Meet Wale Babalakin: the lawyer who built Nigeria's best airport with private money and then spent years fighting the government to keep it
Billionaires Africa | 20.04.2026 18:06
The day Wale Babalakin walked into the office of then-Aviation Minister Kema Chikwe, he had just returned from South Africa, where he had seen what a proper domestic airport terminal looked like. He was stunned, and then he was furious. Nigeria, one of Africa's largest economies with one of its biggest aviation markets, was planning to replace the old domestic terminal that had burnt down with what Babalakin describes simply as a shed.
