On a warm February evening in Abuja this year, the old order of Nigerian power gathered to celebrate one of its own. At the launch of Ibrahim Babangida’s autobiography and the fundraising for a new presidential library, oil money and political nostalgia flowed freely. When it was Prince Arthur Eze’s turn at the podium, the slight, soft-spoken billionaire from Anambra pledged N500 million and thanked the former military ruler in a single line that said a lot about how he made his fortune: “Babangida has no enemy. He made all of us.”
That declaration was not exaggeration. Over four decades, Eze has turned a royal name, a string of broadcasting contracts and a talent for cultivating presidents and generals into what may be Africa’s largest privately held portfolio of oil exploration acreage. Atlas Petroleum and Oranto Petroleum, the twin companies he founded in the early 1990s, today control more than 20 licences across at least 10 African jurisdictions and now reach as far as Venezuela and newly awarded blocks offshore Liberia.
Whether that makes him the single biggest private owner of oil acreage in the world is impossible to say with certainty; there is no global league table of private concessions. But within Africa, even friendly biographies describe him as “undoubtedly the largest holder of oil exploration blocks,” and his companies market themselves as the continent’s biggest indigenous exploration group by acreage.
The path to that position began far from the offshore blocks that populate his portfolio.
Arthur Eze was born in Ukpo, a town in Anambra State’s Dunukofia area, on 27 November 1948, into the ruling family of the community. His elder brother, Robert, is the traditional monarch, which makes Arthur a prince by birth as well as by the honorifics he prefers in public life.
He finished secondary school at St. Augustine’s in Nkwerre in 1970, at the end of the Biafran war, then left for the United States four years later to study mechanical and chemical engineering at California State University, Long Beach, graduating in 1978.
By the early 1980s he was back in Nigeria, trading on a mix of engineering skills, royal pedigree and political introductions. The first big opening came at home. Commentators from Anambra recall that then-governor Jim Nwobodo awarded Eze a contract to build facilities for the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) in Onitsha, a job that brought him into the orbit of the Nigerian Second Republic’s northern political establishment.
Eze himself later told the story in a now-famous interview at his Ukpo country home. He said that in 1980, Kano State governor Abubakar Rimi gave him a $12 million contract to build Kano State Television at a time when, by his own account, he “didn’t have one naira.” Rimi then introduced him to Solomon Lar, governor of Plateau State, who offered another contract of similar size to build Plateau Television. Contracts followed in Katsina, Borno and Kaduna, Eze said, painting a picture of a young eastern contractor lifted by northern politicians who “didn’t care where I came from.”
Those stories are contested in their details – critics question the contract sums and point out that Nwobodo’s introduction was crucial – but the trajectory is clear. The man who would one day control oil licences from the Gulf of Guinea to the Albertine Rift first made serious money pouring concrete for state television stations and learning how to navigate governors’ offices.
By the 1990s, Eze’s network extended beyond elected governors to the military hierarchy. Business Hallmark and other Nigerian outlets describe how he became a strong supporter of General Sani Abacha’s regime, securing water contracts in the south-east and, more importantly, access to oil leases.
It was in this period that he made the pivot that would define his career. In 1991, he founded Atlas Petroleum International; two years later he created Oranto Petroleum as a sister vehicle focused on exploration. Anambra-based profiles credit his late elder brother Walter – a military doctor who rose to become one of Nigeria’s first in that role – with introducing him to the oil world and helping him build contacts in the armed forces.
That positioning paid off at home. In 1991, under Nigeria’s indigenous “sole risk” policy, Atlas was awarded OPL 75 in the shallow waters of the western Niger Delta. The company drilled, made the Ejulebe discovery and converted the lease into OML 109 in 1996. Production from Ejulebe started in 1998 and has since yielded more than 15 million barrels of oil.
Today OML 109, where Atlas holds 70% and operates, is still the group’s core Nigerian asset. It produces into a floating storage facility, with total output from the licence estimated at more than 10,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day – a meaningful but modest stream compared with the majors, and yet the anchor that underpins Eze’s African expansion story.
Alongside oil, he experimented with aviation. In 1992 he launched Triax Airlines, based in Enugu, flying Boeing 727s on domestic routes until the carrier folded around 2000.
The pattern was becoming clear: secure licences and concessions using political relationships, operate just enough to hold the acreage or generate cash, and constantly trade up into more prospective terrain.
From the late 1990s through the 2010s, Atlas and Oranto stitched together a portfolio that made the group a quiet but ubiquitous presence in African licensing rounds.
By 2017, Energy Capital & Power – an industry promoter that later worked with the company – could list 22 oil and gas acreages in 11 African jurisdictions, including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Uganda and South Sudan. More recent corporate and university biographies say the group now holds licences in “12 jurisdictions” and operates or invests in more than 20 countries, adding frontier positions in places like The Gambia and Zambia.
The structure is simple. Atlas typically holds producing or near-developed assets – OML 109 in Nigeria, stakes in Equatorial Guinea’s Aseng oil field and the Venus discovery in Block P – while Oranto carries much of the exploration risk in places like Uganda’s Ngassa Deep and Shallow areas, Zambian onshore blocks and offshore acreage in Senegal.
Group-wide, Atlas Oranto has told investors and conference audiences that its portfolio produces around 18,000 barrels a day, mainly from Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. That’s a small stream by super-major standards, but unusually high output for a company whose public identity is built on its land bank rather than its barrels.
If there is a single deal that encapsulates both the brilliance and the controversy of Eze’s model, it is Liberia’s Block 13.
In the mid-2000s, Liberia’s National Oil Company (NOCAL) awarded Oranto exploration rights over several offshore blocks as the country opened up after civil war. Investigative reporting by FrontPageAfrica and later analysis by governance organisations showed how some of those awards were made at low entry prices and amid allegations of conflicts of interest around powerful political figures.
An account compiled by Liberian anti-corruption activists and republished in 2024 describes how Oranto paid about $200,000 in signature bonus for one offshore block, and then sold its interest on to Chevron in a deal valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The summary says Block 13, in particular, was flipped to the US major for roughly $250 million, with the Liberian state receiving only a fraction of that value.
ProPublica, in a deep dive on Liberia’s oil sector, cited Oranto as an example of middleman companies that scooped up rights cheaply and then sold them on to bigger players, while politicians and NOCAL officials were accused of taking bribes or unexplained payments. Neither Eze nor his companies have been charged with wrongdoing in Liberia, but the episode has coloured perceptions of Atlas Oranto as a trader of acreage rather than a builder of projects.
Two decades on, he is back. In September 2025, Liberia signed four new production-sharing contracts with Atlas/Oranto for offshore blocks LB-15, LB-16, LB-22 and LB-24, in a package worth a reported $800 million in planned investment and a $12 million signature bonus. The deal has triggered familiar questions in Monrovia about transparency, the state’s negotiating power and whether the company will drill or simply hold the blocks as paper wealth.
Eze’s comfort with politically mediated business has never been limited to oil.
During Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, SaharaReporters and other Nigerian outlets published documents suggesting that Triax, an Eze-linked company, received a defence procurement contract worth around $500 million to supply refurbished Puma helicopters to the Nigerian military.
A 2017 Transparency International report on Nigerian defence procurement cited the case as an example of alleged overspending and poor value for money, noting that the contract was awarded via the office of then national security adviser Sambo Dasuki and describing the helicopters as having “limited to no combat utility” and never deployed.
Eze has not publicly addressed the details of the contract, and no court has found him liable over it. Still, the episode reinforced a broader view among critics: that his rise owes as much to proximity to power – civilian and military – as to operational excellence.
At home in Ukpo and across the country, he has tried to soften that image with philanthropy: multi-million-dollar donations to Anglican projects in Bayelsa, flood relief, schools in South Sudan, sports and university causes, and, most recently, the Babangida library. The scale of his pledges is sometimes questioned, but the pattern is clear: Eze mixes generous public giving with a willingness to back – and loudly praise – whoever is in power, from Abacha and Jonathan to Muhammadu Buhari and now Bola Tinubu.
Nowhere are the limits of that model clearer than in Equatorial Guinea, the small Central African producer that became one of Atlas’s most important theatres.
In the 2010s, Atlas built a substantial position there. It acquired a near-30% stake in the Aseng oil field in Block I alongside operator Noble Energy (now Chevron), Glencore and state company GEPetrol. It also took interests in gas-rich Block O and, later, in Block P, home to the Venus discovery now being developed by Houston-based Vaalco Energy.
For years, the relationship looked solid. In 2019 Atlas Oranto announced plans to invest close to $350 million in Equatorial Guinea’s gas “backfill” project, which reroutes gas from fields like Aseng and Alen into an LNG complex on Bioko Island. In 2021, Africa Intelligence reported that Eze held a “fruitful” secret meeting with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema to secure assurances that his blocks would not be taken away despite limited activity.
By 2025, the tone had changed. Reports described how Eze returned to Malabo twice in March and April this year, accompanied by his sons Walter and Arthur Jr and geologist John Nwosu, in an attempt to recover blocks that had been withdrawn from Atlas Petroleum for lack of work. The authorities were demanding a $10 million payment to reinstate some of the acreage.
Chevron, now operator at Aseng after acquiring Noble, is said to be frustrated that Atlas appears unable or unwilling to fund its share of new investments needed to boost gas production, raising the prospect it could be diluted or pushed aside.
Eze’s camp has pushed back in other outlets, insisting that Atlas remains committed to Equatorial Guinea and still sees Venus and the gas backfill as core projects. But the episode underlines a recurring tension: he is exceptionally skilled at collecting licences; his record in turning all of them into wells and production is more mixed.
The same pattern is emerging elsewhere.
In Uganda, Oranto Petroleum holds two licences over the Ngassa Deep and Ngassa Shallow areas near Lake Albert. Kampala granted the company a two-year extension in December 2023 after Covid-era delays, but officials and analysts note that the firm has drilled little and will need to move quickly or risk losing the acreage as the country pushes to join the ranks of oil producers. Reports suggest that the Ugandan government is considering letting some Oranto-held permits lapse for non-performance.
In Senegal, where Oranto secured offshore blocks during the Macky Sall years, the change of administration has been even more jarring. The company is now reportedly on the brink of expulsion under President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s government, as officials accuse it of doing “little prospecting” on its existing blocks even as it lobbied for new ones using high-level political contacts.
Put together, Equatorial Guinea, Uganda and Senegal suggest that the old playbook – win acreage, sit tight and wait for a major or a commodity cycle to do the heavy lifting – is becoming riskier as African governments demand faster work programmes and higher local content.
Quantifying Eze’s holdings is as much art as science. Licences are constantly expiring, being renewed or traded, and Atlas Oranto is privately held with limited public disclosure.
A few anchor points stand out. In Nigeria, Atlas operates OML 109 and has held interests in other offshore blocks such as OPL 293 and OPL 320. In Equatorial Guinea, Atlas holds a significant stake in Aseng and a 20% interest in Block P’s Venus discovery. In Uganda it controls the two Ngassa licences; in Zambia it farmed into two exploration blocks in 2018; in Namibia, São Tomé and South Sudan it has onshore and offshore frontier acreage; and in Liberia it now controls four offshore PSCs.
Corporate and academic profiles commonly cite “22 licences in 11 or 12 jurisdictions” and current production of around 18,000 barrels per day, mainly from Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, with new production expected once Venus comes onstream.
By African standards, that makes Atlas Oranto huge. Internationally, it places Eze in a very select group of individuals – alongside families behind some Middle Eastern, Russian or Latin American independents – who control multi-country upstream portfolios largely outside the stock market. Whether his land bank is the largest privately owned anywhere is unknowable, but within Africa the claim that he is the continent’s biggest private oil acreage holder is widely repeated and rarely contested.
Although Atlas Oranto employs experienced technical staff, the group remains tightly held. Reporting from Malabo this year describes Eze travelling with two of his sons, Walter and Arthur Jr, and geologist John Nwosu Ebubechukwu, suggesting a small inner circle that combines family and trusted technical advisers. Public biographies and social-media posts point to other sons – including Olisa and Onyeka – involved in philanthropy or family ventures, while a lean management team of “African petroleum industry specialists” runs day-to-day operations.
That structure has advantages. Decisions are fast, there is no shareholder revolt to fear, and deals can be cut quietly at presidential palaces from Malabo to Monrovia. It also concentrates risk. When politicians change – in Equatorial Guinea, Senegal or potentially Uganda – so does the calculation around licences granted on the back of personal relationships.
Is Arthur Eze simply a hard-nosed entrepreneur playing by the rules of frontier markets, or does his business model cross ethical lines?
His defenders point to the long list of donations, from church projects and flood relief to universities and sports, and to the fact that Atlas Oranto has kept OML 109 producing for more than a quarter of a century while pushing gas monetisation schemes in Equatorial Guinea.
Critics, including some of his own Igbo contemporaries, counter that he has a record of collecting state contracts he did not fully execute, sitting on licences until he can flip them, and aligning himself with whatever administration is in power – from Abacha and Jonathan to Buhari, Babangida and now Tinubu – without much visible concern for governance or public outcomes.
The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Eze is a product of Nigeria’s and Africa’s political economies: a businessman who understood early that the most valuable resource in oil is not always geology but access. That access has brought him broadcasting contracts, a controversial defence deal, and an oil empire that spans from the Niger Delta to the Liberian basin. It has also left him exposed as governments and publics grow less tolerant of licences that remain on paper.
Back in Abuja, at Babangida’s book launch, his N500 million pledge was presented as gratitude to a benefactor and an investment in preserving history. It was also a reminder of how his own story will likely be told: not just as the tale of an engineer-prince who built Africa’s largest private oil land bank, but as a case study in how politics, patronage and hydrocarbons intertwined across a continent’s most turbulent decades.
Whether that empire endures – and whether his latest bets in Liberia and elsewhere become producing assets or just another set of flipped blocks – will determine if Arthur Eze is remembered as Africa’s most successful private oil landlord, or as the man who tried to corner the continent’s subsurface and discovered, too late, that the rules of the game had changed.
Credit: billionaires.africa
