The World Richest People;Alhaji Aliko Dangote

Alhaji Aliko Dangote among the world's billionaires should excite Nigerians who must be close to believing that no good news can come out of the country.
It should, indeed, excite Nigerians that the President/Chief Executive Officer of Dangote Group of Companies is not just among the Forbes magazine's world's billionaires but is, for this year, listed as the richest black person in the world, with $3.3 billion, ranked ahead of black American television talkshow superstar, Oprah Winfrey and South African gold magnate, Patrice Motsepe.
Dangote and Motsepe are also the first black Africans to appear on the Forbes International rich list.
The excitement over Dangote's new feat should arise from several factors. One is the fact that for a change, the story is no longer that one ex-military dictator or the other is the richest man in the country or the continent but that a relatively young entrepreneur, who has, unlike most other rich Nigerians, decided to invest in his country's economy has made it big.
Also, this milestone should convince many other younger men and women that if they work hard at whatever they are doing, they too can attain the lofty heights that Alhaji Dangote has attained, literally, from nowhere.
The Kano state born business mogul started off as a commodity marketer, buying and selling such items as sugar, flour and cement.
Other less resourceful or unambitious people would have stayed at that level, but Dangote, who has shown great capacity for adaptation to the realities of the times has metamorphosed from a marketer of commodities to a first rate industrialist, with huge production facilities in different parts of the country.
He has effectively transformed from the commodity trader of yesterday to a big time manufacturer of mainly those commodities that he used to import and sell to consumers. He is doing this through such companies as Dangote Salt Plc, Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, Dangote Pasta Plc, Dangote Flour Mills Plc, Dansa Foods Ltd. and through cement factories in Benue, Kogi, Ogun and Cross River State, all of which are working towards attaining 100 per cent use of locally sourced raw materials.
He has also diversified into shipping, energy development, solid minerals, steel, banking, land transport and property and is running the conglomerate, which is clearly the biggest in the country and continent, so efficiently that the companies within the group have become beautiful brides that are much sought after in the stock market.
Alhaji Dangote, a former president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) is indeed, today, one of the major players in the stock market, with many of his companies listed and with him also having interests in several of the blue chip firms in the country. All these are evidence that he has abiding faith in the nation's economy and is playing his part in efforts to revamp it and take it to where it should be, among the top 20 economies of the world in the next few years.
One peculiar characteristic of this business icon is that he has a knack for seeing through companies and individuals. Some of the companies within the Dangote Group that are thriving today were once run down and written off. He acquired, restructured and recapitalized these companies to the point that they have bounced back to production and profitability.
Because of his confidence in the economy of the country of his birth, other investors who would, otherwise have been scared off by the negative stories of the unconducive business environment are attracted to the country.
His companies alone are said to be employing at least 20,000 people while the other investors coming as a result of his investment in the Nigerian economy are also helping to deplete the army of the unemployed.
In spite of his huge contribution to the economy of the country and in spite of his billions, Dangote is marked out as very humble and uncontroversial. Others in his shoes would want to dominate the country's politics and social life, others would go out of their way to garner all manner of chieftaincy titles and doctorate degrees and would want to be on the front pages of every publication and on prime time television. But this is not the case with this philanthropist of note, who, indeed, is believed to be press shy.
He has shunned partisan politics as much as possible and sparingly participates in socio-cultural events.
Try as he can, however, he has not outrun the criticism of those who insist that behind every great wealth there must be some question marks. The most persistent of these question marks is what is considered Alhaji Dangote's intolerance of competition, which another school of thought insists is the motivation for attainment of primus interpares.
The bottom-line, however, is that, as at today, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has emerged as the richest black man in the world. His attainment of this milestone should encourage other entrepreneurs in Nigeria, Africa and world over, to strive harder to make more money, and very importantly, to impact their communities, countries, fellow blacks wherever they may be and, indeed, humanity as a whole, positively, with their immense wealth.
Dangote has used his own great wealth to build structures in his home country that are giving hope to thousands and providing goods and services to millions. His activities, indeed, are impacting positively on millions of Nigerians, but he must press on to ensure that in the hearts of the down-trodden, in the hearts of Nigerians of all classes, he would be remembered, not for his billions alone, but for what he has done or would still do to positively transform the lives of many, including generations yet unborn.