Be it the average or the very wealthy, every parent wants to be able to help the children. Asides education, in some cases, it could be payment for cars, and in others, assisting on an apartment or full property. Then there are times when it means offering a controlling stake in a major blue chip company or passing down a longstanding empire to the next generation. In all, fortunes are passed down from billionaire parents to their children to allow businesses to continue under well-known family names long after the patriarchs are gone. For Nigerian tycoon, AbdulSamad Rabiu, at 62, he’s not going anywhere yet. But the Kano-born industrialist has started grooming all his four children with fortune provided them as resources to get a new venture off the ground.
One of them is Isyaku Naziru Rabiu, the billionaire’s first son who leads a very private life outside of the spotlight but prefers to let his talent speak for itself. For the 2018 University of Hertfordshire Business Economics graduate, he is naturally the heir to their father’s $6.5 billion fortune. But like his dad, urbane Isyaku is a workaholic who does not believe in generational wealth. In spite of the financial war chest readily available at his disposal, Isyaku chooses hard work and resilience as one of his driving forces thereby striving hard to build his own name and make his own fortune. Nevertheless, he has been part of the family empire, BUA Group —one of Africa’s fastest expanding manufacturing conglomerates founded more than 33 years ago by his dad— since 2016 as an audit intern while still in school. But on his graduation, he resumed as Business Development Officer and diligently rose to the level of Commercial Director at the Group’s Flour and Pasta Division, a position he held till November 2021 when he was appointed an executive director at the newly capitalized BUA Foods Plc.
In fact, Isyaku and his dad, Abdul Samad Rabiu, own a 99.8 per cent stake in BUA Foods Plc, which is now worth N998 billion ($2.37 billion). Earlier this year, Isyaku and his father reportedly earned a dividend of N62.9 billion ($151.6 million) from their stake in the newly integrated food business. The mega million-payout represents the majority of the N152 billion ($63 million) final dividend payment approved by BUA Foods’ shareholders at the group’s annual general shareholders meeting. However, in a strange twist, the Polo-loving Isyaku was recently made to step down from the board of the consolidated Lagos-based food giant. Though, the brilliant chap’s resignation was said to be in accordance with the Nigerian Exchange, NGx’s listing rules —which state that no more than two members of the same family may serve on the board of a publicly traded company at the same time— some pundits however believe there is more to the billionaire heir’s exit than merely obeying the bourse’s rules.