Good People, after Dangote Cement touched the mountaintop, at excess of N1 trillion revenue, I shared a post, on how the business has joined MTN on the N1 trillion league here and here . But surprisingly, many of the comments are negative. In short, some are offended that I was congratulating the company: “Why do we praise people for the wrong reasons?” Mr. Aliko Dangote, no matter where you are, you need to fix your image with young people in Nigeria. It must not be this way!
Read some samples of the comments:
Comment #1
Ok, we can see that he’s great at raking in fat numbers as revenues and profits. But they also need to stop fiddling with cement prices! What has become common in Nigeria is that self sufficiency in production doesn’t mean consumers pay less, and we are likely to see same with the refinery.
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Looking at the numbers, how many bags were sold in 2020 compared to 2019? Because if you add N1000 to a product and sell 200 million bags, even without doing anything special, you have added 200 billion naira to your balance sheet! This is a number game, they didn’t invent new thing or shipped some bags for fencing in Mars and Jupiter.
We thought local rice would be cheaper, but we ended up paying numbers we never heard off, for all the years we ate foreign rice for fun here; something is fundamentally wrong with Nigeria and how we do business in the land.
In the year of Covid, banks brought in dizzying numbers, and cement has done same; we are really one of a kind.
Those who sold hand sanitizer and face masks should report their numbers too, because 2020 created a new market there.
Comment #2
Yes. He is able to do so because he controls more than 85% of the market share in the Cement industry. Thus he can fix prices as he likes. This is made possible because Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), the agency responsible for checkmating this kind of unethical business practices are not doing anything in Nigeria. In UK, there’s a Competition Commission, an agency that ensures that no single company controls more than 25% of total market share in any industry. No merger and Acquisition takes place without the approval of this agency. Hence no single company is able fix prices anyhow. But here in Nigeria, Dangote is fixes cement price anyhow because there’s no strong competition anywhere.
How can Nigerians be paying NGN 3,300 for a bag of cement which is 100% produces locally? The so called Michel Pucherous is not a magician, he’s not doing doing anything special. Millions of Nigerians can do better given the same business environment.
Nigerians will continue to suffer in the hand of Dangote until FCCPC stands up to their responsibilities
Comment #3
Before Michael Pucheros, Dangote already had a monopoly (or near-monopoly) over the cement industry, which is possible only in a backwards failing state that is Nigeria.
Pucheros simply hiking the price on a monopoly built before his arrival, can hardly be lauded as business acumen. If anything, this short term gain comes at the long term risk of emerging viable competitors, borne from Dangote’s insane cement prices, at #4,000 per bag. Pucheros is engaged in no more than a risky naked money grab from Nigerians already struggling. Absolutely distasteful.
Comment #4
I will not applaud this because Dangote is thriving on monopoly.He determines the price of cement in the market and hike the price anytime without considering Nigerian consumers. How can Nigerians pay more for a bag of cement than other African countries where it is exported to. I see this as serious extortion and no one is saying anything because he has political support. Mr Cement left Larfarge to a competitive company is a breach of contract between the two parties and they are still on the matter.
Michel Puchercos Takes Dangote Cement To The Big Party with MTN Nigeria
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