Uneven Stock Rally Reshapes Billionaires’ Fortunes as NGX Posts Best Return in 18 Years

Nigeria’s stock market wrapped up 2025 with one of its strongest performances in nearly two decades, but the historic rally masked sharp contrasts beneath the surface, particularly in how it affected the fortunes of the country’s wealthiest investors.

The NGX All-Share Index surged by 51.19 per cent year-to-date to close at 155,613.03 points, marking its best annual performance in 18 years.

The benchmark was buoyed largely by strong price appreciation in select banking, cement and food manufacturing stocks, many of which significantly outpaced the broader market.

Despite the impressive headline numbers, gains across the equities market were far from evenly distributed. A narrow cluster of high-performing stocks accounted for much of the rally, while several others posted deep losses.

This imbalance produced clear winners and losers among Nigeria’s top investors with listed equity holdings.

An analysis of six Nigerian billionaires shows that, collectively, they added an estimated N11.36 trillion to their paper wealth in 2025, after factoring in both gains and losses from their publicly traded shares.

However, the bulk of this increase was driven by a small number of outperforming stocks, highlighting how concentrated the market’s growth was during the year.

In contrast to the overall market strength, Globacom founder Mike Adenuga emerged as the most impacted on the downside, due to a steep fall in the share price of Conoil Plc. Conoil’s stock declined by 51.65 per cent, dropping from N387.20 at the beginning of the year to N187.20 at the close of trading in December.

Adenuga holds his interest in Conoil indirectly through Conpetro Limited, which owns 103.26 million shares in the oil marketing company. The value of this stake fell from an estimated N39.98 billion at the start of 2025 to about N19.33 billion by year-end, translating into a paper wealth loss of roughly N20.65 billion.

The contrasting outcomes underscore a defining feature of Nigeria’s 2025 equities rally: while the market delivered exceptional overall returns, only a limited group of stocks, and investors, captured most of the upside.