Post #140

🇳🇬 Nigeria: When Oligarchy Works for People On Thursday, Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu slapped an extra 15% tariff on imported fuel, which was clearly another boost for Aliko Dangote, the tycoon behind Nigeria’s biggest oil refinery. Decades of preferential treatment built his empire. But could this long-running policy favoritism have brought any good to ordinary Nigerians? Let's figure out who is Aliko Dangote and how his actions have shaped Nigeria. ⏩Paradoxically, Dangote's political ties to Nigerian elites illustrate a rare example of how an oligarchy can serve a nation.⏪ 🔸Dangote owes much of his success to those ties. His first big win came in cement, which he expanded under the patronage of then-president Olusegun Obasanjo, whose 2003 campaign he heavily financed. 🔸The mogul maintained good relations with all successive Nigerian administrations benefiting from import tariffs, tax breaks, public contracts, and a $2.7B foreign cash loan from the Central Bank of Nigeria to launch the now-famous Dangote oil refinery in 2023. 🔸Paradoxically, that favoritism has served Nigeria in many ways - from a cement importer, the country became Africa’s largest producer. If the model works a second time, the oil-rich nation could end fuel imports and potentially acquire a world’s largest refinery bypassing the Jamnagar complex in India (1.24 million bpd) A rare case when a conflict of interests resulted in national successes, this would never work out with investors from abroad, which would bribe and create nothing for people in return. Devils Below