Danjuma worth $1.2bn – Bloomberg
A retired Nigerian Army General and former minister of defence, Lt-Gen Theophilus Danjuma, is currently worth an estimated $1.2 billion, Bloomberg, the US-based media organisation has said.
This amounts to N432 billion in the Nigerian currency as the media organisation declares that the 80-year-old’s family office managing a portion of the wealth.
According to Bloomberg, the retired officer now owns the Kings Arms Hotel, “a 300-year-old inn next to London’s Hampton Court Palace, once the home of Henry VIII.”
When it finally starts operating, the medium said each of its rooms would cost about 250 pounds or $318 a night.
“We never tend to look at trophy assets.
“We’re not going to head to Mayfair to buy a 15 million-pound apartment primarily because we are a yield business,” the report quoted Hannatu Gentles, the second daughter of Danjuma’s five children and chief operating officer of his London-based family office, as saying.
Born in 1938, Danjuma made his fortune from the Nigerian oil sector. He was reportedly awarded an oil block by the military government.
Danjuma was said to have dropped out of college in 1960 to join the Nigerian security organisation where he gained prominence after allegedly participating in the 1966 counter-coup against Nigeria’s first military dictator.
He retired from the Nigerian Army in 1979 and founded an oil and shipping company which currently has over 2,000 workers.
Femi Falana, Nigeria’s senior lawyer and human rights activist, recently accused the military administration of Ibrahim Babangida of being partly responsible for the current economic challenges facing the country.
Falana hinged the challenges on the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) by the administration of military government of Babangida in 1986, which led to the selling of public assets to wealthy Nigerians.
