Opinion article by Duke of Shomolu, Joseph Edgar
I have just received a memo from the Dangote side of this fight to join the fray. He said please help push this and I opened it and it is Dangote’s response to the allegations levelled against them by his brother on a Forex scam concerning their operations on the continent.
Dangote in this piece that I have been ‘instructed’ to push was denying very seriously all the allegations stating very clearly that they have been operating above board securing necessary approvals and even in-flowing serious Forex thereby contributing their own little quota to the economy.
Just as I was reading Dangote, Abdulsamad’s people dropped theirs. Their own was even more pathetic and shameful. They went to the gutters painting Dangote as a rough handed low level mafioso kingpin or how else do you label someone who according to the Abdulsamad report which is all over social media and assuming it’s actually from them, detailing , the lock down of construction sites, overnight deportation of expatriate crews and even the mention of specific ‘long term staff of Dangote’ involved with all sort of mischief.
Sad thing is that, mainstream media is strategically avoiding this ‘fight’ for very obvious reasons, leaving the combatants to continue to sully their not so hard won reputation with this childish struggle.
Let me be honest. This is a fight between two groupings that continue to gain very significantly from the compensatory partnership between the commercial and political elites and as such I am lost for words as to the reason behind this stupidity.
The market is big enough. It’s 200m in Nigeria and by the time you add the continent you could easily be looking at a market far in excess of 500m. How many can they even serve? If you multiply their combined capacity and add another x10 of their sizes, they still will not cover the available market size.
So it is the little mindedness of their very beginning and the short cultism that positions them near power that is most likely driving this needless feud.
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If you look deeply at their beginnings, you will see two people who didn’t start out with a world vision. They were just traders from a long line of very successful traders who happened on a vision rather than being propelled by a vision of an expansive business empire.
The fact that they accidentally came upon the vision for global market conquest without the necessary drive required to fuel the push is why we are now witnessing this very juvenile feud that is rubbishing both brands and their promoters.
Unlike the Otedola and Elumelu wahala where I took sides with one side, I refuse to be dragged into this putrid and meaningless feud, but instead will lump them together into a box of infamy and flog them until just maybe some sense comes into their head.
These should be global business icons. These two should lead the push for the renewed economic relevance of our country, joining hands with the government in rebuilding international investor confidence but instead are going at each other like overused prostitutes in a Shomolu brothel fighting over the lone drunken customer who just sauntered in.
Can someone kindly beg them to spare us all of this sordid tale.. I am personally not even interested if Dangote gets Forex at controlled prices and launders it. I am also not interested if BUA is being investigated by anybody or that they have been running their sugar plants on pig urine, they should both just shut up and allow us to be.
Do they even think of the calamity that will befall their workforce if not the economy if this goes on unabated?
Between both of them, they employ more Nigerians than anybody else, pay the largest taxes and impact the economy on almost every front much more than any other economic force since independence and yet can not see through their spoilt backsides and focus on growing their bandwidth legitimately.
I think these two should grow up and begin to come to the realisation of their undeserved positioning and behave like the statesmen that we expect them to be.
This is nothing but shameful.. Period.
Thanks
*Duke of Shomolu*
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