IN his on-going triangular trade, political and PR war with the Tinubu administration which has BUA’s Rabiu Abdul Samad as a supporting striker, embittered billionaire, Aliko Dangote, has almost emerged the masses’ martyr, despite his almost-settled anti-people persona. The credit should go to his sacks of dough and an obviously well-funded and delivering spinning media team. But winning the moment and having the momentum against a sleaze-ridden national oil sector headed by no other than the commander-in-chief, isn’t a guarantee he would have the popular opinion behind him forever, except he uses the moment to remake the past by making the future about the people despite being a private businessman who can spend his money as desired.
If Nigerians are accusing Dangote of not being selfless, they have a good case against him. Aliko isn’t just another filthly-rich. Our commonwealth has been put at his disposal for so long, for the people to not demand he gives back and gives back well. What he owes Nigerians isn’t the regular freebies of the rich. He owes the people opening his heart to them, in the course of making more money which nobody in good conscience can deny his investment. The Bible is replete with the doctrine of sowing and harvesting, planting and reaping. I deliberate cross-fertilise.
Amid the sweet crude contention with the billionaire and his refinery, the Tinubu administration has inadvertently muddled and perhaps obliterated the day of reckoning many had legitimately wished it would visit on the businessman as a form of comeuppance for alleged unearned national cake shovelled into his mouth by successive past governments.
Now that he is winning public sympathy with the victim aces the administration has in an unthinking manner handed him, even a legitimate official questioning of his past deeds and deals with public coffers, no matter how credible, can easily be driven into the sob story of Tinubu-is-after-Dangote-for-supporting-Atiku narrative. This is one reason thinking fellows should coordinate official efforts at some redemption for the Nigerian public. That fellow coming out of presidential villa, after meeting with the President, to attack Dangote, his refinery and calling his products fake, was thoughtless. He simply pointed to where the fire cooking Aliko’s bum, was being stoked. Aliko is definitely not a saint, but the Tinubu administration is close to cannonising him.
The EFCC raid of his business headquarters in Lagos on the very first Thursday of 2024 and the disclosure that the Africa richest and his conglomerate were being probed for alleged years-long forex manipulation, had inflamed the adrenaline of the nail-Aliko crowd. But just 22 days after, the C-in-C was bursting the bubble of his hailing hailers (apologies to Elder Adesina), by appointing Dangote alongside Tony Elumelu of UBA (the bank where my failed transactions among hundred others have remained unresolved for more than a year), Bismarck Rewane and co. into his Presidential Economic Team. From that February, tension had lowered between Aso Rock and Dangote group, until the latest eruption which has polarised the Nigerian public into pro-NNPC which would read more like pro-Tinubu who incidentally is the Petroleum minister and pro-Dangote, which is begining to look like a coalesce of opposition figures, including within the APC.
A lot, is trending, in the highly-inflammable oily war of the Nigerian now-splintered cash circle, which have also rent the nation in the median though despite the grandstanding and lofty talks from both ends, the common man is yet to reap anything as dividends of their masquerading pro-people emissions. Yet, the people, in form of accountability and public probity may be the eventual beneficiary of the sleaze accusations and counter-accusations between the oil czars and barons when the drums of war are eventually silenced. Despite the open secret that the Nigerian oil industry has always been a sewer for as long as the crude has been dripping, the Dangote/Tinubu conflagration has brought into light, darker shades of fraud hitherto revealed and the unrevealed, which are breaking new frontiers in inhuman handling of public trust and investment.
The President who doubles as the Oil Minister has long been tied to a major investment and interest in the sector. Before he became president, he was largely seen as a major player in the oily game. Retaining the Petroleum portfolio despite his yet-to-be-denied business investment and interest in the sector, can’t be good optics but there isn’t yet, any proveable pointer to him being so compromised not to lead a clean-up of the sector. But his media managers are doing much damage to whatever efforts being made to ensure investors like Dangote no longer take the country for a ride, by playing the politics card, which would suggest they have no answers to the damning allegations and purely agreement arguments by Dangote.
But that would not deter from the accusation against Dangote that he is simply fighting Olusegun Obasanjo’s battle, with the former president being fingered as the “original” owner of Dangote’s wealth, especially the refinery. To robe this not-too-far-fetched allegation (considering the meteoric rise of the wealth of Dangote, Femi Otedola et al under Obasanjo’s presidency), with some legitimacy, the promoters have pointed at the personalities who have risen in stout defence of the Kano-born, Lagos-made businessman. Peter Obi, who is leading the line of Dangote defence, is Obasanjo’s open choice for the seat Tinubu is occupying. Otedola, who though once accused Dangote of plotting his assassination and now mounting a sensational defence of his one-time business competitor, is openly Obj-made. The most surprising is the ever-cautious and politics-weary AfDB boss, Akinwunmi Adesina, who waltzed into the roforofo almost immediately the NMDPRA fellow declared the gutter war open from the interior of the presidential villa. When Adesina faced Trump turbulence over his second term as AfDB boss, it was Obasanjo that God used to rally Africa behind him, carrying him to the shore safely.
I don’t know the intels the Tinubu administration has on the allegation but Dangote can’t be hung for being an alleged front if he is dealing fair in his business with the Nigerian state, though it would still be morally reprehensible if the allegation is true. Same would also hold true for Tinubu the moment he starts conferring undue advantge on those supposedly holding his oily business in trust for him.
Nigeria has always been a massive crime scene. Her billionaires are always traced as minions of thieves in government. Atiku Bagudu and the Abachas, is a good go-to. But at least, some are investing the loot here. Even if Dangote is a minion and not an iconoclastic businessman he has been vaunted to be, at least, the investments are on ground to see, despite the suspicion he isn’t playing fair with country and humanity around here. Tinubu and Obasanjo may sustain their ego war for a lifetime, but lives and livelihoods must not be ruined for it, considering how devalued existence is around here already. If Aliko has run afoul of the law, he can be made to pay without targeting a refinery that will serve the people one way or the other. And the Kano fellow would have to stop giving media pressers as if on soapbox. Actually, nobody is also afraid of him.
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