THE DANTATA FAMILY OF KANO IN THE 80s

LIFE AT ANADARIYA FARM IN TIGA

Leaving Lagos for Kano in 1980 as a young high school graduate was something I hadn’t planned. I left Owo for Benin-City to live with my half-brother, Dare who was then a banker. Somehow, I was not happy with working at the Brewery in Benin City so I moved to Lagos. Then a friend sent a message to me that Northern Nigeria was fun to live and work so I contacted the friend I was on my way to Kano. I didn’t know where I was going in particular but knew I wanted to footloose and get away as a young man, so the urge for adventure took hold of me and I decided to go to Kano. During the three-day journey by rail, I ran into an old town man of mine when I got to Kaduna and we soon became so acquainted that he asked me to come live with him on Niger Road in Sabon-Gari Area of Kano where most foreigners live in the ancient city.                                                                                                                             Meanwhile, I didn’t know that my half-brother whom I left behind in Benin City few months earlier had also left the South for the North. We were in the front of the house of my host on Niger Road one day when I saw Dare approaching me. I thought it was a dream. We embraced. He asked me to come join him at Balat Hughes Road in the same Sabon-Gari where he was living with his folks from Ijebu from his maternal side of the family. At Balat Hughes, the Ijebu communities there were a closely-knit folks who looked after one another. There, you felt at home as if you were really in Ijebu land. The popular delicacy of the Ijebus known as “ ikokore” was always available. Soon, my step-mom came from the South and was surprised to see me with Dare. She asked if the whole journey had been planned and was I in the know of the circumstances that brought her son from Benin-City to Kano. Of course, our meeting was rather fortuitous because Dare never told me he was planning to leave for Kano when we were in Benin neither did I tell him I was leaving Lagos for Kano. It was through Dare that I left Kano for Tiga Village and ended up working for the Dantata family.                                                                                                                              Dare was always aiming high. We discussed at length the opportunities of “making it” in Kano and he told me matter-of-factly that he would not work for anyone or company in Kano except for the Dantata Organization and every day, he would ask me to follow him to the sprawling offices of the millionaire on Ibrahim Taiwo Road. “Aburo-meaning brother-if I don’t work for this man and make it here, I won’t work for any one,” he would say grinning. Although he made another exception, which he would reluctantly mention: another Kano millionaire: Rabiu Group of Companies he would work for in the event of his inability to be employed by the Dantatas.                                                                                                                        The rumor was that the Dantata Family made their money by printing Naira-Nigeria’s currency. Even in Southern Nigeria, people used to say that the Dantata’s had the Nigerian minting machine stationed right in their Koki Quarters in Kano through which they printed their own money and because they are Hausa people, they could not be arrested by law enforcement agents. The impression was that if anyone could just manage to secure employment with the company, he could make it like the Dantatas.                                                                                                                          The foolish idea that the Dantata Family owned its own printing and minting machine was laughable but we were young and uninformed in those days, so rumors thrived in the absence of good and reliable information. But as I later learned, there is indeed an iota of truth in that rumor. It was true that one of the eldest Dantata’s who was Aliko Dangote’s uncle was sent to prison the year Aliko was born in 1957 for currency forgery, money laundering and counterfeiting. The scandal rocked the Dantata Family in Kano to its very foundation and has since become a reference to the shadiness and clumsiness of the Dantata wealth. The conviction of Dangote’s maternal uncle, Alhaji  Ahmadu Dantata for money laundering in 1957 by the colonial authorities was a stain the family which has not been completely washed off and the blemish soon became the fodder for the rumor that emerged later. While the conviction and 5-year imprisonment- Alhaji Ahmadu Dantata was not released until 1962- has been played down by those intimately familiar with the event in Kano, late Alhaji Ahmadu Dantata has been able to reduce the damage because, as soon as he regained his freedom, he was told by his other Dantata Brothers to join politics. The Northern People’s Government-NPC- led by the late Sir Ahmadu Bello that orchestrated his release told the family that Ahmadu must cross-carpet from the NEPU to NPC if he wanted to redeem his name and the name of the Dantata Family. He could also be re-tried by the NPC government after Nigerian independence if he did not play ball so Alhaji Ahmadu Dantata agreed and joined the NPC. He contested and won a seat in the Kano Native Assembly and through that, succeeded in repairing the damage he did to the Dantata Family. In Kano, this ugly incident was a no-go area and indeed, no family member was ready to discuss that scandal during our research for the book on the late Ahmadu Dantata ‘s cousin. This background is necessary in order for the readers of our forthcoming book: “Aliko Mohammad Dangote, the Biography of the Richest Black Person in the World,” to understand and know the research that went into the book.                                                                                                                                          In those days, the means of communication and information outlets were scarce or virtually non-existent. We are talking of the late 1950s and the year 1957 when Aliko Dangote was born. It was possible that Aliko Dangote himself as a young man may not have been told that one of his uncles was once jailed for money laundering, forgery and counterfeiting. In the absence of reliable information, the felony charges had been twisted by local folks in ancient Kano. Even many of those old enough when the incident happened could not state exactly the whole saga that Alhaji Ahmadu Dantata went through. The Kano Museum was helpful in sourcing through the maze of uncertainty and confusion over the ordeal that one of the Dantata’s went though. This was what informed my half-brother’s insistence to work for the Dantata Family when we arrived in Kano in 1980. 

  We eventually got the job and were handed over to a Briton and told to go to the Dantata Family Farm; Anadariya Farms in Tiga near Bagauda Lake Hotel. We initially demurred thinking the corporate head office in Kano was where the action was until a fellow worker told us we would not do anything in Kano except pushing paper files. “Guys, the farm is where the action is,” he counseled. “Major decisions are taken in that farm and Alhaji hardly comes here when he is town but people go to the farm to meet him at that farm. Besides, you get everything free at that farm.” He was right because we enjoyed farm life at Anadariyya and each time I think about the “kundi” (gizzards) we normally ate free and all weekend, those were the days I would not forget in Kano. In addition, when I think about the Filipino girls that were our companions and the jokes of our British boss, and other co-workers of other nationalities, Tiga life was fun indeed. Each time I discuss with Dare-now in Toronto, Canada -when I call him up from Chicago and we relive those experiences, we crack up numerous times. But did we strike gold at Dantata Farms as Dare anticipated? Not really, but my Tiga experiences were to come in handy three decades later as I prepare to co-author the biography of one man who once was mistaken for a Dantata: Billionaire Aliko Mohammad Dangote.

TO BE CONTINUED