Moët & Chandon Nigeria has named fashion influencer Angel Obasi and menswear creator Akin Faminu as brand partners under a campaign called The Art of the Perfect Pairing, the house announced on May 18. No financial terms were disclosed.
The move comes as Nigeria’s champagne market is still working through one of its sharpest contractions in over a decade. Import volumes fell 53.2% to 302,141 bottles in 2023 from 644,452 in 2022, according to Comité Champagne, the French trade body that tracks export data. The naira’s collapse from N463/$ to roughly N1,606/$ through 2023 pushed import duty costs sharply higher, forcing many retailers to raise prices by 50% to 80%, according to Lagos-based champagne retailer Victor Ikem, speaking to BusinessDay. A 75cl bottle of Moët Impérial currently retails online at approximately NGN 96,300, according to Barrels.ng, a Moët Hennessy distribution partner in Lagos.
Nigeria’s effective import duty on alcohol sits between 75% and 95%, one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.S. Trade.gov’s Nigeria country guide. At that cost structure, premium imported champagne sits well above what most Nigerian consumers will spend on a single bottle, which pushes sales into a narrow tier of Lagos hospitality venues, corporate events, and affluent private buyers.
Both partners sit squarely inside that tier’s cultural orbit. Obasi, known as @styleconnaisseur, has roughly 424,000 Instagram followers, runs The Style Connaisseur accessory brand, and co-founded fashion label Anchiel. She has been featured on BBC World, CNN, and Canal+. Faminu is a practising medical doctor who has built a parallel career as Nigeria’s most prominent menswear influencer, representing designers from Orange Culture to Emmy Kasbit at Lagos and Paris Fashion Weeks. Business of Fashion has cited both as central figures in Nigeria’s influencer economy, alongside prior partnerships with Armani Beauty and Nivea.
The choice of two creatives with deep roots in Lagos’s style and professional class follows a visible pattern for LVMH-owned brands on the continent: use local cultural credibility rather than celebrity to reach high-net-worth consumers. Globally, Moët Hennessy’s champagne division saw volumes decline a further 9.2% in 2024 to 271.4 million bottles globally, per Comité Champagne, as inflation and weaker consumer spending compressed demand across most markets.
Whether the campaign generates commercial lift for the brand in Nigeria will depend on how retailers and on-trade venues respond, and on whether the naira holds enough stability in the near term to keep premium import costs from rising further. Headline inflation closed 2024 at 34.8%, per the National Bureau of Statistics, and while the naira has shown relative stability in 2025 compared to its 2023 collapse, import costs for dollar-denominated goods remain structurally elevated.
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