Exclusive: Africa’s Richest Woman Folorunsho Alakija’s FAMFA Oil Illegally Kept a $200 Million Private Jet Fleet in Nigeria for Over a Decade While Owing N8.85 Billion in Unpaid Customs Duty – Secrets Reporters Nigeria

Secrets Reporters

A SecretsReporters investigation can reveal that FAMFA Oil Limited, the company that made Folorunsho Alakija Africa’s richest woman, has for more than a decade kept a private fleet of three Bombardier jets worth close to $200 million flying in and out of Nigeria on expired, backdated or entirely non-existent import papers and now faces a federal demand for N8.85 billion in unpaid duty on just one of the three aircraft. The matter is now before the courts.

The fleet at the centre of the dispute is not modest by any standard: a Bombardier Global 6000 XRS, registration VP-CFO; a Bombardier Global 6000, registration VP-CEO; and a Bombardier Global 7500, registration VP-CTO – Bombardier’s flagship ultra-long-range jet, a model that lists new at roughly $75 million and can fly non-stop from Lagos to London, New York or Dubai without refuelling.

Together, at current list prices, the three aircraft represent close to $200 million in private aviation assets, parked, hangered and flown inside Nigeria for years at a time, our investigation finds, without the paperwork Nigerian law requires for that privilege.

A nationwide sweep that caught Nigeria’s richest woman in its net

The story begins with a nationwide verification exercise ordered by Nigeria’s Comptroller-General of Customs, targeting privately owned aircraft flying in Nigerian airspace without ever properly clearing the country’s import regime.

An initial sweep ran in the second half of 2021; a follow-up verification exercise in the middle of 2024 went further, cross-checking ownership records, Temporary Importation Permits and Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority clearance certificates against the aircraft actually parked on Nigerian tarmacs.

When the results came in, FAMFA Oil’s three jets were named on the federal government’s own list of illegally imported aircraft and the Global 7500 alone was assessed to carry an outstanding import duty bill of N8,849,869,111.

The jet that overstayed by a decade

Under Nigerian law, an aircraft brought into the country on a Temporary Importation Permit (TIP) may stay for one year, renewable twice, for a hard ceiling of two years — after which it must either be formally converted to permanent importation, with the appropriate duty and VAT paid, or physically exported out of the country.

Our investigation found that FAMFA Oil’s Global 6000, VP-CEO, arrived in Nigeria and underwent its post-arrival customs inspection in September 2012, with an initial import permit issued that August. That two-year ceiling would have expired around 2014. Records reviewed by our investigation show the aircraft was still in Nigeria, still flying, more than a decade later with no permanent conversion ever completed, no export ever recorded, and no explanation on file for how it continued operating in the country for so long past its legal window.

The second aircraft, the Global 6000 XRS registered VP-CFO, tells an even more pointed story. Our investigation found that this jet underwent its post-arrival inspection in July 2015 but its Temporary Importation Permit was not procured until February 2016, seven months later, in what the underlying customs record describes as an attempt to “surreptitiously” regularise a stay that had already begun without one. Put plainly: the aircraft flew into the country first, and the paperwork required to legally justify its presence followed only after the fact, once questions had already started. Even after that permit was finally issued, our findings show the aircraft went on to remain in Nigeria well beyond the maximum duration the TIP regime allows. This second plane only obtained permit after the plane had already landed

The third aircraft removes any ambiguity. It didn’t even try to obtain permit The Bombardier Global 7500, registration VP-CTO which is the newest and most expensive of the three, at a new list price of roughly $75 million was flown into Nigeria on 6 December 2023.

Our investigation found no record of any statutory fee ever paid to the Nigeria Customs Service at the point of import, and no Temporary Importation Permit application on file for the aircraft at any point between its arrival and the filing of the federal government’s case. Unlike the other two aircraft, where FAMFA Oil at least eventually went through the motions of a permit, however late or however overstayed, the Global 7500 appears to have skipped the process entirely, which is what produced the N8.85 billion duty assessment now at the centre of the dispute.

The cover story: calling a business trip an export

Perhaps the most damning finding in our investigation is not any single missed deadline, but the pattern connecting all three.

Federal Investigators found that at no point did FAMFA Oil apply for, or receive, approval to permanently export any of the three aircraft at the end of their respective permit periods nor did the company ever obtain a Permit to Export from Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation, nor a Bill of Exit or Certificate of Exportation from the Nigeria Customs Service, for any of the three jets, at any point.

Instead, SecretsReporters findings show, ordinary international flights, trips the aircraft made abroad and back, the everyday business of a private jet appear to have been represented as though they constituted the permanent exportation the law required. It is a distinction that matters enormously: a jet that flies to London and back has not left Nigerian customs jurisdiction; a jet that has been permanently exported has.

Flying to London and back is not the same as leaving the country for customs purposes but our investigation found that is exactly the distinction FAMFA Oil’s paperwork tried to blur, for three aircraft, over more than a decade.

That distinction is confirmed by the one set of records nobody disputes: the Flight Operations Clearance Certificates and Maintenance Clearance Certificates issued by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority for all three aircraft.

Our investigation found that these certificates which exist specifically to authorise an aircraft’s continued operation inside Nigeria were never cancelled or revoked for any of the three jets, at any point across the entire period in question. An aircraft that had genuinely been permanently exported would have no need for a live Nigerian operating certificate. That all three jets kept theirs, uninterrupted, is itself evidence that none of them ever really left.

A billionaire’s fleet, an ordinary importer’s obligations

FAMFA Oil Limited is not a struggling operator for whom customs paperwork might reasonably fall through the cracks. It is the company that holds a stake in OML 127 which is the Agbami deepwater field, one of the most productive oil blocks in the Gulf of Guinea and it is that stake that has made Folorunsho Alakija, by Forbes’ own reckoning, the richest woman in Africa for much of the past decade.

Every importer bringing an aircraft into Nigeria, under the Temporary Importation Permit regime enforced by the Nigeria Customs Service, is required to apply for the permit before the aircraft arrives, submit a lease agreement or pro-forma invoice showing its value, post a bond covering the duty that would be owed, and present the aircraft for inspection at the port of entry. Our investigation’s findings suggest that, across three separate aircraft and more than a decade, this was treated as optional.

The federal government’s position, now before the courts, is straightforward: three aircraft, one N8.85 billion demand already crystallised on a single jet, no export permits, no bills of exit, and a decade-long pattern of permits either backdated, overstayed, or never applied for at all. What happens next will turn on how a court weighs paperwork against possession but the paper trails SecretsReporters investigation has scrutinized leaves little room for the explanation to be an innocent one.