BEVERLY HILLS, March 08, (THEWILL) – Recently, the sporting media was abuzz with the oft-repeated news of the interest of Nigerian billionaire and foremost business magnate Aliko Dangote in acquiring controlling stakes in the English Premier League’s north London club Arsenal.
Every time this has come up as a hot item in the news, it has been whipped up to a frenzy by mostly a cross-section of Arsenal fans who have become disenchanted by current owner, American businessman Stan Kroenke, as a result of their perceived notion of his failure to arrest the club’s steady decline over the last decade. They believe that their favourite club would enjoy a considerable upturn in fortunes if Dangote eventually acquires it.
As newsworthy as this is, it is by no means the first or, indeed, the second time a Nigerian has openly displayed European football club acquisition interests in history. In fact, there are currently two clubs under Nigerian ownership both of which are in Portugal and the second belongs to a Nigerian woman with the record of being the only woman of African origin to own a club in Europe.
She is Nneka Ede, an entrepreneur and business mogul, who in 2020, acquired the 109-year-old club Lusitano Ginasio Clube, MHC, also commonly known as Lusitano de Évora, a Portuguese sports club based in Évora and competing in Serie D of Campeonato de Portugal, the third tier of Portuguese football.
Ede’s deal to take over ownership of the club effectively made her the first Nigerian woman to own a club in Europe. It was initially claimed in some reports, at the time, that she became the first African woman to own her own club but those reports did not take into cognisance the 2017 acquisition of Italian club Como 1907 by Akosua Puni Essien, wife of former Ghana international and Chelsea midfielder, Michael Essien.
Essien reportedly paid €237,000 (£206,000) at a bankruptcy auction to enable her buy the third-tier team three years ago to become the first ever African woman to have a club. However, her ownership of Como was transient. With the club in bad shape evidenced by broken ceilings in the stadium, it was not long before they were looking elsewhere for buyers who could revamp the fortunes of the side and invest seriously in it.
Indonesia’s tobacco industry giant Djarum, through its vessel SENT Entertainment Ltd, stepped in and bought the club two years after it fell into the hands of Essien. One of the company’s rationale for acquiring Como 1907 was the intention to provide the club’s headquarters as shelter for the Garuda Select team, which strives to unearth Indonesia’s next big football star, that was slated to visit Italy, as part of its training program on European soil.
This meant that when Ede bought Lusitano, she became the second woman in chronological order but the only African woman who currently owned a European club. It took her months of monitoring before she decided to buy and more months of negotiations before an agreement was reached to allow the sports enthusiast and successful entrepreneur get her wish to claim the club for her own with the promise to improve the club’s standings.
Incidentally, the official flag of the 109-year-old Portuguese side shares the colours green and white with the flag of Nigeria, which was claimed in the official release of the transfer of ownership, as another link in the natural bonding of the club to the new owner, whose countrymen and women share a considerably significant love for the round leather sport.
Although the precise amount she parted with to take over the club was never made public, the new owner was euphoric about the success of the deal and filled with the optimism of the potential it afforded for deepening sporting relations between Portugal and Nigeria while providing a pathway for young talents to develop and shine through.
However, though Ede was the first female Nigerian to own a football club in Europe, there was one before her, a premiere purchase that preceded hers and set the stage for the others that were bound come. This first ever record was set by another Nigerian businessman Kunle Soname when he purchased Clube Desportivo Feirense back in 2015.
The wealthy billionaire, whose interests stretch across actual sports, betting, investments, and his love life, is also the Ijebu-Remo owner of Bet9ja, Nigeria’s foremost online bookmaker company that offers betting on major sporting events and is most popular amongst Nigeria’s betting public. Soname’s near 100% stake in KC Gaming Networks Limited, the company that co-owns Bet9ja, means his net worth can be estimated to be around $100 million.
The 2015 acquisition of the Portuguese side was not his first rodeo in club ownership because in 2004, he founded the Remo Stars Football Club (formerly known as FC DENDER of Lagos). The club was rebranded and relocated from Lagos and now plays in the second Division of the Nigerian National League.
His Clube Desportivo Feirense, which is more commonly known as CD Feirense or just Feirense, is based in Santa Maria da Feira. Founded on March 18, 1918, Feirense play in the LigaPro, the second tier of Portuguese football and they are managed by 42-year-old Portuguese coach Filipe Martins.
By acquiring a 70% share of the club, Soname took ownership of the side that was last seen in the Portuguese top flight in 2011. However, with fortune on their side, the chances of them returning to the first Division, the Premiera Liga, are very high with the team second and one point from group leaders Estoril Praia and a gap of four points from the third-placed side Academica after 22 games.
Soname who was convinced about owning the club has demonstrated no desire to change anything about it satisfied as he is with their operations, organisation, philosophy and fans. He was more dedicated to ensuring the progress of the club through promotion to the top division, while seeking benefits to Nigerian football through players transfer, training for officials and administrators, who have proven they have what it takes to succeed in Europe.
That leaves Dangote and his intention for Arsenal as the third for the charm of owning an European club by Africans in general and Nigerians in particular.
Although the industrialist and billionaire has been not been reticent about his intention for the club, there has been a recent lull in the conversation around his takeover of shares currently held by American businessman Stan Kroenke. It was argued that this was not unconnected to the coronavirus pandemic that has swept across the globe.
The pestilence, which rendered many an economic outlook dire, turned investment-minded business types away from football club takeovers with other bigger returns opportunities higher on their agenda especially given the financial implications around football due largely of the pandemic and reflected in financial strains for some otherwise big clubs globally, with Barcelona as a standard example.
Nevertheless, the wealthiest African alive has not let that dampen his intentions for the club which has been a long-time objective. The 63-year-old admitted, in June 2015, that he missed the initial offer to buy Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith’s 15.9% stake way back in 2011 when they became available, as he and others interested did not act quickly enough, allowing Kroenke to snap up the stake.
His reason for not immediately effecting a straight out buy decision is based on how much he has to deal with currently with a plateful of competing business decisions to make but above all else, the overall industrialisation of his assets and the near-completion of one of the most ambitious projects of his business empire: the construction of an oil refinery in the financial capital of Nigeria, Lagos State.
What the billionaire intends is to clear the project of completing the refinery off his mind and with the time and resources on his hand after that, to acquire the club from Kroenke. The sensible opportunity from such a decision is that Dangote will be in a position to fulfill not just the dream of owning the north London outfit but, unlike Soname’s intention for Feirense, to carry out the turnaround Dangote believes the club needs to start functioning as a successfully run business, in the way he has done to his network of profitably-run establishments.
With the over $15 billion, capital-intensive Ibeju Lekki oil refinery project nearing completion, with an estimated date for the refinery to become operational put at early 2021, the time may be nearer than ever for Africa’s foremost billionaire to deliver on his wishes to own the Emirates club.
The 63-year-old is currently the 162nd richest man in the world according to the Forbes Rich List, with a net worth of $11.5 billion. And unlike the first two of Soname and Ede, he is gunning for the biggest side in the history of Africans acquiring clubs and in arguably the biggest football league of them all.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
