On the last day of 2025, as Nigeria was counting down to a new year, Tony Elumelu was closing a deal.
A $496 million deal, to be precise, the acquisition of a 20.07 percent stake in Seplat Energy Plc from French oil company Etablissements Maurel & Prom, making him the single largest shareholder in the Nigerian energy company.
By September 24, 2026, barely nine months later, Seplat’s share price had reached an all-time high of N16,000, pushing the market value of Elumelu’s 120.4 million shares to approximately N1.93 trillion. The stock opened 2026 at N5,809 per share, meaning it had gained about 175 percent by September 24.
To understand how this happened, you have to go back much further than December 2025. You have to go back to the moment Tony Elumelu decided to stop being a banker and start building an investment empire.
The exit that became an entrance
For most of his professional life, Tony Elumelu was known as a banking titan. At 34, he led a small group of investors to acquire the distressed Crystal Bank in 1997, rebranded it as Standard Trust Bank, and built it into one of Nigeria’s top-five financial institutions within seven years.
In 2005, he led its merger with the larger, historic United Bank for Africa, becoming Group Managing Director and CEO of the combined institution and overseeing its expansion into a pan-African bank operating across more than 20 countries.
When he retired from UBA’s executive leadership in 2010, it would have been easy to assume his most consequential business chapter was behind him.
He was 47 years old. He had other ideas.
In 2010, Elumelu founded Heirs Holdings, a diversified investment company built around a philosophy he had been developing and writing about for years: Africapitalism, the belief that Africa’s private sector, not foreign aid or Western capital, must lead the continent’s economic transformation.
Heirs Holdings was designed to be the vehicle through which that philosophy would be tested in the real world, with investments across energy, power, banking, real estate, hospitality, healthcare, insurance and technology.
The first major move came in 2011, when Heirs Holdings acquired a controlling stake in Transcorp, Nigeria’s largest listed conglomerate. That was the appetiser. The main course was energy.
The first oil bet: OML 17
In January 2021, Elumelu made the move that announced his energy ambitions to the continent. Through TNOG Oil and Gas Limited, a subsidiary of Heirs Holdings and Transcorp, he acquired a 45 percent operating stake in Oil Mining Lease 17 from Shell, Total and ENI in a transaction valued at over $1.1 billion. The Nigeria National Petroleum Company retained the remaining 55 percent.
OML 17, located in Nigeria’s Niger Delta near Port Harcourt, was a high-potential asset that had been chronically underinvested, producing below 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the time Heirs acquired it. It had 15 onshore wells, six of them active, with an estimated 1.2 billion barrels in proven and probable reserves and additional exploration potential.
Tony Elumelu financed the acquisition primarily through debt, assembling a consortium of lenders that included the African Export-Import Bank, the Africa Finance Corporation, Union Bank of Nigeria, ABSA, Hybrid Capital and the Amundi fund. The $1.1 billion financing was, at the time, one of the largest funding arrangements secured by an indigenous African-owned producer.
“We have a very clear vision: creating Africa’s first integrated energy multinational, a global quality business, uniquely focused on Africa and Africa’s energy needs,” Elumelu said at the time.
Over the four years that followed, Heirs Energies more than doubled OML 17’s production through a combination of well interventions, gas scale-up initiatives and improved infrastructure management. The deal was later recognised as Africa’s Mergers and Acquisitions Deal of the Year.
It established Heirs Energies as an operating oil and gas company, not just an investment vehicle.
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Seplat: the company Tony Elumelu had been watching
While Elumelu was building out OML 17, Seplat Energy was writing its own story.
Seplat was born in 2009 from a merger between two Nigerian-owned oil companies: Platform Petroleum Limited, run by geologist and petroleum engineer Austin Avuru, and Shebah Petroleum Development Company, controlled by orthopedic surgeon and entrepreneur ABC Orjiako. The name Seplat was coined from the two companies, SEBCO and PLATFORM, at a meeting between Avuru and Orjiako in which the two men agreed to jointly bid for assets Shell was divesting in the Niger Delta.
Avuru became the company’s first CEO on May 1, 2010. In July of that year, Seplat acquired a 45 percent working interest in OMLs 4, 38 and 41 from Shell, inheriting the core production staff who took their last Shell salaries on July 31 and their first Seplat salaries on August 1. Production at the time was around 17,000 to 18,000 barrels per day.
The third pillar in Seplat’s founding structure was Maurel & Prom, the French oil company whose early capital and credibility helped secure the company’s first blocks. M&P became Seplat’s largest shareholder and held that position from 2010 until the moment it sold to Elumelu at the end of 2025.
From those three original OMLs, Seplat expanded steadily. It completed a dual listing on the Nigerian Exchange and the London Stock Exchange in 2014, becoming the first Nigerian oil company to achieve that milestone. It later made the move that changed its scale entirely: the acquisition of ExxonMobil’s Nigerian onshore and shallow water assets in a $1.28 billion transaction, adding OMLs 67, 68, 70 and 104, a 40 percent interest in the Qua Iboe export terminal and a 51 percent interest in the Bonny River Terminal.
By the time Tony Elumelu came looking, Seplat was a transformed company. Revenue surged 144 percent in 2025 to $2.73 billion, while adjusted EBITDA rose 137 percent to $1.28 billion. Average working-interest production in H1 2026 reached 139,509 barrels of oil equivalent per day, up from 134,492 the year before.
The French exit and the $496 million acquisition
Maurel & Prom had been a Seplat investor since its founding in 2010. Over 15 years, the French company had watched Seplat grow from a 17,000-barrel-per-day startup into a dual-listed energy major. By late 2025, M&P had decided it was time to exit and refocus on direct oil and gas asset investments.
“We are incredibly proud to have supported Seplat’s journey and its transformation into a leading energy company in Nigeria across both oil and gas,” said Olivier de Langavant, CEO of M&P. “This investment has delivered very strong returns since inception in 2010, and we believe this is the right time to monetise our position.”
Heirs Energies was the buyer. The transaction, announced on December 31, 2025, involved the purchase of all 120.4 million of M&P’s ordinary shares in Seplat at 305 pence each, totalling approximately $496 million. To finance the deal, Heirs Holdings secured a $750 million financing arrangement with the African Export-Import Bank.
When the deal closed, Seplat’s shares jumped 11 percent in London, while Maurel & Prom’s shares rose 8 percent in Paris.
“This acquisition reflects our strong belief in Africa’s ability to own, develop, and responsibly manage its strategic resources,” Elumelu said. “It is a long-term investment in Nigeria’s and Africa’s energy future.”
On January 22, 2026, Elumelu was appointed a non-executive director on Seplat’s board. He is expected to become chairman on January 1, 2027.
The numbers that followed
Seplat’s share price on the Nigerian Exchange stood at approximately N5,809 at the start of 2026. By September 1, it had reached N12,320.60, putting the value of Elumelu’s 120.4 million shares at approximately N1.48 trillion.
His stake, valued at approximately N1.37 trillion at the end of June 2026, had therefore added about N114 billion by September 1.
The stock did not stop there. By September 16, Seplat had climbed to a then-record N14,907.80, pushing the value of Elumelu’s holding to approximately N1.79 trillion.
Then, on September 24, 2026, the shares reached a new all-time high of N16,000. At that price, the 120.4 million shares were worth approximately N1.93 trillion, adding about N137.6 billion to the value of the holding in just over a week.
The $496 million acquisition had, in less than nine months, grown into a holding worth approximately N1.93 trillion on the Nigerian Exchange. The increase represents an unrealised gain because Tony Elumelu has not sold the shares.
Beyond capital appreciation, the investment is also generating income. Seplat declared a N165.50 per-share interim dividend for H1 2026, comprising a N68.96 core dividend and a N96.54 special dividend. On 120.4 million shares, that translates to approximately N19.92 billion in dividend income for Elumelu’s holding from the first half of the year alone.
Why Seplat’s shares have surged
The rally in Seplat’s share price is grounded in a transformation of the company’s underlying financials, driven primarily by the ExxonMobil asset acquisition completed before Elumelu’s arrival.
Seplat’s 2025 revenue of $2.73 billion represented a 144 percent increase on the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA of $1.28 billion was up 137 percent. In H1 2026, revenue reached N2.50 trillion and profit before tax rose 74 percent to N790.4 billion. Production has risen, diversification across oil and gas has improved, and the company’s balance sheet has been strengthened.
The rally has also come against a favourable global oil-price backdrop. Disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude prices higher in September, supporting the earnings outlook for upstream producers such as Seplat. Seplat exports crude through Nigerian infrastructure including the Qua Iboe Terminal and Yoho FSO.
Elumelu bought into Seplat as the company’s financial performance was beginning to reflect the scale of the ExxonMobil acquisition. The shares were already moving when he arrived, with the company’s earnings, production growth and broader oil-market conditions all contributing to the subsequent appreciation.
The architecture of an energy empire
Heirs Energies holds a 45 percent operating stake in OML 17, a block that was producing below 20,000 barrels per day when acquired and has since more than doubled its output. Heirs Holdings and Heirs Energies collectively hold 20.07 percent of Seplat Energy, now worth approximately N1.93 trillion at the September 24 closing price.
Elumelu has described this as the execution of a single, long-held vision.
“We have a very clear vision: creating Africa’s first integrated energy multinational,” he said at the time of the OML 17 acquisition.
What started with the acquisition of a distressed bank in 1997, pivoted through a retirement from banking in 2010, planted its flag in the Niger Delta in 2021, and reached a new stage on the last day of 2025 with a $496 million acquisition from a French oil company.
Nine months later, that stake is worth N1.93 trillion.
