Alhaji Abdulsamad Rabiu is a Nigerian businessman and the founder of BUA Group. He serves as the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of BUA Group. BUA Group is now one of the most important diversified groups in Nigeria. Since he founded BUA Group in 1988 and the group have grown into business conglomerate with wide influence in Nigeria’s economic and business sector, with a special interest in sugar, cement, ports, real estate, agricultural produce, oil and mill, import rice, edible oil, flour, and iron and steel products.
Born in Kano, he rose from nothing to something through sheer dint of hard work laced with doggedness. Highly blessed with a good business acumen, Abdulsamad connotes the proverbial cat with nine lives. Despite being caught up in the country’s dwindling business climate with a hard typhoon and tsunami directed at him, he was able to weather the storm and retain his spot in the business.
Following the footstep of his industrious late father, Alhaji Khalifah Rabiu, a top Northern industrialist in the 1970s and 1980s, he drove his company to great fortune. Due to his wide knowledge of finance, business, and corporate governance, he was appointed the Chairman of the Nigerian Bank of Industry (BOI).
Abdul Samad Rabiu’s career in business dates back to when he founded BUA International Limited with the initial intent of commodity trading. BUA Group, concentrates on manufacturing, infrastructure, and agriculture and producing revenue in excess of $2.5 billion annually.
However, his main business breakthrough came in 1990, when government-owned Delta Steel Company, contracted (BUA) to supply its raw materials in exchange for finished iron products. Later that same year, BUA further expanded into steel, producing billets, importing iron ore, and constructing multiple rolling mills in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, to make it in the business terrain, you must have the heart of Hercules, the fearlessness of Achilles, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
After a successful take-off in business, Abdul took an audacious business decision to acquire Nigerian Oil Mills Limited, the largest edible oil processing company in the Nigeria. Then in 2005, BUA started two flour-milling plants in Kano and Lagos. By 2008, BUA had broken a monopoly of about 8 years enjoyed and dominated by rival Dangote in the Nigerian sugar industry by commissioning the second largest sugar refinery in sub-Saharan Africa.
Abdul did not stop at that, in 2009, the company acquired a stake in a publicly-listed Cement Company in Northern part of Nigeria and began to construct a $900 million cement plant in Edo State, completing it in early 2015. He also has a stake in BUA Oil and Mill, BUA Estate, BUA Sugar, BUA Port, and terminal and BUA cement.
In early January 2020, Rabiu merged his privately-owned Obu Cement company with listed firm Cement Co. of Northern Nigeria as the company trades on the Nigerian stock exchange with Rabiu owning a 98.5% stake.
After tenaciously trudging through that tough trial, fortune favored him again and by 2013, he was back on his feet and once more on the Forbes rich list in 2013 with a wealth estimated to be $1.2 billion.
As the new year 2020 sauntered in, Abdulsamad also found his way into the Forbes List as one of the Richest Nigerians in Africa with a net worth of $3.1Billion.
He is also a great philanthropist. Through his BUA Foundation, he supervised the construction of a 7,000-square-meter pediatric ward which he donated at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. And also constructed the Centre for Islamic Studies at Bayero University Kano.
