July 05, (THEWILL) – On Thursday last week, at Ovia River, near Benin City, Edo State capital, Aliko Dangote’s truck rammed into an 18-seater bus from behind, killing 15 persons instantly. At the point of penning down this piece, I’m yet to read any condolence message(s) from the over-pampered and murderous businessman, who waters and nurtures the litany of his business empire with the blood of the Nigerian masses.
This is not the first time that Dangote’s impudence will wilfully destroy human beings and our roads without remorse. Statistics revealed that 75 percent of accidents on our roads across the country occurred as a result of Dangote’s reckless drivers, who are largely untrained and uncultured, whose labour he exploits with meagre wages by the day. Dangote’s trucks abound on our highways in their hundreds of thousands at night and in day time, harassing the living lives out of citizens using the same road.
I interviewed one of Dangote’s truck drivers named Musa Ahmed, from Taraba State, who confirmed to me that he earned N40,000 ($54) monthly minimum wage, having driven Dangote trucks over the last seven years. He said he was never trained for the job, nor retrained ever since he joined the company. What type of shylock and retarding business owner would not have his members of staff trained periodically for optimal output and productivity, at the expense of the workers’ and the general populace’s safety? What business literacy teachings suggest that vampires or bandits in the name of driving should be hired to menace the civil population plying the same road?
On the 8th of April, 2018, a truck belonging to Dangote Group Plc, crushed Mr Mukhtar Abdulkarim, a Second Republic Senator, to death. Mr Abdulkarim, along with his brother and driver, were travelling between Kano and Zamfara States on that day, when the truck rammed into his car. He died instantly. I’m sure, like thousands of his victims, the family of the deceased Senator, who died a woeful death, has not been compensated for his gruesome killing.
There’s a pending suit filed by two families who sued the billionaire businessman and his companies, following the killing of their members in an accident involving a truck that belongs to the businessman’s company. According to court papers filed before the Lagos State Multi-Door Courthouse, the accident happened on January 9, 2018, along Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, claiming the lives of 10 passengers in a commercial bus with registration number BDJ 410 YM. In the lawsuits filed on their behalf by the Lagos State Directorate of Citizens’ Rights, the two families are each seeking N160 million in damages against Dangote and his companies.
On March 24th, 2013, there was mayhem in Ibese, Yewa North Local Government Area of Ogun State, after a couple and four other persons were crushed to death by a truck belonging to Dangote Cement Company. The couple was said to be riding on a motorcycle when the incident occurred. The driver of the vehicle escaped with his truck from the scene of the accident. This incensed members of the community, who allegedly descended on two other trucks belonging to the cement company and set them ablaze. In the process, witnesses said a truck driver was consumed in the inferno and was unable to escape from the trailer before the mob attacked it.
On January 24, 2021, nine students were crushed to death in an accident involving a Dangote truck at the Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba (AAUA) gate. The incident was confirmed by the spokesperson of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), Bisi Kazeem, in a statement made available to journalists. He admitted that a total of nine persons were killed while nine others sustained various injuries.
On the 30th of May, 2019, no fewer than seven persons lost their lives in a ghastly motor accident involving a truck with registration number BSA 214 XA and a Toyota Hiace bus with registration number BSA 453 XJ, at Hawan Kibo on the Hawan – Kibo – Jos road in Riyom local government area of Plateau State. The truck belongs to Dangote company, while the bus was from God’s Time Is The Best Transport company in Jos.
An eyewitness said the fatal accident occurred at about 7:47 pm, when the haulage vehicle heavily loaded with goods suddenly lost control after a brake failure, while descending from the notorious Hawan Kibo hill and rammed into a Toyota Hiace coming from the opposite direction. From the available statistics, no week passes without Dangote’s trucks killing a minimum of two to five citizens on Nigerian bad roads. These have added up cumulatively to the charge that his trucks have killed over a thousand citizens in the last two decades without compensation to the victims’ family.
This is one of the reasons those calling for Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s prosecution in the International Court of Justice at the Hague have a point over his deliberate mass murder, destruction of our roads, exploitation of cheap labour and for experimenting with Nigerians masses lives as Guinea Pigs. I do not know of any businessman of his status who pays a driver $54 dollars a month without hazard – accommodation, health and insurance allowances – in any part of the world. His drivers who drive hours on end, mostly falling asleep while on the steering wheel, resulting in daily fatal accidents after travelling thousands of kilometres, can’t be blamed for Dangote’s callousness.
It is on record that in the past two decades, Dangote’s close ties with politicians and his incorrigible massive corporate conglomerates have retarded the nation’s economic development. Because the government at the centre has been concentrating and entrenching its abysmal market power, his greedy and predatory strategy has now fueled a sharp increase in income and wealth inequality, as well as a lack of beneficial competition.
To be sure, except President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ‘Renewed Hope’ is a mere fluke and absolute grandstanding, breaking up Aliko Dangote’s overly dominant business conclave, is the only way to salvage constant devaluation of the naira and the ever-soaring inflation in all sector of the economy. There are precedents to such economic stimulation and ‘Renewed Hope’ globally when the leaders are focused, committed and courageous. The US government’s 1911 breakup of Standard Oil is one of the classic examples. Such radical interventions generally are reserved for the most egregious monopoly as we have with Aliko Dangote’s business fiat, ordered by a disruptive and ethnocentric government, now that we’re faced with an acute crisis of fuel subsidy regime retrieval.
In the early 1930s, US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, specifically targeted business groups with policies limiting the allowable number of corporate tiers, imposing higher taxes on inter-group dividends, eliminating consolidated group tax filing, constraining financial institutions from acting as controlling shareholders, and barring business groups from controlling public utilities. These measures effectively reined in overly powerful business groups in the United States.
After Japan’s defeat in 1945, Douglas Macarthur, the administrator of the US occupation, adopted a similar approach to dispose of the Zaibatsu – business groups that had become integral to the country’s militaristic regime. Holding companies were banned, and the practice of tying family assets to business groups was prohibited. As in the US, these measures proved effective not only in advancing market de-concentration and dismantling the business structures behind it but also in unleashing Japan’s subsequent economic resurgence.
Speaking specifically and truthfully, Nigerians are at sea with what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu means with the vague apropos of the ‘Renewed Hope’ mantra, without explanation or a policy of trust, on how he hopes to achieve it. Is it ‘Renewed Hope’ for the disingenuous and pillaging business mafias or for the downtrodden, whom Alhaji Aliko Dangote and his kind have mercilessly trampled upon, using their businesses? Only time shall tell.
Written by Erasmus Ikhide
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