Benedict Peters began his career in the oil and gas industry by entering the highly-specialized and capital-intensive exploration. He would later grow Aiteo Eastern E & P Company as one of Nigeria’s largest indigenous oil producers.
Overview:
- Date Of Birth: December 5, 1966
- State origin: Abakaliki, Ebonyi State
- Alma mata: University of Benin, Benin
- Business interest: Oil and gas
- Company: Aiteo Group
- Children: 5
Benedict Peters, a Delta State native from Onicha-Olona, was born in Ebonyi State’s Abakaliki in 1966. He had his primary and secondary education in Enugu before proceeding to the University of Benin, Edo State, and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography and Urban Planning.
Experience:
Benedict earlier worked in a variety of industries, including banking and commodities trading, before joining the Nigerian oil and gas business in the early 1990s. He worked at Ocean and Oil Limited (now Oando). He was also a former Group Executive Director of MRS Oil Nigeria Plc until being promoted to the position of Managing Director. All of MRS Oil’s Chevron/Texaco service stations in West Africa were under his purview in this capacity.
His Entrepreneurship Journey
After his years of experience in the oil and gas industry, Benedict founded Sigmund Cummunecci in 1999 and Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Production Company Limited five years later.
One of the main goals of the organization was to assist drive economic growth by offering environmentally friendly energy extraction and manufacturing.
To date, the business has acquired a significant portion of one of Nigeria’s largest petroleum tank farms, which includes the Abonnema Storage Terminal and has an excess capacity of over 250 million litres.
In addition to Lagos, Nigeria, Aiteo also maintains offices in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Warri, London, and Geneva, as well as a Lagos-based headquarters.
A number of Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s assets in the Eastern Niger Delta were bought by his company, including Oil Mining Lease (OML) 29 (home to 11 oil and gas fields) and the Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL).
As A Football lover
As an official Optimum Partner of the Nigerian Football Federation, Aiteo Group signed a five-year sponsorship with NFF in 2017. It cooperation deal is worth NGN2.9 billion.
In 2018, the firm joined with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to support the annual CAF Awards.
Other Businesses:
Peters founded the Joseph Agro Foundation to help farmers in rural regions improve their quality of life. He currently serves as its chairman. He has carried out a number of philanthropic projects and activities, particularly in rural regions, through this organization.
Outside Nigeria, Peters also owns Bravura Holdings Ltd., a business that has won platinum concessions in Zimbabwe. However, despite the fact that Zimbabwe possesses the world’s third-largest platinum group metal deposits, Peters refused to be swayed by the country’s inconsistencies in mining policies.
The manager, Lionel Mhlanga, has intimated that the business may be a vehicle for Peters to explore mining for cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, copper in Zambia, gold in Ghana, and iron ore in Guinea.
Awards and Recognition
The founder of Aiteo has won several awards, among them are:
At the Africa-US Leadership Awards luncheon in Washington, DC in August 2014, Peters was one of four people that received the Marquee Award for Global Business Excellence.
In January 2015, he was presented with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Awards in the category of “Economic Empowerment” during an event held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.
As of 2017, Peters was among BusinessDay Newspaper’s list of the 50 Most Influential Nigerians, and in 2019, he was named BusinessDay’s Man of 2019.
Corruption Allegation:
In 2015, the founder of Aiteo was accused of working as a front for the former Petroleum minister Alison Diezani-Madueke, who is wanted for corruption.
In the UK, properties allegedly belonging to Benedict Peters were frozen and was prohibited from accessing them.
Again, Peters’ firm, Aiteo, was implicated in the 2015 INEC bribery scam in which Alison Madueke distributed $115 million to INEC personnel via Fidelity Bank.
Peters and his company denied the allegations. He specifically denies corrupt and dishonest relationships with Mrs. Alison-Madueke.
Through his lawyers and Aiteo’s spokesman, they claimed that the company was tremendously successful long before Mrs. Alison Madueke was named Minister of Petroleum Resources, and denied ever benefiting from the Strategic Alliance Agreements.
Humanitarian works
As the Chairman of the Otuoke University Council, Peters is also responsible for ensuring that Otuoke’s long-term goals are carried out.
He has also donated generously to the Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency to help the state efficiently address the serious problem of internally displaced individuals.
Net Worth:
There is not enough information to ascertain Benedict Peters actual net worth, but several platforms claim that he’s sitting on on at least $3 billion assets. He is one of the richest Africans.
Conclusion
As a major leader in Nigeria’s oil, gas, and power industries, Peters is one of the few well-known billionaires in Africa.
He was once awarded as “Oil and Gas CEO of the Year” by Nigeria’s The Guardian newspaper and recognized by Forbes magazine as ‘Africa’s Oil and Gas Leader of the Year.