1. Igho Charles Sanomi (Net worth, $1 billion)
Igho Charles Sanomi is one of the youngest billionaires in Nigeria and a businessmen, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. He was born in Agbor, Delta State, on 17 May 1975. He is the executive director of Cosmos oil AG and the founder of Taleveras.
He is the founder of Taleveras Group, Igho Sanomi’s business interests include telecommunications, shipping, aviation, engineering, construction and real estate investments. He is also the son of a former Assistant Inspector General who makes millions of naira from his energy, building, and power business enterprises.
It is also noteworthy that his company has vast shares in two Nigeria oil blocs. Sanomi founded Taleveras Group (a Nigerian energy-trading company) in 2004. According to Forbes, Taleveras trades have over 100 million barrels of crude oil and several million tons of gasoline, LPG and jet fuel.
In April 2012, Taleveras acquired production sharing contracts (PSCs) for three offshore oil blocks on Ivory Coast. In June 2013, Taleveras sold a 65% stake in one of its Ivorian offshore upstream projects to Lukoil of Russia for an undisclosed price.
Taleveras also owns a stake in a power distribution firm in Nigeria. Venture-Africa, a bimonthly Pan-African business magazine about African capitalism, described the group as trading nearly a billion barrels of crude oil and millions of tons of condensates, gasoline, jet fuel, condensates and LPG every year.
Taleveras also owns substantial stakes in two oil blocks in Nigeria and lucrative production sharing contracts (PSCs) in three offshore oil blocks on Ivory Coast. The group Power subsidiary constructs electrical substations in Nigeria and recently acquired a majority stake in the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company.
Taleveras has an annual turnover of several billion dollars, and Igho Sanomi is the group’s controlling shareholder.” On 30 July 2013, Taleveras Group acquired Afam Power. One of the Nigerian companies reportedly awarded oil-lifting contracts in the federal government’s bid, through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to award nearly half of the 2012–2013 lifting contracts (worth $60 billion) to indigenous companies promoting local content and “downsizing contracts awarded to international oil traders”.
In October of that year, Taleveras Group signed a technical agreement with Alstom Group to rehabilitate and expand the 776-megawatt Afam power plant in Rivers State.
Patrick Kron, chairman and chief executive (président-directeur général) of the French engineering conglomerate, signed the agreement with Taleveras Group during his visit with Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, Nigerian business leaders and members of the international business community in Lagos, Nigeria.
