Two filings received by Companies House on August 3, 2026 carry news that was four years and eleven months old. They place Temitope Shonubi on the public record as a person with significant control of Energy Resource Limited with effect from September 1, 2021, and they record a change in the control particulars of Adedeji Odunsi, his fellow founder of the Sahara Group, from the same date. Between them, the two men hold the shares, the voting rights and the power to appoint and remove the board of a company that does no business at all and sits on £800,000 in cash, and for nearly five years the register that exists to name such men carried neither the declaration nor the change.
ReportsNG study of the filings shows the duty they arrived against. Under Britain’s persons with significant control regime, a company that learns of a registrable change must enter it in its own register within 14 days and deliver it to Companies House within a further 14. The forms carry the dates on their faces. Shonubi’s notice states “date that person became registrable: 01/09/2021”. Odunsi’s states “date of change: 01/09/2021”. Across both is stamped “received for filing: 03/08/2026”. The filings assign no reason for the interval, and none is recorded here. The dates stand side by side, and the gap between them is five years against a duty measured in days.
Energy Resource Limited, company number 03240229, was incorporated on August 15, 1996, three decades ago, before the Sahara Group’s public rise. The control the filings declare is complete in every limb the register recognises. Each man holds more than 25 per cent but not more than 50 per cent of the shares. Each holds the same band of voting rights. And each holds, in the register’s own words, “the right, directly or indirectly, to appoint or remove a majority of the board of directors of the company”. Shares and votes are arithmetic. The board right is command of the company itself, and it is held by both men at once.
The geography on the filings is stated plainly. Shonubi’s service address is Apartment 2805, Laguna Tower, Cluster A, Jumeirah Lakes Tower, Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and the filing records the United Arab Emirates as his country of usual residence. Odunsi’s filing records his country of usual residence, from the same September 2021 date, as the United Kingdom. One controller in the Gulf and one in Britain, each with a quarter to a half of the company and each with the power to hire and fire its board.
One entry in the paperwork does not agree with another, and it is recorded here exactly as filed. The August 2026 notice gives Shonubi’s nationality as Nigerian. The live register of the sister company renders him as British. Both renderings stand on the public record, and the filings do not reconcile them.
What the two men control is, by the company’s own sworn account, nothing in motion. The unaudited financial statements of Energy Resource Limited for the year ended August 31, 2025, signed by director Adedeji Odunsi on May 13, 2026, show cash at bank and in hand of £800,000, called-up share capital of £800,000 and net assets of £800,000. The 2024 column carries the identical figures, pound for pound. The accounts claim exemption from audit as a dormant company under section 480 of the Companies Act 2006, the members having declined to require an audit. The company does not trade. It does not invest. It holds £800,000, and until August 2026 its controller declarations had not caught up with its own control.
The sister company tells the opposite story in the same hand. Sahara Energy Fields Holding UK Ltd, company number 07243330, incorporated on May 5, 2010, once carried Tonye Patrick Cole, the third Sahara co-founder, as both director and person with significant control. His directorship terminated on September 1, 2018, and a notice received on May 16, 2019 records him ceasing as a person with significant control on that same date. What remains is the thinner vehicle. Its accounts for the year ended December 31, 2025, signed by director Adedeji Odunsi on September 17, 2026, show investments of £10,185 and cash of £10,000 against creditors of £68,314 falling due within one year, leaving net liabilities of £47,879 against share capital of £10,000, with the small companies audit exemption under section 477 claimed. The older company sits on cash that never moves. The younger one owes more than it owns.
The late declarations arrived in the season of a register being rebuilt. Britain’s Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act has made identity verification the price of standing on the register, administered through authorised corporate service providers. The register carries verification statements for both men by B.C. Business Centrum, Odunsi’s completed on October 20, 2025 and Shonubi’s on February 17, 2026. The filings do not state that the new regime produced the August declarations, and no such claim is made here. They arrived in its season, five years after the control they describe took effect.
Cole, Shonubi and Odunsi are publicly documented as the founders of the Sahara Group, the energy conglomerate founded in Lagos in 1996 that grew into one of Africa’s largest privately held power and oil businesses, and Energy Resource, incorporated the same year, is the oldest vehicle in this paper trail. The filings close with an address. On the Energy Resource control record, Odunsi’s correspondence address is given as 4 Imperial Crescent, Imperial Wharf, London SW6 2RG, which is also the registered office of Pimlico Realty LLP. The address is stated as filed, and there the documents end.
