Alhassan Dantata (fascinating evening reads)🌻🌻

Did you know?

Alhassan Dantata was West Africa’s richest man in the 1940s. Aliko Dangote’s great grandfather.

Aliko Dangote is a Nigerian billionaire businessman known for his conglomerate, Dangote Group, which operates in various sectors including cement, sugar, and flour. He is considered Africa’s richest person and one of the wealthiest individuals globally. Dangote’s business empire has made significant contributions to Nigeria’s economy and beyond, with investments in several African countries. He is renowned for his entrepreneurial acumen, philanthropy, and influence in shaping Africa’s economic landscape.

Aliko Dangote’s most recent project is Dangote Oil Refinery which is a 650,000 barrels per day (BPD) integrated refinery. It is Africa’s biggest oil refinery and the world’s biggest single-train facility.

The Pipeline Infrastructure at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery is the largest anywhere in the world, with 1,100 kilometers to handle 3 Billion Standard Cubic Foot of gas per day. The Refinery alone has a 435MW Power Plant that is able to meet the total power requirement of Ibadan DisCo.

In January 2022, Aliko Dangote’s net worth was estimated to be around $12 billion USD, making him one of the wealthiest individuals in Africa and globally. However, please note that net worth figures can fluctuate over time due to changes in asset valuations, market conditions, and other factors. It’s advisable to check the latest financial news or reliable sources for the most current information on his net worth.

Alhassan Dantata built the Kano Groundnut Pyramids & dealt in kolanuts. Each pyramid had 15,000 filled bags.
He was a supplier to British trading companies.

Alhassan Dantata opened an account with British Bank of West Africa (now First Bank) with 20 camel-loads of silver coins in Kano, Nigeria in 1929His great grandson, Aliko Dangote is the Richest Man in Africa.

Before competing know their history and while at it, aim to break the generational cycle of poverty so that your bloodline that comes after you stand a chance of tapping into your greatness☺️😍. Be the ancestor that starts it all or revives the greatness that was somewhat interrupted. Quit searching for the fortune they preach to you and seek whether it’s already in your blooodline or find answers.

Understand the blood that runs through your veins and intentionally be proactive with the clarity that lightens the burden you carry of questioning why your own story is different. Your veins have the all the answers .

Dantata was born 1877 in Bebeji, Kano Emirate in the Sokoto Caliphate, one of several children of Abdullahi and his wife, Amarya. Abdullahi was the son of Baba Talatin, it was Baba Talatin who brought the family from Katsina to Madobi in Kano following the death of his father called Ali. Dantata was born into an Agalawa trading family in Bebeji in present-day Kano State in 1877. His parents were caravan leaders and traders. His father, Abdullahi, was a son of a prosperous merchant called Baba Talatin who had originally moved the family from Katsina in the early nineteenth century.

His mother, Fatima Maduga Amarya, was also an independent caravan leader. She had the reputation of having such a forceful character that nobody in the Zango would take her as a wife after the demise of her husband. She decided to leave her children in the care of an old female servant and moved to Gonja in Accra, Ghana where she became one of the wealthiest Hausa traders. The servant, whose name was Tata, was the reason young Alhassan became known as Dantata (“Dan-tata” means “son of Tata” in the Hausa language).. Abdullahi died in Bebeji around 1885.

Dantata was only sixteen when the 1893 civil war broke out in Kano. A group of dissidents from Kano sacked the town of Bebeji. Many of the town’s inhabitants were killed and the rest were captured, including Dantata and two of his brothers (Bala and Sidi). They were able to buy their freedom back and return to Bebeji shortly afterwards. He witnessed yet another upheaval when the British attacked the region shortly after the turn of the century. He was in Bebeji when the British crossed the border from Zaria on February 1, 1903. In the attack on Bebeji, the town leader was killed along with a number of his troops.

Dantata was sent to a Qur’anic school (madrasah) in Bebeji. Because his share of his father’s wealth seemed to have vanished, he had to support himself. Although the life of an almajiri (Qur’anic student) was (and is) a difficult one, he was able to save some money, largely at the insistence of Tata, who purchased an asusu (ceramic money box) for him.
At fifteen, Dantata joined a Gonja-bound caravan in order to see his mother with hopes that her wealth would allow him to settle in Accra without having to work. He purchased some items from Bebeji, half of which he sold on the road and the remainder in Accra. After only one day of rest, Dantata’s mother took him to a Muslim teacher and asked him to stay with him until he was ready to return to Kano.

He was forced to work even harder in Accra than he did in Bebeji. After the usual reading of the Qur’an, he had to go and beg for food for himself and his teacher. On Thursdays and Fridays he worked for money, but he had to share the greater part of his income with his teacher. After less than a year, his mother sent him back to Bebeji where he continued his studies. Even though now a teenager, Dantata continued to save something every day.

He set out for Accra again via lbadan and Lagos, travelling to the Gold Coast by sea and eventually becoming one of the first northern traders to exploit these routes commercially. For several years he utilized coastal steamers to transport his kola nuts to Lagos where he resold them to Kano-bound traders and began to amass considerable wealth. In 1906, he began to diversify his interests by trading in beads, necklaces, European cloth and other items and was able to buy a house in the Koki ward of Kano. His mother, who had never remarried, died in Accra around 1908, at which time Dantata began to limit his trade to Lagos and Kano, although he still occasionally visited Accra. He married Hajiya Umma Zaria and she conducted business for him with women (he refrained from doing so for religious reasons).
In 1912 when the Europeans started to show an interest in the export of groundnuts, they contacted established merchants through the first British appointed Emir of Kano, Abbas (1903-1919) and his chief agent, Jakada. Established merchants such as Umaru Sharubutu and Maikano Agogo were approached and all readily accepted the offer.

In 1918, Dantata was approached by the UK-based Royal Niger Company (RNC) to help purchase groundnuts for them and he responded to their offer. He was already familiar with stories of people who had made fortunes by buying cocoa for the Europeans in the Gold Coast. Because of the speed with which he responded to the invitation of the RNC, he gained several advantages over rival Kano traders. In addition, his mastery of English (achieved through his trade in the south and along the coast) helped him in negotiations, as well as the fact that he had also accumulated a greater amount of capital than many other Kano merchants.

Furthermore, unlike many of his peers, he had a relatively small family to maintain, largely because he was still younger than other traders of similar means. His early life had instilled in him a flair for financial management as well as a tendency towards leading a frugal existence. He had some accounting skills and with the help of Alhaji Garba Maisikeli (his financial controller for thirty-eight years), every kobo was accounted for every day. Dantata was also a careful manager who directly supervised his workers.

Within a short time of entering the groundnut business, Dantata came to dominate the field. By 1922 he had become the wealthiest business executive in Kano, pushing his contemporaries Umaru Sharubutu and Agogo to second and third place respectively. When the British Bank of West Africa opened a branch in Kano in 1929, he became the first Kano businessperson to open a bank account in which he deposited twenty camel-loads of silver coins. 

In the last decade of his life, Dantata became the chief buyer of groundnuts for the Royal Niger Company (known at this time as the United Africa Company following a merger with the African and Eastern Trade Corporation). He alone purchased about half of all the groundnuts secured by UAC in northern Nigeria. In 1932, he applied for a licence to purchase and export groundnuts on his own.

However, because of the lingering world depression and the conflict in Europe, it was not granted. In 1949, he contributed property valued at £10,200 to the proposed Kano Citizens Trading Company for the establishment of the first indigenous textile mill in northern Nigeria.

Between 1953 and 1954, he was a licensed buying agent who sold directly to the commodity board instead of to another firm. By this time, Dantata had many business connections both in Nigeria and in other West African countries, particularly the Gold Coast (now Ghana).

He dealt other merchandise, including cattle, cloth, beads, precious stones, grains and rope. His role in the purchase of kola nuts from forest areas of Nigeria for sale in the North was so great that eventually whole “kola trains” from the Western Region were filled with his nuts alone.

After finally settling in Kano, he maintained agents (mainly his relations) in other trading centers; his brother, Alhaji Bala, was in charge of his Lagos office. Dantata employed many people (mainly Hausas, Yorubas and Igbos) as drivers, clerks, and labourers. In some ways, his employees were treated as members of his extended family. Some lived in his own houses (especially the Hausa workers) and he frequently took responsibility for his workers’ marriage expenses.

Despite his great wealth, Dantata lived a simple lifestyle; eating the same foods and dressing like everyone else. He worked closely with his employees and frequently shared his meals with them. Dantata reportedly sought to avoid any conflict with individuals or with the authorities. Whenever he offended those in power he would quietly solve the problem with the official concerned.

In 1955, Dantata fell ill. Because of the seriousness of his illness, he summoned his chief financial controller, Garba Maisikeli and his children. He told them that his days were approaching their end and advised them to live together. He was particularly concerned about the company he had established (Alhassan Dantata & Sons).

He asked them not to allow the company to collapse. He implored them to continue to marry within the family as much as possible. He urged them to avoid clashes with other wealthy Kano merchants. They should take care of their relatives, especially the poor among them. Three days later, he died in his sleep on Wednesday 17 August 1955. He was buried in his house in the Sarari ward.