How Dangote Seized His Uncle’s Tin Can Island Port

Apart from the famous surname, the name Usman Dantata may mean nothing to the average Nigerian. But Alhaji Usman, 57, is the biggest benefactor of the maverick self-styled billionaire businessman Aliko Dangote. In fact, he made Aliko Dangote what he is today. Ironically, Alhaji Usman is today a cripple, downcast and barely ekes out a living in Kano, having been destroyed by the same man he helped many years ago.

LEADERSHIP Sunday authoratively learnt that Usman Dantata, who is the sixth son of Alhaji Sanusi Dantata, Aliko Dangote’s grand father (father of his mother Mariya Dantata), became fond of Aliko. This was because Aliko is the eldest grandson of Sanusi and also a favourite of the family. He had grown up with Sanusi since he was two.

Aliko got married on May 27, 1977. In December of that same year, Alhaji Sanusi took him to Lagos and handed him to Usman for guidance and for the purpose of apprenticeship. Usman had already distinguished himself in commerce.

He agreed to take Aliko and they both stayed in a house at No. 29A Probyne Street (currently owned by Alhaji Umaru Muttalab, the chairman of First Bank).

Sanusi continued to influence the career of the then young Aliko by urging Alhaji Usman to be favourably disposed toward his ward, especially by according him preferential treatment in the cement trade he (Usman) was engaged in.

Usman willingly immersed Aliko in the cement business and was giving him special concession in the trade. That was how Aliko made his first break. He was earning an average of N10,000 each day at a time a Mercedez Benz 200 car cost N7,000.

When Mehta, the general manager of the cement company, did not think Dangote should be accorded special favours, Alhaji Sanusi had to travel to Lagos to give him a dressing down. Mehta, humiliated and scared for his job, had to beg on his knees. He was made to sign an undertaking that he would never "misbehave" again. He was allowed to keep his job but warned never to tamper with Dangote’s rise again in the business. Aliko was to dump the cement business within a few months . He went on to set up his own business in New York in 1978. It was called ALCO International.

Time passed and, in August 1985, Alhaji Usman Dantata was attacked by suspected assassins. He survived the near-fatal attempt, but has since become a cripple with his whole body, from the neck, paralysed.

Fortunately for Usman, he had a thriving port business close to the government-owned Tin Can Island Port. There was also a vegetable oil-refining plant within the complex. And, in spite of his ill health, he was making an average of N50 million per month from the port. The money kept him and his family going and also defrayed his medical expenses.

But in a classical twist of fate, about 10 months ago, Aliko Dangote suddenly beamed his searchlight on Usman’s port business and promptly made plans to add it to his chain of monopolies.

Aliko contacted the then President Olusegun Obasanjo and said: "There is a man who owns a port in Tin Can Island who has not been paying ground rent."At the time, payment of ground rent was a misnomer in that area.

To be fair to Obasanjo (as strange as this may sound), he had no idea of who Dangote was referring to. But characteristically Obasanjo, without checking for details, promptly barked at his aides to get him the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority whom Dangote had strategically brought to Abuja for the same purpose. Dangote made his GSM readily available to Obasanjo to call the MD.

Obasanjo then vehemently gave orders that the port should be confiscated. It was a bemused Usman who later got two letters on the same day asking him to pay up a ridiculous and outrageous ground rent. The other letter asked him to vacate the premises and hand it over to Dangote, who automatically became the owner of the port and the lucrative vegetable oil business.

Obasanjo’s order, of course, runs counter to due process and the spirit of the Land Use Decree of 1978.

Under Nigerian law, land could only be seized in the overriding public interest. In the case of Usman, a travesty of justice occurred when the cripple’s asset was taken and given to Dangote.

Prominent Northerners are now working on Yar’Adua to revoke the hostile takeover of the property and return it to the rightful owner, Alhaji Usman, who is also an uncle of Aliko Dangote.

But then, this is not the first time Dangote has dealt a fatal blow on the business of a family member or an associate. He recently crippled one of his brothers, Sani Dangote, who was in the cement industry. Sani’s cement company, just like that of Chief Ibeto, was ruined overnight.

Today, Sani is a mere director in Aliko’s company’s; he receives a monthly salary from his big brother.

The problem with many Nigerians is either their pretencious nature or their clannish siege mentality.

Another hungry slowpoke on the prowl

denex:

@Xris74

don't you think that you are mad? You have called others (including many Nigerians) stupid, warped and imbecillic. Leaving only yourself as the sole-surviving mentally sound individual on this thread.

Could it be that it is not everybody else that is mad but you? Consider it because you have just expressed the first symptom. It is not necessary that you strip naked in a market-place before you can confirm you're far gone.

Paw-Paw:

@Xris74Hungry ke? I fit feed your entire family o boy. Hahaha

Paw-Paw:

@Xris74Hungry ke? I fit feed your entire family o boy. Hahaha

denex:

@Xris74

don't you think that you are mad? You have called others (including many Nigerians) stupid, warped and imbecillic. Leaving only yourself as the sole-surviving mentally sound individual on this thread.

Could it be that it is not everybody else that is mad but you? Consider it because you have just expressed the first symptom. It is not necessary that you strip naked in a market-place before you can confirm you're far gone.

Paw-Paw:

@Xris74Hungry ke? I fit feed your entire family o boy. Hahaha