Shareholders of BUA Foods Plc have overwhelmingly re-elected billionaire industrialist Abdul Samad Rabiu, CON, as Chairman of the company, while also approving the largest dividend payout in the company’s history: a final dividend of N28.00 per ordinary share for the 2025 financial year.
The resolutions were passed at the company’s 5th Annual General Meeting (AGM), held on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja, bringing together directors, institutional investors, and retail shareholders to review a year that company officials described as BUA Foods’ strongest yet.
The approved N28.00 per share payout represents a striking 115% increase from the N13 per share paid for 2024 and translates to a total distribution of roughly $363 million, or N504 billion, a figure that ranks among the most substantial dividend payouts in Nigerian corporate history.
The scale of the reward to shareholders reflects the strength of the numbers behind it: BUA Foods reported revenue of N1.77 trillion for 2025, about $1.27 billion, up 16% from the previous year, while profit after tax nearly doubled year-on-year.
Given Chairman Rabiu’s dominant shareholding position, the payout carries personal significance as well. With an approximate 90 percent stake in the company, Rabiu stands to receive a gross dividend running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, underscoring how concentrated ownership in Nigeria’s leading food manufacturer has translated record profits into substantial personal wealth for its founder.
Beyond the dividend, shareholders formally received and considered the company’s Audited Financial Statements, Directors’ Report, Auditors’ Report, and Audit Committee Report for the year ended December 31, 2025, the customary housekeeping that precedes substantive AGM resolutions.
The re-election of Rabiu, alongside Mrs. Oluyemisi Lowo-Adesola, both of whom retired by rotation in line with standard corporate governance practice, was approved without apparent dissent.
The formal resolution read: “That the re-election of the following directors, Abdul Samad Rabiu and Oluyemisi Lowo-Adesola, retiring by rotation, be and is hereby approved.”
Shareholders also handed the Board authority to fix the remuneration of the company’s external auditors for the financial year ending December 31, 2026, and approved remuneration packages for the company’s managers and non-executive directors for the 2026 financial year.
In a further governance step, three shareholder representatives, Musa Bichi, Eric Akinduro Akinnifesi, and Nwokocha Innocent Peters, were elected to the Statutory Audit Committee, joining board representatives Mrs. Oluyemisi Lowo-Adesola and Mr. Chimaobi Madukwe on the oversight body.
Addressing shareholders at the meeting, Rabiu used the occasion not merely to tout the year’s numbers but to lay out an ambitious expansion agenda.
He framed BUA Foods’ growth trajectory as an investment in Nigeria’s broader industrial future rather than a simple pursuit of corporate size, telling attendees the company’s ongoing capacity projects would position it as the country’s largest food manufacturer once completed.
“By next year, when our current projects are completed, BUA will become the largest player in our sector in Nigeria. We are not pursuing growth simply for the sake of becoming bigger. We are pursuing growth because scale matters in an industry like ours,” Rabiu told shareholders, according to a report from Megastar Magazine.
He was careful, however, to tie the company’s expansion to fundamentals rather than ambition alone, arguing that the same disciplined principles that helped BUA Foods compete when it was a smaller player in the industry would guide it as it scales toward market leadership, namely efficiency, transparency, and sound management.
Following the AGM, the composition of the BUA Foods Board remains as follows:
- Chairman: Abdul Samad Rabiu, CON
- Managing Director/CEO: Ayodele M. Abioye
- Non-Executive Directors: Kabiru Rabiu, Chimaobi Madukwe, Finn Arnoldsen, and Imran Rashid
- Independent Non-Executive Director: Oluyemisi Lowo-Adesola
- Company Secretary: Oluseye Alayande
The resolutions were confirmed in a statement signed by Company Secretary Oluseye Alayande and released on July 17, 2026.
The outcome of the AGM adds to a string of positive signals for BUA Foods this year.
Industry observers and shareholder advocacy figures have separately lauded Rabiu’s stewardship of the company, pointing to both the scale of shareholder returns and broader corporate social gestures, including a reported gesture of goodwill toward long-serving employees as evidence of a governance approach that balances profitability with stakeholder value.
With the dividend approved, the leadership mandate renewed, and an expansion drive already underway, BUA Foods enters the second half of 2026 with shareholder backing firmly behind its stated ambition: to become Nigeria’s largest food manufacturer within the year.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
BUA Foods’ 5th AGM delivered a clear vote of confidence in Abdul Samad Rabiu’s leadership, with shareholders re-electing him as Chairman and approving a record N28.00 per share dividend, a 115% jump from 2024, totaling N504 billion.
This payout, backed by nearly doubled profits and 16% revenue growth, signals not just a strong financial year but Rabiu’s stated ambition to make BUA Foods Nigeria’s largest food manufacturer by 2027 a goal now backed by both boardroom continuity and shareholder trust.
