Featuring a foreword by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who will also attend as the event’s Special Guest of Honour.
LAGOS, NIGERIA — On 13 July 2026, Lagos will host the public presentation of The Challengers: The Disruptive Nigerian Entrepreneurs Creating a Billion-Naira Company. Written by acclaimed novelist and entrepreneur Dr Eghosa Imasuen and published by Narrative Landscape Press, the book tells the origin story of the founders of VFD Group,offering readers a front-row seat into how a small group of young Nigerians turned the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis into a multi-billion-naira financial institution.
Attendance is by RSVP due to limited venue capacity. Tickets and entry passes are available now at tix.africa/discover/chbook26.
In a business landscape traditionally dominated by the myth of the single, all-powerful tycoon, The Challengers offers a completely different model. The book follows the journey of Nonso Okpala, Adeniyi Adenubi, Mobolaji Adewumi, Gbenga Omolokun, Azubike Emodi, and their co-founders. Instead of building separate corporate silos, this cohort of late Generation X entrepreneurs decided to do something rare in Nigeria: build a company based on shared equity, equal partnerships, and collective ownership.
The book traces their early setbacks, failures and false starts–moving from a failed real estate venture to running local barbershops and a small restaurant–before those lessons ultimately coalesced into the foundation of VFD Group.
A landmark gathering in Lagos
The public presentation will bring together some of the country’s most prominent figures in statesmanship, business, and media:
- Special Guest of Honour: His Excellency, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria, who also wrote the book’s foreword.
- Live Moderated Dialogue: Renowned media entrepreneur Chude Jideonwo will lead a live, unscripted conversation with Dr Imasuen and the VFD Group founders to unpack the realities, disagreements, and trust required to scale a collaborative empire.
- Reviewer: The book will be formally reviewed by Channels Book Club host, Kunle Kasumu.
- Master of Ceremonies: The event will be hosted by Isabella Adediji.
“The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis created what is in retrospect a perfect environment for the rise of a new kind of Nigerian entrepreneur,” said Dr Imasuen. “The founders that I write about realised the truth in the saying, ‘You want to go far, go together.’ I look forward to presenting this story to Nigerians.”
The Challengers is Imasuen’s first major book in thirteen years since his acclaimed novel Fine Boys. It represents a significant entry into African narrative nonfiction. Based on three years of research and dozens of unfiltered interviews, the book reads like a corporate thriller, revealing the messy, hard-won realities of building a business together.
The Lagos premiere marks the beginning of a broader global conversation. With Narrative Landscape’s growing footprint in the East African market through its Nairobi branch, the publisher plans to expand the book tour internationally over the coming months, with planned stops across Africa and key diaspora locations.
Although it is an invitation-only event, Narrative Landscape Press has opened a few tickets for business leaders, SME founders, students of enterprise, and the general public to join the conversation. Because the venue has a strict capacity limit, interested readers are encouraged to reserve seats early. Tickets are available directly at tix.africa/discover/chbook26.
About Narrative Landscape Press
Narrative Landscape Press is an independent publishing house based in Lagos, Nigeria. Under its motto, Our Stories, Our Way, the firm is dedicated to providing African writers with an uncompromised platform to own their narratives and publish high-quality literature for both local and global audiences. Some of the writers under its umbrella include Oyinkan Braithwaite, Yejide Kilanko and New York Times bestselling author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
