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Abdulrasaq Isa Kutepa is one of the very few high-flying Nigeria’s business leaders who have etched their footprints on the sands of the time. As a successful banker, oil magnate, entrepreneur and philanthropist, Kutepa had garnered experiences on his pluri-faceted routes in life. His ascendancy in the business firmament of Nigeria, nay Africa in the last two decades has been like a fairytale adventure. While in the cutthroat terrain of the ever-changing ecosystem of Nigerian banking, Kutepa successfully, rode the tides of the industry. In 1998, when he began his entrepreneurial journey with the establishment of Waltersmith Group—with a focus on many economic areas such as manufacturing, real estate, hospitality, agriculture, and upstream and midstream oil and gas— not a few were full of optimism of his success.
Indeed, his Waltersmith has quietly risen like a phoenix and gradually transformed into a viable energy firm that may be on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in the nearest future. The debonair Kogi-born billionaire impresses his name in eternity by his dazzling strides. Waltersmith Petroman Oil Limited —an indigenous upstream oil and gas company he co-founded— operates the Ibigwe field in the Oil Mining Lease, OML 16 in Imo State, which was acquired through a competitive bid in 2004. Waltersmith successfully began commercial exports from Ibigwe field in 2008, growing peak production to 7000 barrels per day, (bpd). In 2020, former President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned the company’s 5000bpd modular refinery in Imo State. The refinery contributes almost 300 million litres of refined products annually. With the additional award of the Assa marginal field to Waltersmith in 2021, the modular refinery is being expanded to have a refining capacity of 40,000bpd. But Kutepa is not stopping at oil and Gas projects alone.
His Waltersmith is also diversifying into power generation and has procured a 300 megawatts power generation licence. Similarly, in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, (UNIDO), Kutepa’s organisation is developing an industrial and innovation park. And the icing on the cake? Recently, global energy giant, Shell announced its decision to divest its onshore oil and gas assets in Nigeria for $2.4 billion, indicating a strategic move away from onshore oil production. After a series of failed acquisition attempts by some top energy firms, a consortium led by the Renaissance Africa Energy, a Nigerian independent energy firm with Kutepa as one of the titans behind it, bid and won, thus marking a significant transformation in Nigeria’s oil industry landscape. With the landmark acquisition, Kutepa – the Jikada Raya Kasar Nupe who will be 63 this month – has devised a comprehensive plan to harness the abundant resources in the country. And the urbane magnate has been officially recognised for his enormous contributions to the socioeconomic life of the nation when former President Buhari awarded him the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR) last May.
