Before now Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man is seen by many as the principality and power of many business ventures in Nigeria.
For any business he enters he conquers it as the dominant force and voice.
Either Sugar, Cement, Rice or any other.
He sets the pace for other smaller businesses to follow and has enough muscle to determine what obtains in the businesses as he is considered powerful enough to influence government policies.
But in the past few years, though his leadership in business and money bring the richest entrepreneur has not been challenged by any living African, yet he has become the man to beat.
Since he dabbled into Oil business with the establishment of Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals business, he has seen the established rentiers especially in the country’s very corrupt bureaucracy gang up to halt his dominance on fuel refinery and supply.
In answer to the supply chain, he imported 2000 CNG bases to reduce cost of delivery to fuel stations reducing the dominance of independent marketers and their trade union partners who profit from high pump prices.
It is not far-fetched this may be the reason for his resignation from his other businesses like Sugar, Salt and Cement to concentrate on fighting the entrenched cabal in the oil sector.
When former President Olusegun Obasanjo sold the Kaduna refinery to him in the twilight of his reign in 2006, other powers and principality in the business sector who has made Nigeria’s four refineries comatose in spite of billions of dollars spent on them by successive governments persuaded then President Umaru Yar Adua who listened and reversed Obasanjo’s decision along with Femi Otedola and others and refunded their money.
But not done Dangote came up with a mega $20 billion second biggest refinery in the world last year and the rest is history.
Today, Dangote’s survival instinct has seen him in head on collision with light fingered officials and principalities in NNPC NMDPRA and both PENGASSAN and NUPENG -the latter being unionists in oil Sector who have collaborated with the former to ensure failure of the four refineries.
Last week’s resignation of the duo of Ahmed Farouk and Gbenga Komolafe signaled the beginning of the end of the powerful cabal within the Oil sector who have ensured that refineries didn’t work but importation must continue in spite of Dangote’s refinery capacity to supply local needs.
What we have seen with the resignations is the opening of the lid of entrenched corruption which has seen Farouk spent a whopping $5 million to pay for four children school fees in Switzerland.
Now with Dangote’s petition to ICPC of the alleged light-finger of Farouk and co, the admission of the latter is a clear indication that Dangote has succeeded and indeed surpassed established activists in Whistle blowing.
Dangote’s whistle has not only blown off the hairs of the silken demons in the government institutionalised bureaucracy in the oil sector but has revealed why NUPENG and PENGASSAN has been powerful over the years in ensuring their disruption of fuel supply to satisfy their greed and pretending to fight for Nigerians.
If Dangote eventually appears before the ICPC to prove his allegation of institutionalized corruption in NMDPRA, then we might just have been treated to a tip of the iceberg of the institutionalized rot which the two ‘notorious’ unions have perpetrated in ensuring that the four refineries does not work and subsequent continuation of fuel importation to the injury to our Forex earnings, depletion of Foreign exchange reserve which has climbed to historic $47bn and the growing wings of the two union which almost ensured that Dangote’s refinery kick the dust.
But for the intervention of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, Dangote’s refinery would today have continued to import crude to refine and the latest reduction of gantry price to N699 would have been impossible.
Beside keeping his business running, which is normal for any business entrepreneur, it is now obvious that Dangote by his new garb of Whistle-blower might be out to prove that at age 70, he is determined to ensure a sustainable economy not a monopolist’s garb for which PENGASSAN and NUPENG -two anti-people unions dubbed him.
If he has the courage and will power to continue the onslaught on NNPC cabal, both inside and outside, the country and indeed Tinubu’s government may eventually see reason why it must sell all the four refineries as scrap and ensure that other private sector driven refineries take-off.
Since Dangote has won the battle of unionization which NUPENG and PENGASSAN fought in vain, other upcoming private refineries would have been empowered to keep the cancerous unions off from their refinery. The two workers unions, whose leaders “swims” in filthy lucre, would at the end of the day have been purged of the penchant to hold Nigeria oil sector down acting in connivance with other unseen Farouk’s in the NNPN, NMDPRA and other government agencies. There is no doubt that their activities have contributed in no small way to crippling domestic refinery and keep our foreign reserve down, enrich Forex overlords in the CBN who are currently suffering from the merger of the Forex market.
The reasons for the new foreign exchange policy of the CBN might just been unveiling in the light of the activities of many other Farouks in the government Oil institutions who ensure their children and generations live in affluence abroad while the nation suffers.
In this regard, the Tinubu federal government must give necessary support to whistle blowers in other sectors like education; defence industry; agriculture where NISRAL have made a mess of efforts to ensure the food subsection thrives; Aviation and others which combined efforts have made life difficult through in-built corruption perpetrated by the many unseen Farouks using the trade union leaders to destroy the sectors.
The unusual Dangote initiative by fighting to protect his investment may be what is needed to save the country from being held hostage in development by entrenched forces both in and outside government.
Dangote by his efforts would have emboldened other critical investors- both local and foreign facing similar difficulties in other sectors.
The Federal Government should give more powers to institutions like the ICPC and EFCC to rid the country of the evil bureaucrats in our government institutions who have become more powerful than the government and people they are supposed to serve.
