Otedola dismisses friendship with Elumelu, says UBA chairman betrayed, and backstabbed him countless times to be friend him again.

The billionaire businessman revealed this after news made the rounds about his cooperate bromance friendship the chairman of UBA-group last week.

Recall that Tony Elumelu while being interview on Arise tv referred to the F-ote Oil Boss as his very good friend.  Otedola in his revelation of his relationship with Tony Elumelu, recounts his fallout history, says his professional, and coo-perate experience with Tony Elumelu is mostly about betrayal or backstabbing him in the cooperate business world.

According to F.O, sometimes in the past he offered to acquire Transcorp Plc for N250 billion and increase the company’s market capitalisation to N2 trillion, but his offer was rejected.

Recently, Otedola acquired a 5.52 percent stake in Transcorp Plc, making him the second largest shareholder in the company, but then sold his entire stake to Tony Elumelu, the group’s chairman.

In a press statement provided to TheCable on Tuesday morning, Otedola commented for the first time on the events surrounding his bid to acquire the company.

“In 2005, when Tony was still managing director of Standard Trust Bank, he approached me for funds to acquire UBA.

I enthusiastically gave him $20 million, which was N2 billion at the time, to buy the shares in UBA required for the acquisition.

After a short while, the share price went up and I decided it was a good time to sell and get out of the bank.

However, Tony appealed to me to keep the shares because he was convinced of the future prospects – so I kept the shares.

In 2007, I became chairman of Transcorp Hotel with a 5% stake, and Tony, unknowingly to me, began quietly buying shares one by one.

The following year, 2008, I went bankrupt in Nigeria. Tony took over my shares in UBA to service the interest on my loans, and he also took over my shares in Africa Finance Corporation, where I was the largest shareholder.