Good People, I have read Dangote Group’s accusations against BUA Group and the high-voltage response from the BUA Group. In summary, Nigeria has a long way to go. From these public crusades, we can get one thing: it is not the best idea that wins in Nigeria in these traditional industries, but the idea with the best “connections”.
In other words, there is no way you can operate in these industries without selling your soul to politicians since they hold the powers to advance or cut you off. As these two men fight, they are sending the wrong messages to the world on some of these critical sectors: how fast a president or a minister could pick your call is what really matters, and not the ideas you are bringing to the market.
That must change, and necessarily must change. Yes, Adam Smith’s invisible hands where the free market drives business systems must work in Nigeria. From these accusations and counter-responses, it is evident that the state is still running the shows despite actors like Dangote and BUA founder.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Read Dangote’s position here (PDF) and follow up with BUA’s response here (PDF); a good business student has some nice documents for a final year seminar on business strategy in Nigeria!
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
From Dangote’s letter, it was essentially agreeing to what it said BUA accused it of, telling us that you sourced billions of dollars on Interbank FX platform was an indictment in itself. How much was left to other businesses if you had access to fund foreign plants construction via official rates? And they were even sounding as though it was a fair play. They would have tried sourcing from black market, their sense of entitlement and fairness is obviously warped and flawed.
On BUA and loss of 4.5 hectares near Tin Can, if we have serious journalists here they should be camping at Obasanjo’s house day and night by now, to get him to tell us why he revoked the land BUA got there. We let a lot salient things to pass as though there were no serious infractions and malfeasance. Yar’dua did well, even Buhari on insisting that the Edo plant should not close. The problem with these presidential interventions was that they never created any institutional framework that could have stopped a repeat of such madness.
Dangote even issued a dud cheque to BUA? These creatures are not much better than street urchins and miscreants that have permeated all our public and corporate spaces.
No real talent, just thugs with political connections.
Hummmm