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| Description: Net Worth: $5.8 BILLION Industry: Oil and Gas Country of Citizenship: Nigeria Age: 62 Number of Jobs Created: 1,000 Prince Arthur Eze is the Nigerian oil and gas billionaire and the founder of Atlas Oranto Petroleum, a West African oil exploration company. With at least 36 oil acreages, it is the largest holder of oil exploration blocks in Africa. Eze continues to grow the number of acreages he owns. Two of his oil blocks alone produce over 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day. Atlas Oranto Petroleum owns equity and working interests in several acreages across the Gulf of Guinea, including Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, and the Republic of Benin. Known for his shrewd business acumen, Eze acquires acreages with significant value on the cheap, and farms out portions of those oil blocks to international oil companies for substantially higher amounts, when the values of those blocks increase. Eze, or Ezenukpo as he is fondly called, is also a political kingmaker in his native Anambra State and a major donor to Nigeria’s ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Eze often chairs fundraising for political aspirants who he supports, and gave away close to $100 million to political aspirants in the last election cycle. He is a prolific and compulsive donor. As he gets, he gives away. Eze remarked to Ventures Africa that he isn’t taking anything with him when he passes on so he will give away as much as he can in the ad hoc manner he prefers. |
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