Meet the CFOs powering the 10 most valuable consumer goods companies on the NGX

Nigeria’s consumer goods manufacturers face a pricing dilemma.

Higher costs for inputs, packaging and distribution put pressure on margins, while inflation leaves households with less room to absorb price increases. Exchange-rate volatility adds another layer of uncertainty for manufacturers that rely on imported materials.

The first nine months of 2026 brought signs of progress. Some manufacturers widened their margins as production costs fell relative to sales, while others returned to profit even as revenue declined. Weaker sales volumes at some businesses showed that the gains in profitability came amid continued pressure on consumer spending.

Finance executives help steer those decisions, from how much inventory to hold and how to fund expansion to when to restructure a balance sheet.

The 10 most valuable listed consumer goods companies were worth a combined N23.22 trillion at the close of trading on November 13, 2026. This is a continuation of Nairametrics’s feature profiling series of top executives on the NGX.

In November 2024, Oludare Ebenezer Elusakin left a restaurant operator with 195 stores in Nigeria and Kenya to become PZ Cussons’ chief financial officer for Africa. The move added Ghana to the markets he covered. As CFO and executive director, he oversees finance teams in all three countries and is responsible for financial planning, reporting, tax, risk management and investor relations.

Elusakin had spent the previous year and a half as group CFO of Eat’N’Go, the Juven Africa-backed operator of Domino’s Pizza, Cold Stone Creamery and Pinkberry franchises. There, he worked with banks, investors and bondholders to secure long-term funding and support the company’s expansion.

His route to PZ Cussons also took him through health care and renewable energy. From 2020 to 2023, he led finance at Evercare Group in Nigeria, managing a 30-person team that handled billing, treasury, inventory and credit control. Before that, he built ZOLA Electric’s finance function as the company entered the Nigerian market. At Tropical General Investments Group, he served as the founding financial controller for two businesses that shared a finance team.

Elusakin earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, and completed a professional certificate in private equity at Imperial Business School in 2024. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.

PZ Cussons Nigeria Plc reported a 10% year-on-year increase in group revenue to N64.84 billion in its unaudited results filed with the Nigerian Exchange on September 30, 2026. The filing covers the first quarter of its 2027 financial year, which ended August 31, 2026. Despite the increase in sales, profit after tax fell 66% to N4.63 billion from N13.49 billion a year earlier. Operating profit declined 58% to N9.05 billion, while profit before tax fell to N9.09 billion from N21.54 billion.

Before taking on the acting chief financial officer role at NASCON Allied Industries in January 2026, Oghenero Okpokoro had spent much of his career working with the people who sell consumer goods. At Guinness Nigeria, he assessed promotional spending and helped set terms for distributors. At FrieslandCampina WAMCO, he led the team that forecast sales and assessed the financial case for new products and promotions.

Okpokoro joined FrieslandCampina WAMCO as head of commercial finance in April 2014 and spent just over five years there. In June 2019, he moved to Dangote Cement as head of financial controlling at its corporate headquarters. His responsibilities shifted from sales forecasts and pricing to the company’s books. He oversaw the monthly close, managed head office accounts and reconciliations, and monitored compliance with financial policies.

He earned an MBA from the University of Lagos, where he studied from 2002 to 2004. His profile also lists an associate qualification from the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, obtained in November 2024.

NASCON reported revenue of N116.9 billion for the nine months ended September 30, 2026. Gross profit rose 4% to N59.4 billion, while profit after tax increased 18% to N28.7 billion.

Modupe Femi-Okunbanjo joined Unilever Nigeria’s board on June 30, 2026, the day Ibrahim Sodipe stepped down as an executive director. She had been overseeing the company’s financial controls in Nigeria and leading its controls work across West Africa. Her responsibilities included regulatory compliance and enterprise risk management. She signed the company’s half-year and nine-month accounts as finance director.

By the time she joined the board, Femi-Okunbanjo had spent more than 15 years in finance across consumer goods and telecommunications. Before joining Unilever in 2018, she held roles at UAC of Nigeria, Helios Towers Nigeria and Makasa Sun Nigeria.

Femi-Okunbanjo earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Lagos State University and an MBA specialising in strategy from Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University. She is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Unilever Nigeria reported N184.01 billion in revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2026, up from N155.41 billion a year earlier. Operating profit rose to N38.54 billion from N30.46 billion, while profit after tax increased to N26.40 billion from N21.98 billion.

Before joining Guinness Nigeria, Mayank Kabra led the rollout of a new SAP system across Tolaram’s consumer goods businesses in five African markets. The project covered Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa and Eswatini. Kabra took office as Guinness Nigeria’s finance and strategy director on November 1, 2024, after Tolaram acquired control of the brewer.

By then, Kabra had spent more than 20 years in finance, working in India, Malaysia and Nigeria. He held roles at PwC, Mondelez and Kellogg, now Kellanova, and helped establish manufacturing businesses in West Africa. He earned a degree from the University of Pune and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria.

In the nine months ended September 30, 2026, Guinness Nigeria’s revenue rose 20% to N403.33 billion, while profit after tax climbed 53% to N40.69 billion. The brewer began the year with an accumulated deficit of N5.22 billion. By the end of September, it had N15.76 billion in retained earnings after declaring N19.71 billion in dividends.

Oscar Mbeche trained at PwC and Deloitte before moving into an assortment of businesses that included consumer goods, banking, video games and oil and gas. Dangote Sugar’s annual report lists Unilever, Diageo, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Take-Two Interactive among the companies where he worked.

By the time Dangote Sugar hired him, Mbeche had more than 30 years of experience. His work covered internal audit and risk management as well as fundraising, trade finance and corporate reporting. He holds an MBA from the University of Oxford. He joined Dangote Sugar Refinery on March 1, 2022. He had worked in banking, consumer goods, oil and gas, and video games.

Before joining Dangote Sugar, Mbeche was group CFO of Philia Group, with responsibilities spanning Geneva, Dubai and Singapore. Earlier in his career, he held posts overseeing finance, compliance, risk, internal audit and information technology for companies in Europe and Asia. He brought more than 30 years of experience to Dangote Sugar, including work in fundraising, trade finance and international taxation. A chartered accountant, he holds an MBA from the University of Oxford.

Dangote Sugar returned to profit in the first nine months of 2026 even as sales fell. Group revenue declined to N569.41 billion from N626.24 billion a year earlier, but profit before tax reached N78.17 billion, reversing a pretax loss of N8.72 billion. The group earned N74.25 billion after tax, compared with a loss of N10.59 billion in the same period of 2025.

Chinyere Ezeugwu started in audit at KPMG in 2008 and spent nearly five years there before joining Unilever as a financial reporting accountant. Over the next seven years, she moved from reporting into business analysis, then into the finances of making and distributing consumer goods. She became manufacturing finance manager in January 2017 and supply chain finance manager in April 2019.

Ezeugwu joined International Breweries in May 2020 as head of control and went on to lead financial planning and analytics. The brewer appointed her finance director effective March 27, 2025, after her predecessor, David Tomlinson, moved to another role in the group’s Africa division. She studied accounting at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, from 2002 to 2006 and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.

In the nine months ended September 30, 2026, the brewer’s revenue rose to N482.61 billion from N472.57 billion. Cost of sales fell even as revenue climbed, lifting gross profit to N195.94 billion from N160.92 billion. The accounts Ezeugwu signed also showed a N191.03 billion transfer from share premium that cleared the accumulated losses carried into the period.

Josué Mbassi became finance and control director of Nestlé Nigeria on February 1, 2026, after overseeing strategic business planning across 25 markets as regional corporate controller for Nestlé’s Central and West Africa operations. He succeeded Namit Mishra, who took a regional finance role covering East and Southern Africa.

The appointment marked Mbassi’s return to Lagos, where he managed decision support and control for Nestlé Nigeria from 2016 to 2020. He led five analysts and controllers, reviewed operating performance and assessed business risks for the finance director. He subsequently ran finance for Nestlé’s Tropical Cluster from Douala and its Coastal Cluster from Accra before moving into the regional controller role.

Mbassi joined Nestlé in Cameroon in 2006 and held positions in internal audit and treasury before taking a sales controller assignment in Abidjan in 2011. He holds a master’s degree in finance and accounting from the University of Douala.

Nestlé Nigeria reported N976.53 billion in revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2026, up 10% from a year earlier. Profit after tax rose 43% to N103.37 billion, lifting the company’s net margin to 10.6% from 8.2%.

Maria Anatolyevna Karaseva became finance director of Nigerian Breweries on September 1, 2025, after more than two years in the same role at Al Ahram Beverages, Heineken’s Egyptian subsidiary. She joined Heineken in 2023 and helped simplify the Egyptian brewer’s legal structure, introduce new business systems and revise how it calculated excise tax. www.nbplc.com

Karaseva spent 14 years at PepsiCo, where she held country and regional chief financial officer and controller roles across Central Europe, Central Asia, Ukraine and Russia. She helped develop investment plans, implement SAP and set up shared service centres. She started her career at Estée Lauder, working as a financial analyst and business manager from 2003 to 2007. She holds a master’s degree in Chinese economy from Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Nigerian Breweries reported N1.10 trillion in group revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2026, up 5.4% from a year earlier. Gross profit rose 15.1% to N477.90 billion, and profit after tax increased 33.4% to N114.10 billion.

Michael Ehimah took over as acting chief financial officer of BUA Foods on October 30, 2025, a day after Abdulrasheed Adebayo Olayiwola resigned. Ehimah had served as finance director and general manager for strategic finance, where he helped strengthen the company’s financial systems and automate finance processes. BUA Foods continued to identify him as acting CFO in its October 2026 earnings release.

Ehimah has more than 20 years of experience in accounting, statutory reporting, financial controls and strategic finance. His work has included capital market operations and the implementation of accounting systems. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Edo State University and a master’s degree from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria and the Nigerian Institute of Management.

BUA Foods reported N450.47 billion in profit after tax for the nine months ended September 30, 2026, up from N405.27 billion a year earlier. Turnover fell 19% to N1.15 trillion, while a steeper decline in cost of sales lifted gross margin to 48.3% from 36.6%.

Ganna Ovchynnikova is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Honeywell Flour Mills Plc, working alongside Managing Director Nassib Raffoul to lead the company’s finance team.

She stepped into the role ahead of the Q2 2027 reporting period (ended September 30, 2026) and co-signed the company’s half-year financial results for the Nigerian Exchange (NGX). During that stretch, Honeywell Flour Mills saw revenue climb 41.3% to N233.79 billion, while profit after tax jumped to N22.61 billion.

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