Alhaji Aliko Dangote: What do you know about him?

May be you did not know that his initial capital was given to him by his father who was a treasurer in NEPU- Northern Elders People's Union.  In the 70s he got   about 750, 000 from his dad. At that time, N 5000 could buy a custom made Mercedes Benz.  He even has a jetty in Lagos area where he offloads his products.How much does he pay in taxes  for the jetty, only God knows. I still prefer him to our politicians who steal public funds to go and invest in Gambia.

all the -ve talk about him won't make any difference it will only make hime better he is the pride of many

All we need to do for this gigantic Nigerian number one hero is God guardians. May Allah be with him now and forever? Ameen

I had opportunity to visit his sugar refinery and nearly cried. The condition in which his workers work and how they are treated made me think of slavery. It really brought to mind the saying that "All that glitters is not gold". I never went back after that.

http://www.businessinafrica.net/leadership/988609.htm
LEADERSHIP
Dangote: Leading businessman and billionaire
Toun Aderele
Published: 21-JUN-07

Aliko Dangote isn’t your run-of-the-mill successful Nigerian businessman. He is always simply clad — no three-piece suits, no natty ties, no fawning aides, no airs, and no long speeches. Just a simple babariga, the long robe favoured by Nigerians for leisurely activities, topped by a small roundish cap.

But beneath that cap is one of the smartest business minds in Nigeria, a mind that has helped this modest and shy 50-year-old businessman to become Nigeria’s undisputed Number One industrialist and business king, sitting atop a multi-billion dollar business empire, from a humble beginning that does not include a college education.

Unlike many of Nigeria’s other big businessmen, Dangote is averse to publicity. Getting an interview with him (for example, BIA made efforts to get an interview with him for weeks to no avail), as journalists have discovered is seldom a successful affair.

“I have always been a bit shy with the press-I don’t want too much publicity,” he said during a rare interview with The Guardian, one of Nigeria’s leading dailies, in 2000.

So how big is Dangote? Given the dearth of statistics on the holdings of most of Nigeria’s super-businessmen, there is no proper estimate of Dangote’s wealth. But his businesses’ sheer presence, its reach and supply of the majority of basic items lend credence to the commonly held belief that he is Nigeria’s richest. Dangote, with his Dangote Group of companies, runs about 13 companies with interests in oil, banking, agriculture, manufacturing, textile and transportation spread across the West African Sub-region. Recently, he listed two of these companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange and analysts put his stakes in these two alone as being more than $4bn. His on-going projects are said to be about $10bn and this include the world’s biggest sugar refinery, a 300,000 barrels a day oil refinery and a 5,000 megawatt power project. Already, he owns one of Africa’s biggest cement plants, the $800mn Obajana cement plant (three others are nearing completion); co-owns a charter airline; several dollar-denominated luxury high rises; and the most viable of Nigerian textile and flour mills. And much more. Among Nigeria’s small tribe of billionaires, rivalry is intense and often very deep. Seldom is a member of the group willing to admit that the other is richer or smarter. But Femi Otedola, Nigeria’s undisputable leader in the diesel market (Otedola, a canny businessman whose company, Zenon, though less than a decade old has pushed locals and multinationals aside to emerge the leader in this highly sub-sector, will also make good material for another story) and a billionaire wasted no time in admitting that Dangote is in a class of his own. “This is the richest man in Africa,” Otedola, a good friend of Dangote, told a BBC reporter earlier this year.

Although, he is modest to the point of being reticent, Dangote is a very shrewd and capable businessman. His rivals, such as the big businesses he ran out of the rice and sugar markets, accuse him of underhand and ruthless tactics. But Dangote likes saying that his tactics-such as the time, he imported a huge consignment of rice to crash high prices at the behest of government- are normal. One other thing that has helped Dangote is his political correctness. Although he is Obasanjo’s good friend, he has equally good rapport with opposition politicians and likes reiterating that he is a businessman and not a politician. He has however said that he has no interest in politics.

“I am a businessman, pure and simple,” he once said to another interview, “Our intention is to do business, and help the communities where we do business. My father was actually a member of the Federal House here; he was a politician and a business man. You know at that time you could combine being a business man and also a politician. And really my father was quite big in politics but that doesn’t mean that I have any ambition. I have been living here in Lagos (or about 20 years but people hardly know me.”

His unlikely run to the top of the Nigerian business sector started at the age of 20 in 1977 when he got a loan of N500,000 from his maternal grandfather, the patriarch of a very successful trading family, the Dantatas. That loan was what he parlayed into enormous wealth. His father, a notable but less-business inclined politician, left him two buildings. “I did not really inherit anything apart from, maybe, two buildings. I had three (Benz) 911 (10 tonner trucks) which my grandfather bought for me and they were working and he was keeping the money for me at that time. So by the time I came out, I had about N127,000 or so. And then my grandfather also gave me a letter to collect N500 000 as loan to be paid back in two years but there was no interest,” he told The Guardian.

Before then he had worked for his uncle. In fact, in his word, he ‘squatted’ in the latter’s office when he started with two staff: a manager and a secretary. “I started with the business of cement, which was giving us a lot of money because at that time Nigeria was making so much money and we were doing a lot of constructions. On a vehicle which I normally get from my uncle, I was making about Nl,350 to Nl,4000 and everyday I had an allocation of about 3-4 trucks including Saturdays and Sundays.

“Later I realised that I was making a lot of money though then I didn’t have a lot of ideas of what to do. It was only cement business that I knew and I stuck to it up till 1980 when I started knowing Lagos, becoming a Lagosian, understanding where to go and finding people to buy import licences from. Within three months I paid my grandfather back because I had no further need of his money,” he said. Dangote would always credit his move to Lagos in the 1980s as one of his biggest breakthroughs. Kano, his family operating base and business headquarters though one of West Africa’s biggest trading hubs, lacks Lagos’ many opportunities. He was afraid that his family wouldn’t want him to come to Lagos. They felt Lagos’ fast-paced life could corrupt him. “In fact, when I told my grandfather that I will like to be given the opportunity to come to Lagos, I just tried him because I thought the answer was going to be no but he allowed me to go,” he said. And again he felt he should leave the family business and strike out on his own. “Working with family, you hardly succeed because you have other children. You know, it is difficult when you come from a large family,” he said.

Dangote’s greatest fear when he started business was that of failure. “I had that fear of being totally on my own because if there is a failure it will show immediately but if you are with somebody and there’s a little failure, you’d still have a cover up because they’ll be looking at that bigger signboards,” he said. Fortunately for him, shortly after his arrival in Lagos and after he had made good money in the cement business, the military came and clamped all the leading businessmen into jail after accusing them of working with corrupt politicians. It was an opportunity of a lifetime for Dngote to take over the market left by this huge vacuum. He seized it with both hands. He cornered the sugar market and also made massive inroads into the importation of rice.

But he has also made mistakes. His biggest was his initial foray into banking, where a bank that he invested in heavily went bankrupt. But before it did, he had pulled out and cut his losses saying that he felt he should only operate a business that he understood. He said one of the reasons for the fast growth of his businesses is its prudence and wise investment decisions, the biggest of which is decision to always plough his profits back into Nigeria. “The difference between our company and others is that we always invest. We don’t go on buying this one, or that one, spending money the normal (way) Nigerians kill business. We always try to re-invest whatever we make in the business not to take the money and keep it in an offshore account. (It is) not that we don’t have money abroad. We have but not the majority of our money. We try as much as possible to invest our money here,” he said.

But his biggest break was his shift from the importation business to manufacturing. That shift was inspired during a trip to Brazil in the late eighties. “The first company I visited was a company called Arisco, a company that produces 503 different items. I was impressed when I went to one of their factories. They had over 4,000 workers. Even though in Nigeria at that time we were not in manufacturing, the only manufacturing company we had at that time was textiles.

“Going to Brazil I thought that we were at the same level with Brazil because I used to hear of Brazil as a debtor nation owing so much money. But when I went there, I saw massive industrialisation, it was unbelievable. I started thinking that how come they have these things in Brazil and we don’t have it in Nigeria. So with that now, when I came back I said okay, fine, I want to venture into industry,” he said.

But he said he realised that the safest way of venturing into industry was to avoid a situation where both manufacturing and the marketing side of business will compete for his attention at the same time.

“So, the easiest for me to do is to now pick the same item that I am now trading in and do a backward integration, which will be much easier and faster for me. So we started with sugar refinery. Then when we met again we said what about spaghetti we are doing (importing) about 360 containers every year, we should go and do spaghetti. So, we jumped into spaghetti. Polypropylene bagging, because we didn’t want somebody to hold us to ransom in terms of bagging. “Believe me, each and everyone item that we’ve gone into has been a blessing because there’s not a single one that we are not making good money out of today. I realise that it is much better than trading, even though industries too have their own headaches (in terms of margin). If you have good margin like we have, you won’t have any problems,’ he said. -Business in Africa Online



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My Man to the core ,the more i hear and read about the MAn the more i like him, I wish I meet him one day .
More power to his good elbow

he believes in monopoly

The truth is that Aliko Dangote is an astute and ground breaker business mogul
that use self growth to deliver jobs to millions of people (not Nigerians alone are in his pay role)
Also Dangote is a sound program timer i.e he understood his timing of business which is one of the key to successful business.
As much as i respect the Kano breed billionaire never should anyone compare him with
czar Richard Branson.

It's okay to critisize the man anywhere there are shortcomings but i will not support whole sale condemnation.
The Rockefeller's, America's first billionaire and Andrew Carnigie the US steel mogul where also critisized for unwholesome business practices and in recent times the well known Bill Gates company has been severally investigated and accused of violating anti-trust laws. But today, the acheivements of these people are all there for all to see, i don't forsee Dangote's legacy being any different from the earlier mentioned men.
Some say afterall he got a good loan from his uncle to start with, but think hard and you will recall many Nigerians who had access to that kind of money but have frittered it away buying expensive toys, cars, throwing huge parties, expensive jewelries, and generally having no idea how to properly utilise the cash.
Many nigerians given the opportunities available to Dangote will flop badly and acheive very little.

In an interview, he gave a leading newspaper, he said he will never buy imported fruit drinks like Don simon and 5 alive(then imported) for his party when Chivita and Fumman are available on the shelf ( long before he started Dansa).  Tell me how many rich Nigerians have that kind of thinking, many will boast how everything around them is imported up to the drinking water on their table.

Am not surprised at all at the enviable heights he has attained, it's not an easy feat, if it is try it and beat him at the game. He has the thinking many of us lack to succed in big business. With the ongoing reforms majority still think in terms of moving from one high paying job to another while the smart minority are staking claims, buying properties, investing and sacrificing and delaying gratification. When they seem to suddenly emerge on the scene we start screaming obceneties. Lets work on our thinking

cheers @ all

I know him to be a very successful Nigerian businessman.
I'm up-coming!

you had 127,000 naira, saved up for you, another 500,000 was given to you as loan without any interest , your father was in the national assembly where he knows who is who in the country, your grandfather at that time was one of the richest man in the country, where before you bring in your goods, you had to have import license, given by the corrupt government,  to their cronies, at a time when the dollar was 83 kobo. now if you ask me, i am much more innovative than such a person, and don,t you compare such a person with the numerous business men who started from scratch with nothing, and knew nobody. thank you.