

The Article has not gone down well with Paddy, who tweeted:

the #qzafrica article’s attempt to tie my chevron NL acquisition with AMCON is dangerous, ill-informed, and a case of poor journalism. i’d never use Nigeria’s tax payer money for a private European deal – NEVER! i’m open to criticism – i am just not open to lies and falsehoods.

What do you think, is Feyi Fawehinmi right about Paddy’s business strategies? You can drop your comment below.

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