Tag: Dangote

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) is the umbrella organization for all registered Independent Petroleum Products marketers licensed to lift and operate petrol filling stations in Nigeria. It was a product of Obasanjo‘s 1978 decree to aid local participation in an area then dominated by foreign interest. But sadly many informed Nigerians believe from being asked to come and engage in legitimate profitable business, Nigerians have since 1983 become victims of IPMAN’s greed.

Its first casualty was Obasanjo’s 4,900 kilometres pipeline commissioned in 1979, to ferry oil products from Lagos to all parts of Nigeria. By the Babangida’s era of commercialisation in 1986, not one kilometre of the pipeline remained functional. Of course the next victim was NNPC tank farms across the nation. They were all vandalized by unknown persons.

But the general perception of Nigerians was that it was only those who stood to gain from such assault on Nigeria’s economic interest that could have embarked on such dastardly act. That IPMAN and their truck drivers who secured NNPC contract to store NNPC imported products and distribute same across the nation came under serious scrutiny should therefore not surprise anyone.

 It was not long Nigerians started to identify IPMAN as an accomplice in the mismanagement of the oil sector by NNPC, regarded as the cesspool of corruption. IPMAN did not help matters by the fact that just a little over half of trucks loaded with fuel from Lagos got to their destination. The rest found their way to neighbouring countries especially the Sahel region of the north where drivers make over 100% profits at the expense of Nigerian consumers who spend hours at filling stations. From 1999 to 2023, Nigerians were taken hostage as those responsible for their nightmare remained untouchable.

 In 2001, IPMAN was used by PDP stalwarts to create artificial scarcity to enable them blackmail Obasanjo into signing the PPPRA bill into an Act within three months. PPPRA was to become instrument with which PDP stalwarts defrauded Nigerian of billions of naira through the fuel subsidy scam.

But with a new sheriff in town, something changed dramatically in 2024. Following customs arrest of some of their tankers for illegal diversion of petroleum products, IPMAN shut down all filling stations in Adamawa, claiming that “customs officers are conducting unlawful operations, harassing their members and causing significant financial losses.” In fact IPMAN threatened government by telling the DSS official that intervened in their case that they will shut down the 30,000 stations operated by its members if the federal government fails to pay the N200bn owed to marketers.

IPMAN’s demands may be legitimate because bridging claims are payments made by the government to oil marketers for transporting petroleum products loaded from Lagos depot to various states across the country. This allows them to sell fuel at the same rate, no matter the logistics cost. The problem however was that IPMAN, like other Nigerians who travel to other parts of Nigeria including the oil producing Niger Delta know you can never get petroleum products at the same rate you get it in Lagos.

However, IPMAN overreached itself in May 2025, when its national chairman, Abubakar Shettima, burying his head like an ostrich and believing no one sees him, went to the FCT Director of the Department of State Services, Usman Dauda, to threaten the shutdown of the 30,000 stations operated by its members because the Nigerian National Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) paid only N50bn out of the N200bn debt. It was with this type of blackmail Nigerians were swindled for over 50 years.

Of course IPMAN remains the greatest critic of Aliko Dangote’s business model which they say is antithetical to Nigerian industrialization. They say he is profit driven, that he is government created monopolist and a man who engages in an unfair competition, and a man who does not keep promises.  In a recently celebrated case, Yahaya Bello the former governor of Kogi State claimed that Kogi State government owned the Obajana Cement Company before Dangote Investment Limited showed interest and was welcomed by the then unsuspecting state government. They didn’t however tell us how Dangote eventually secured 100% ownership of the company. Nigerians have to decide who to believe between Yaya Bello and Aliko Dangote.

David Hundeyin writing for BusisnessDay of March 21, 2021 said “It is no coincidence that many products on Nigeria’s import ban lists are items in which Dangote has major interests. He describes Dangote’s Cement as an example of “a price maker monopoly” a status he secured via President Obasanjo’s executive fiat. This banned cement imports and granted 90-year exclusive limestone mining licenses to Dangote at Nigeria’s richest limestone sites.

And still quoting from  the U.S. diplomatic cable, he  says  “Nigeria’s wealthiest man is not actually a productive capitalist creating value for the Nigerian economy but at best an economic parasite and at worst a direct brake on Nigeria’s economic growth.”

Unfortunately, Hundeyin also suffers from credibility deficit from recent newspapers reports. Besides, with President Trump’s multiple indictments for financial malpractices including tax evasion, American capitalism model is at its most brutish form.

And come to think of it, it is not only Dangote alone that enjoyed support of government. In fact Prof Bolaji Akinyemi, former foreign affairs minister not too long ago declared that there is no Nigerian multi-billionaire that did not make their fortune through the state.

The current administration recently sanctioned some of our mega banks for exploiting some of the loopholes in the CBN laws to make profit that will make capitalists in the home of capitalism green with envy. In fact they were made to refund some of their un-earned profit back to CBN.

We also know billionaires who did not inherit industrial complexes from their great grandparents as was often the case in western societies. Their fortune could only have come from government contracts.

Read Also: ‘Nigeria inches closer to exiting global anti-graft grey list’

Dangote also came under vicious IPMAN attack recently when he suggested that “the Nigeria First Policy” announced by President Tinubu should apply to petroleum sector and all other sectors”. He anchored his argument on the fact that America, Canada and European countries are doing it to protect local investors.

That they are going to source their own dollars only begs the question. Much of our foreign exchange earnings stolen from the Abacha period are in private hands.

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi before he was booted out as CBN governor by President Jonathan called our attention to missing $20b in NNPC. We could not have suddenly forgotten the case of Andrew Yakubu, former NNPC Group MD in whose farm house in Sabon Tasha in Kaduna State, EFCC on tip off, made a haul of $9.7m (N2.9b) He was later acquitted by the court who agreed with him that EFCC could not prove the money was not a gift from his friends. Just in January, Nigeria and the US signed an agreement to repatriate about $52.88m in assets forfeited by Diezani Alison Madubuike former oil minister.

In recent weeks, Dangote has also been in the eye of the storm for announcing the delivery of   4,000 brand-new compressed natural gas (CNG) trucks, as part of strategy including establishment of CNG stations across the nation. The move, backed by a N720 billion investment, would see the company absorb an estimated N1.07 trillion yearly in fuel distribution costs, eliminating transportation charges for fuel marketers and large-scale consumers. The presidency has described the initiative as “a major boost to the federal government’s push for gas-powered transportation.”

If Dangote is a monopolist, he is one with human face. Not too long ago he told some reporters that while many of his employees have personal houses in London, he has no house abroad. Dangote because of his faith in Nigeria ploughed back his fortune in Nigeria. Dangote has been able to cover our shame of having to import what God gave us in abundance.

If I have to choose between beneficiaries of those who vandalized 4,900 kilometres of pipelines; who destroyed  NNPC tank farms; the enablers of fuel subsidy scam, parasites  and their truck drivers who periodically hold us hostage, and a man who because of his faith in his country invested his fortunes at home  while his fellow billionaires kept theirs abroad, a man who  liberated us from price equalization abusers with N1trn of his money and ensures Nigerians from all the corners of the country benefit from oil God gave them in abundance, I will go for the latter.