Author Eghosa Imasuen publicly presented his new book, The Challengers: The Disruptive Nigerian Entrepreneurs Creating a Billion-Naira Company, on July 13 at the Radisson Blu Anchorage in Victoria Island, Lagos, before an audience that included the co-founders of VFD Group, the financial services company whose creation the book documents.
Published by Narrative Landscape Press, the book is Imasuen’s first work of narrative non-fiction, following two earlier novels, To Saint Patrick and Fine Boys.
The event was hosted by Isabella Adediji, the founder and managing director of Yellow Tamarind Productions, a media, PR and edtech company based in Lagos, who opened proceedings by describing the evening as more than a conventional book launch, framing it instead as an account of a group of Nigerians building a company together in a business culture more accustomed to sole proprietorship. The programme included a book review, a chairman’s address and a moderated conversation with the author and the of the founders whose stories the book tells.
Anwuli Ojiogwu, co-founder and managing director of Narrative Landscape Press, delivered the welcome address. She said publishing functions as an act of preservation, converting private memory and institutional history into a public record, and that The Challengers achieved this for a group of young Nigerian entrepreneurs whose company has grown into a multi-billion-naira institution. She argued that Nigerian readers have increasingly sought accounts of how domestic companies are built, in contrast to an earlier public interest driven mainly by celebrity and politics.
Ojiogwu identified three reasons she considered the book significant: its adherence to factual accuracy despite its literary form, its value as a source of inspiration for young Nigerians navigating uncertainty and its documentation of the policy environment that allowed the founders to take advantage of financial-sector reforms in the early 2000s. She noted that the founders had permitted close examination of their decisions, including setbacks, describing this openness as unusual in Nigerian corporate storytelling.
Ayodele Aderinwale, founder and chief executive of Just Rite Stores and a member of the African Leadership Forum’s National Honour Committee, chaired the occasion and read remarks on behalf of a special guest of honour who could not attend because of heavy rainfall in Lagos.
Aderinwale situated the book within a broader argument about entrepreneurship as a driver of change in Nigeria, describing successive waves of national liberation and arguing that the current phase would be led by business builders rather than political or military figures. He cited an example in which a foreign bank withdrew from financing a project in Senegal over a political disagreement, and a Nigerian bank stepped in to provide the funding instead, as evidence of the reach of African private capital. Aderinwale also reflected on his own business experience, including a partnership that ended in a family dispute, and said the book’s account of the VFD founders managing an internal breach of trust illustrated the practical importance of emotional intelligence in business. He described the enduring partnership between two of the company’s co-founders, who began as rivals in university student politics before building one of the country’s more durable business relationships, as evidence that trust and persistence could be built even from adversarial beginnings.
The literary review was delivered by Kunle Kasumu the producer and presenter of the Channels Book Club on Channels Television, who described the book as narrative non-fiction constructed with the pacing and characterisation of fiction rather than a conventional factual account. He said the book opened against the backdrop of the 2008 global financial crisis and followed the founders as they built the company now known as VFD Group from an initial idea into a diversified financial services group. Kasumu pointed to several episodes he found notable, including a dispute over a stake in an insurance company that ended in a buyout, and the difficulties the founders faced when taking over a family-owned automobile business, in which the outgoing family continued to challenge their authority despite the change in ownership. He said the book also documented periods when individual founders left the company, and that these departures were presented without concealment. Kasumu described the founders’ early emphasis on formal corporate governance as a notable departure from common practice among Nigerian businesses, and said the book was likely to serve as a reference point for people either starting or struggling in business.
An author conversation, moderated by Chude Jideonwo, a media entrepreneur and the host of the talk show #WithChude, addressed Imasuen’s decision to write non-fiction after describing himself as retired from writing. Imasuen said the project began through informal contact with figures connected to VFD Group and grew out of a wider interest in documenting the experiences of his generation of Nigerian professionals, whom he said had not seen their own stories told with the same detail given to earlier generations or to international business figures.
He said the founders had agreed to detailed interviews on the understanding that the account would include difficult periods as well as successes, and that this openness was central to the book’s credibility. Discussing the writing process, Imasuen described drawing on structural techniques from fiction, including character development and scene-setting, while treating the underlying facts as fixed. He said the book was designed to run alongside a parallel account of Nigeria’s recent economic and political history, including financial-sector reforms and constitutional changes, arguing that the founders’ story could not be separated from that wider context.
Indeed, as it was clear to see, particularly when five of the founders featured in a fireside chat at the gathering, this is the story not of a corporation, but of a covenant.
The narrative follows the founders through the 2008 global financial crisis, the early growth of what is now VFD Group, and subsequent ventures across financial services, insurance and other sectors.
In 2008, when global markets crumbled and certainty became a luxury, these young Nigerians–Nonso Okpala, Adeniyi Adenubi, Mobolaji Adewumi, Gbenga Omolokun, Azubike Emodi, and others whose names are etched into this foundation–did not retreat into safe, solitary paths. They leaned in, together. They saw a financial system that had grown sclerotic, and they imagined a different kind of house: one built not on a single towering ego, but on a shared axis of trust. And from the start, they broke the first rule of Nigerian business: they refused to go it alone.
The question that haunted their early years was not about capital or strategy, but about survival albeit of a different order. How does a company with so many captains not only stay afloat, but sail further than any solo founder could dream? Their shared leadership became their superpower and they didn’t just build a firm, they built a living argument against the cult of the individual.
The Challengers is not a business manual. It is a mirror held up to a generation, asking uncomfortable questions with the answers written in the resilience of VFD Group today. It is a testament that when the floor falls away, the only thing that holds is the grip of a partner beside you.
Imasuen trained and practised as a physician before moving into publishing, managing Kachifo Limited prior to co-founding Narrative Landscape Press with Ojiogwu in 2016. His earlier novels, Fine Boys and To Saint Patrick, were published under Farafina. The Challengers is his first full-length work of narrative non-fiction, and traces the founding of VFD Group from a partnership among university contemporaries, including co-founders identified during the event as Nonso and Azubike Emenike, through the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent growth into a diversified financial services group.