The Zabadne family
Three generations of the same business, from a Lagos distributorship in 1952 to the company that carries the name today. Every entry below names its source.
First generation
Walid Zabadne arrived in Lagos in 1952, eight years before Nigerian independence, and went into the distribution trade.
He built a distributorship: importing, representing, and eventually manufacturing consumer goods — radios, record players, refrigerators, and later the products of his own factory. His work in the trade took him repeatedly to the United States and to Tokyo between 1967 and 1979.
He became a naturalised Nigerian, and ran the business for the next three decades.
Timeline
Each entry below is tied to the document it came from. Where a date rests on family recollection rather than a dated record, we say so.
1952Lagos
Walid Zabadne arrives in Lagos and goes into the distribution trade, importing and representing foreign manufacturers in a market that was about to grow quickly. Nigeria would gain independence eight years later. Everything the family owns today traces back to this business.
Family records
1967to 1979
For twelve years Walid Zabadne works the international market in person — Lagos to the United States, Lagos to Tokyo — negotiating directly with manufacturers for the right to represent them in Nigeria. These are the years that turn a Lagos trading house into the Nigerian agent for some of the largest names in American and Japanese manufacturing, won one agreement at a time in the manufacturers’ own boardrooms.
Family records
1968Manufacturing
The business stops importing finished goods and starts making them. Working closely with its American and Japanese principals, the family sets up assembly in Nigeria, building locally what it had been shipping in. It is the beginning of the factory operation that would define the next two decades.
Family records
1970sand 1980s
Zabadne & Co Ltd runs as both manufacturer and distributor, holding the Nigerian representation for Whirlpool and Maytag of the United States and Akai and Pioneer of Japan — home appliances and audio equipment, assembled in the family’s own factories in Nigeria rather than shipped in finished. At its height the operation employs more than eight hundred people. A contemporary citation refers, almost in passing, to “his total commitment to the distributorship business and the management of several companies”.
Family records; Akai signage visible on the Zabadne & Co Ltd premises in the archive photograph
1992Tourism
Nigeria opens its doors to tourism, and the family goes into it. Paradise Holidays builds the first marina in Lagos: Paradise Yacht Club, on the Lagos Lagoon. A waterfront club with restaurants and apartments built out over the water, and a fleet of more than forty boats and yachts rigged to run out past the harbour for deep-sea fishing. AJ Zabadne founds it with his brother Khalid, who takes it on as managing director and runs the operation. It trades for thirteen years and closes in 2005.
Family records
1997Second generation
Ahmad “AJ” Zabadne writes from the president’s desk of the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies. His report for that period records a new Consultative Assembly, convened to repair unity among members, and a record eighty-seven members paid up by 31 March. It also notes the Association’s exhibition stand at the 7th OAU/AEC All Africa Trade and Tourism Fair in Kaduna, his election to a sub-committee at the ICAO Africa–Indian Ocean joint meeting in Abuja, and meetings with the Ministers of Aviation, Commerce and Tourism.
“From the President’s Desk”, Nanta News, March–May 1997
2000sProperty
Capital built in manufacturing and distribution is redeployed into Lagos property — residential and commercial — held directly and managed by the family.
Family records
2012Dubai
The family establishes Zabadne Sterling DMCC in Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai. Walid Zabadne runs it as chief executive and owner, with his son Khalid as chief financial officer; AJ Zabadne was involved in forming the company. The company becomes the exclusive distributor of Lumineers, LumiBrite, Sapphire Plus and DenMat products across the Middle East, North Africa, the GCC and Kazakhstan. Sixty years after Walid Zabadne arrived in Lagos and went into the distribution trade, the family holds a distribution territory stretching from Morocco to Central Asia.
Zabadne Sterling DMCC company listings; family records
2013Dubai property
A year after the dental business opens, the family buys its first property in Dubai — and keeps buying. Offices, houses and apartments, acquired to hold. The same move as Lagos a decade earlier: profits from trading put into buildings, managed directly and held.
Family records
2013Colorado
AJ Zabadne founds Elite Sterling Security in the United States, supplying ballistic-resistant apparel and protective equipment to police forces, military customers, and private clients. It is the family’s first manufacturing-led business outside Nigeria, and draws directly on the factory experience of the first generation.
Walid Zabadne Jr. joins in the same year and works alongside his father through 2021 — the third generation’s first role in a family business.
Elite Sterling Security; family records
2026Damascus
Rock Vision International Investment L.L.C is entered on the commercial registry in Damascus on 20 January 2026, with AJ Zabadne as Director General, trading goods and services between the United States and Syria — the first line being clothing apparel. The family also holds buildings, land and homes in the country. The family’s origins are in Damascus; three generations on, it is trading back into the city it came from.
Syrian commercial registry certificate No. 22574, 20 January 2026; family records
TodayThird generation
The family’s interests now sit across three continents: property in Nigeria, Syria and Dubai, active project work in Syria, and operating businesses in the United States including Elite Sterling Security, which AJ Zabadne founded and leads. Rock Vision Investments — which he owns and heads — is the company that holds and grows them, with the third generation now running its day-to-day operations as chief operating officer.
Second generation
Owner and Chief Executive, Rock Vision Investments
Ahmad “AJ” Zabadne built businesses in travel and tourism, aviation services, dental distribution, and security — in Nigeria, the Gulf, and the United States.
His career spans close to thirty years of international business across the United States, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East: manufacturing, travel and tourism, airport security, telecommunications, diplomatic logistics travel, international airline management, executive protection vehicles, and the medical and dental field.
In 1997 he led the National Association of Nigeria Travel Agencies as its president, representing Nigerian agents at ICAO and federation meetings across Africa and negotiating directly with Nigeria Airways and the aviation ministry. In 2013 he founded Elite Sterling Security in the United States, supplying ballistic-resistant apparel and protective equipment to police forces, military customers, and private clients, and serves as its president and chief executive.
Second generation
Paradise Holidays · Zabadne Sterling
Walid Zabadne’s son. He ran the family’s tourism business in Lagos for thirteen years, then its dental distribution business in Dubai alongside his father.
When the family moved into tourism in 1992, Khalid Zabadne took Paradise Holidays as managing director, running the marina, the club, the restaurants, and the fleet.
It was a demanding operating business: boats, berths, kitchens, staff and paying members, every day, on the water. By his brother’s account, he ran it well.
When the family established Zabadne Sterling in Dubai in 2012 he went with it as chief financial officer, running the company alongside his father, who was its chief executive and owner. Two of the business’s principals, in the same room, in a market neither had worked in before.
The second generation
Both sons of Walid Zabadne. Both began in Nigeria, and both followed the business to Dubai.
Third generation
Chief Operating Officer, Rock Vision Investments
The third generation to carry the name into the business, and the one running it day to day.
As Chief Operating Officer he runs the company’s operations. His current focus is the trading business — the import and export of apparel between the United States and Syria — alongside the family’s property holdings in the United States, Dubai, and Syria.
He began in the family’s businesses at Elite Sterling Security in 2013, working alongside his father through 2021. His own background is in marketing: he founded Moonlight Marketing Solutions, which he continues to own and run. He brings more than a decade of commercial experience across retail, sales, marketing, property management, and real estate in the United States — including residential leasing with Greystar — and real estate in Dubai with Tanami Properties. He holds a business degree from the University of Colorado Denver.
Beyond the business
Alongside the companies, Walid Zabadne built a sport. A magazine feature devoted to him ran under that title, and the record behind it is a matter of public sport history in Nigeria.
01
He played for the country’s first national basketball team, and later served as a coach to it. He was also an international referee of high repute.
02
Vice chairman of the Nigeria Basketball Association at its inception in 1965, he took over as chairman from Michael Imana and led it for four years, handing over to Major General Joseph Garba in 1970.
In recognition of his contribution to the sport.
Nigeria’s national recognition for services to sport.
He funded the men’s championships outright from 1980 to 1985.
He played as Nigeria entered its first international tournament, in Dahomey.
The archive
Nine documents and photographs from the family’s private collection. Select any item to read it full size.
Continue
Zabadne & Sons is where the manufacturing, property, and partnership work sits today.
