THE FRAUDULENT NIGERIAN FORBES BILLIONAIRES.
FADAKA LOUIS by FADAKA LOUIS
The fraudulent Nigerian Forbes billionaires are Alhaji Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola, who also happen to be the largest economic saboteurs of the Nigerian economy.

It is an irony that these two billionaires who always struggle to be on the Forbes list of richest billionaires year after year, who strive to be the most celebrated Nigerian businessmen, are the most fraudulent, vicious and bigget economic saboteurs of the Nigerian economy.

President Buhari’s investigative searchlight should be directed at these two businessmen, the duo that are bleeding Nigeria’s economy dry.




The Genesis

Aliko Dangote used to be known as Aliko Gote, or “Aliko powder”. His mother was a daughter of the famously wealthy Kano merchant Dantata. His father was Alhaji Gote. He seems to have started off as a dealer in powder before suddenly moving to America. As a young dealer, he had sports cars, lived in an expensive house and lots of cash. His import-export business seems to have revolved between Brazil and the United States.
However, his ostentatious lifestyle soon caught the eyes of the American authorities — he received information that there was an interception of his consignment — so he blamed it on his junior brother Sani Gote and fled back to Nigeria.



Femi Otedola at this time was a notorious loan shark and gambler based in Surulere Lagos who started life in business by lending money at interest rates of 20–30 percent per month, knowing that debtors could never repay him. He would then confiscate and sell their collaterals at a premium.

Femi’s classmates from secondary school had all entered university, were working or had started some form of legitimate business, but Femi chose the ways of Shylock, extorting astronomous interest rates from victims and quickly moving on to sell their collaterals at the slightest delay, causing misery and financial damage to so many victims.




Their first billions

Aliko Gote, now living in Nigeria and running away from the laws of America, ran back to Nigeria and changed his name to Alhaji Aliko Dangote, adding the title Alhaji and adding Dan to Gote like his cousins, the Dantatas.

Femi Otedola, who seemed to have joined the Ogboni cult, now started wearing only white clothes and ran back to his father for cover, as many whose lives were ruined from his loan shark business were now after him.



In 1999, the Nigerian military handed over power to former General Olusegun Obasanjo, who had just emerged from prison. This moment became the duo’s golden moment. They became so close to Obasanjo that they became like his sons. A pact was reached between the three gladiators, to control the commodity business of Nigeria, and Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola became Obasanjo’s fronts for this purpose. Aliko Dangote was to control cement, sugar, salt and rice, while Femi Otedola was to control the importation of refined petroleum products.



To make this arrangement into a cash machine for the three, the four Nigerian refineries that had a capacity of 445,000 barrels a day were totally neglected and left to rot. The power sector was purposely neglected so that 180 Nigerians would have to keep buying petrol and diesel to power their generators.





Enter the Nigerian Customs and Waivers

The duo of Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola now put the top of the customs in their pockets. Moreover, presidential orders from above now stated that that the pair’s vessels should receive preferential treatment in docking and discharging goods while competitors’ vessels were to be delayed until any profits of the latter group were wiped out.

The next important instrument they used was pioneer tax status, whereby the duo were given tax-free status for so many years. During the same period, competitors’ applications were flatly rejected. The third advantage they got was the privatisation of state assets, which were sold to them at approximately 10 cents to the dollar. Aliko Dangote acquired Benue State Cement, Terminals, Nigerian Textiles, Nigerian Salt Company, a state-owned sugar company, Oshogbo Steel Mill and the NEPA fiber-optic transmission network. Femi Otedola acquired African Petroleum.



The duo then claimed to turn around these assets, but they did nothing other than call in auditors to ascertain the real value of these assets before calling Forbes to debut as the first Nigerian billionaires to grace the magazine’s rich list.



However, Aliko Dangote was one step ahead and moved to become the African king of waivers and duties. Nobody in African history has been given more waivers than Aliko Dangote and the single act of not paying custom duties made him not only the richest Nigerian but the riches African. Some conservative estimates put the custom import duties that were waived for Aliko Dangote at between $12–15 billion since 1999. There are cries of millions of Nigerians that Aliko Dangote should be made to return this money, as it is one of the biggest cases of corporate fraud in Nigeria and Africa.





President Buhari will need to open a special investigative panel to scrutinize Aliko Dangote’s businesses, as Nigeria can recover between $12 and $15 billion of waivers and unpaid taxes from this man alone.



One of President Obasanjo’s last acts of office of was to sell Nigeria’s largest refinery to the duo of Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola for $761 million, approximately 10% of its real value. One of President Yar’Adua’s first acts of office was to cancel this fraudulent deal.



Upon learning the facts of the case, President Yar’Adua was reportedly filled with rage. Not only were the duo the biggest economic saboteurs in Nigeria, but they were paying PR consultants to build their image as intelligent and progressive businessmen in the Western media. Yar’Adua used the economic intelligence reports at hand to reverse many illegalities. He found out that Dangote had a monopoly in cement, sugar and pasta, claiming to be producing all these commodities locally, when, in reality, he was importing everything, fraudulently collecting import duty waivers and simply re-bagging the goods. At this point, President Yar’Adua lost any respect he had for Dangote.



The economic intelligence reports also showed how Femi Otedola and Aliko Dangote crushed their competitors by illegally using government agents to shut down the latter’s operations. They pressured banks to call in their competitors’ loans, used customs to delay the competitors’ consignments, underpay for state assets, avoided paying duties and taxes through their “pioneer” tax status, and even created their own “anti-corruption unit” to lock up business foes and friends who had fallen out of their favour.



The wickidness of this duo knew no limits and every real or perceived competitor was to be liquidated, their businesses shut down, thousands of workers were to lose their jobs and all the while Dangote and Otedola avoided paying billions of dollars worth of taxes and import duties.





The quarrel between the duo

President Obasanjo asked the duo to help raise money for elections and a deal was struck. The government’s oil earmarked for Nigerian industry was delivered to the oligarchs at extremely cheap rates and then sold at the prevailing world market price. Three million metric tons of fuel was sold to the duo at $59 and sold at $350. The duo thus made a profit of $299/mt or $873,000,000. Needless to say, Nigerian industry never received the cheap fuel that the government promised them and the state was robbed of $873 million.



Aliko Dangote did not have a house in Abuja and was found sleeping in Femi Otedola’s residence. His passion was sleeping with other people’s wives but, unknown to him, Femi’s passion was to secretly videotape others and use these tapes at the right time to blackmail his victims.



However, Aliko did not trust Femi and requested that their illegal profit of $873 million be paid to his younger brother, Sayyu Dantata’s, account. The money was paid into MRS account of BNP Paribas.



Femi now wanted some gas stations of his own and told Aliko Dangote that Chevron was planning to sell its gas stations in West Africa, under the Texaco banner, and that he would bid $200 million for the assets.



Aliko then instructed his younger brother to overbid for the gas stations, using up the entire $873million plus taking out a loan to make it look as if he had borrowed the money, but secretly splitting the proceeds of the sale with the sellers in an illegal kickbacks scheme.



Femi Otedola was outfoxed by Aliko Dangote and Femi went mad. The quarrel became one of the nastiest in Nigeria. Rarely had so much dirty linen been washed in public, forcing well-meaning Nigerians to intervene between the two as marriages were breaking up due to the revelations and circulations of video tapes of whose wives they were sleeping with.





In the Wilderness

These were the facts observed by President Yar’Adua, which led him to immediately cancel many of the illegalities, such as the purchase of the refinery, reopening competitors’ factories, issuing import licenses to others and ordering an investigation into how many billions the duo owed in unpaid taxes and duties.



In addition to this, the duo was found to be Nigeria’s biggest debtors, owing banks billiosn of dollars. As Aliko Dangote did not want to pay the banks back, he pushed the business on his brother Sani Dangote, who took the heat for defaults (e.g. Dansa Juice).



Femi Otedola became the biggest defaulter of loans in Nigeria and his loans were passed on to AMCON as he could not repay back his loans. It was no longer business as usual for the former loan shark.



Femi rebranded his company from ZENON to FORTE OIL and went public, whilst Aliko Dangote also listed and went public. PR experts were hired to rewrite their stories and make them look good. In the stories, they were made to look like Western billionaires but, in reality, they were sinking in debt as they no longer had the ear of the President. Worse, the president was preparing to reveal to Nigerians that the two were the countries’ biggest economic enemies.



Continue reading on:

https://www.gbetutv.com/the-fraudulent-nigerian-forbes-billionaires/


Lalasticlala

Wetin di pain this one?

Personal investigations matters alot and might be truer. But in this our dear nation Nigeria, where news are not properly investigated and controlled, I hardly believe any story.

Nevertheless, I know there are many skeletons hiding inside the cupboards in almost all homes in Nigeria and with time the stench will surely exposes them.

The truth might delay but will definitely prove itself effortlessly someday.